Sidemount Diver Instructor: How to Start Teaching It

If you have ever watched a technical diver glide past with cylinders slung neatly along their sides instead of strapped to their back, you have seen sidemount diving in action. It started life as a cave-exploration technique, born out of necessity in tight passages where a back-mounted twin-set simply would not fit. Today it has grown into one of the most popular specialties in recreational and technical diving, and for those of us who teach it, few courses are as rewarding to run as the Sidemount Diver Instructor course. If you are already comfortable diving sidemount yourself and want to start passing that skill on to others, this is where your teaching pathway begins.

What the Sidemount Diver Instructor Course Actually Involves

The Sidemount Diver Instructor course is a specialty instructor qualification that authorises you to teach the Sidemount Diver specialty to your own students, from complete beginners to experienced divers looking to add a new configuration to their toolkit. Unlike a full open water course, this is a compact, focused programme built around teaching methodology, equipment configuration, and problem management specific to sidemount, rather than general diving skills you already hold as a working instructor.

You will spend time in the classroom working through trim theory, gas management with independent cylinders, and how to structure a sidemount specialty course for different types of student. Then you will move into the pool and open water to demonstrate and refine the skills you will be expected to teach, everything from basic configuration and buoyancy checks through to valve drills, gas-sharing procedures, and streamlining a rig so it sits comfortably rather than fighting the diver all day.

Who Should Take This Course

This course sits within our Professional Academy, and as such it assumes you already hold an active instructor rating. Beyond that baseline, you will need reasonable sidemount diving experience of your own, ideally including a recreational Sidemount Diver certification and a healthy number of logged sidemount dives so that the skills feel second nature rather than something you are still working out yourself.

In practice, we see three types of instructor come through this course. The first is the technical diving enthusiast who already teaches cave or wreck specialties and wants sidemount as a natural extension. The second is the instructor working at a dive centre with an ageing or injury-prone clientele, since sidemount configurations are often kinder on backs and shoulders when kitting up on land. The third is simply the instructor who fell in love with the trim and freedom sidemount offers and wants to share that feeling rather than keep it to themselves.

Prerequisites at a Glance

You will need an active instructor certification from a recognised training agency, a recreational sidemount qualification of your own, and enough logged experience in sidemount configuration that the mechanics feel automatic. If you are unsure whether your current logbook is sufficient, our team can review it with you before you commit to a date.

What a Typical Training Day Looks Like

Most candidates complete the course over two to three days, depending on prior experience. A typical first day starts in the classroom, working through the standards and procedures you will use to teach the specialty, then moves poolside for equipment configuration practice, where you will fit and adjust sidemount rigs on a range of body types and torso lengths.

The second day usually moves to open water, often in a flooded quarry or similar controlled environment where visibility and depth are predictable. Here you will run through a full teaching presentation as if you had a real student in front of you, covering entries, trim adjustment, gas switching, and simulated failures such as a regulator free-flow on one cylinder while you manage the other. Your instructor trainer will evaluate not just whether you can perform the skill, but whether you can explain, demonstrate, and correct it clearly enough for a nervous student to follow.

A third day, where scheduled, is typically reserved for a mock teaching session, paperwork, and a debrief covering how you would structure your first few sidemount specialty courses back at your own centre.

What You Will Learn to Teach

By the end of the course you will be confident teaching correct sidemount rig assembly and adjustment, weight and trim distribution for different cylinder combinations, gas management strategies for independent cylinders, valve shutdown and gas-sharing drills, and the streamlining adjustments that separate a comfortable rig from an awkward one. You will also come away with a set of practical teaching tools, including how to brief students who have only ever dived back-mount, how to spot and correct trim problems from the surface, and how to sequence skills so students build confidence rather than frustration.

Common Questions Before Booking

Do I need technical diving experience? No. Sidemount is taught recreationally as well as at technical levels, so plenty of candidates arrive with purely recreational backgrounds.

What cylinders will I use during training? We typically use aluminium 80s or steel equivalents for the practical sessions, matching what most of your future students are likely to use in warm-water and UK conditions alike.

Can I combine this with another specialty instructor course? Yes, several candidates pair it with a Dry Suit Diver Instructor or Deep Diver Instructor rating during the same visit to make the most of their time with us, particularly useful given our UK dry suit season is well underway by this point in the year.

How soon can I start teaching after certification? As soon as your paperwork is processed, you are qualified to run Sidemount Diver specialty courses immediately.

Kit and Logistics for the Course

If you already own a sidemount harness, bring it along, since teaching in your own configuration is genuinely useful preparation for coaching students who will eventually buy their own gear too. If you do not yet own a rig, we can supply demo harnesses for the duration of the course so you can compare a couple of different designs before deciding what to invest in for yourself.

Expect to be in the water across both pool and open water sessions, so bring your usual exposure protection for the time of year. With dry suit season well underway here in Reading by mid-October, most candidates run this course in a dry suit, which is worth factoring into your trim practice since a dry suit adds an extra variable to manage alongside your cylinders. If your own dry suit skills need a refresh first, it is worth mentioning to your instructor trainer before the course starts so the two can be woven together sensibly rather than tackled as entirely separate problems.

We keep class sizes deliberately small for this course, usually no more than two or three candidates per instructor trainer, so you get genuine one-to-one coaching time rather than sitting in a queue waiting for your turn in the water. That also means dates can fill up a few weeks ahead, so it is worth checking availability early if you have a particular window in mind.

How It Fits Your Bigger Pathway

For most professionals, the Sidemount Diver Instructor rating is not an endpoint, it is a stepping stone. It pairs naturally with technical instructor pathways through our Professional Academy, and it broadens what you can offer as an independent instructor or as a valued member of a dive centre team. Divers increasingly ask for it by name, having seen sidemount configurations on social media or while travelling, and centres that can offer it stand out from those that cannot.

It also tends to make you a better all-round instructor. Teaching sidemount forces you to think harder about trim, weighting, and gas management than teaching a standard back-mount course does, and those sharper observation skills carry over into every other course you teach afterwards.

Ready to add sidemount teaching to your instructor toolkit? Explore the full Sidemount Diver Instructor course or browse the rest of our course calendar, or get in touch - we're at Bellman Court, Great Knollys Street, Reading, or call +44 (0) 118 9761 729.