SSI Sidemount Specialty Course

SSI Sidemount Specialty course is the fastest trending course in recent years of diving.

Sidemount is a scuba diving equipment configuration which has diving cylinders mounted along the diver, below the shoulders and along the hips, instead of on the back of the diver. It began as a configuration popular with advanced cave divers, as the total area of a sidemount diver is so much smaller than that of a backmount.

Hence, it is much easier for a sidemount diver to maneuver in tight spaces that their back mount counterpart.

Nowadays, the main reason of the Sidemount trend is the highly customizable set up, allowing divers to fine-tune their equipment to the smallest details. Moreover, a sidemount system is a good start-up for a journey in the technical diving area. Divers will learn to stage, and handle more than one tank, which is a regularity in technical diving.

Duration Sidemount course

The SSI Sidemount Specialty is a 2 days course – 1 day in pool and another out at sea. Upon completion, you will be so much better in getting your trim, and you probably will not go back diving in a backmount again!

What do you do and where do we teach you

Your SSI Sidemount Specialty Course is a 2 days course, which requires you to have a pool session and an open water session. The Freedom pool we use is a 5 meters deep pool, which enable us to anticipate pressure changes underwater and practice deep water skills.

On your open water training day, you requires at least 2 dives to finish the skills. You will learn skills like the ‘s-drill’, back-finning and more to help you cope with the new configuration.

Hence, some of our students opt to combine sidemount course with Perfect Buoyancy Specialty course to optimize buoyancy control. Sidemount is also very popular among Nitrox divers, as nitrox extends the NDL, while Sidemount system allows diver to bring more breathing gas underwater.