Recreational Sidemount is still an Open Frontier:
Recreational-Sidemount owes a debt of gratitude to the Cave/Tech Instructors who brought the techniques out of the “darkness” and into the “Light”.
Without them, these skills and techniques would have remained – forever – unavailable to the majority of certified divers. However, there is still a strong prejudice against teaching recreational divers the sidemount skill set.
The benefits of recreational sidemount are immense. We always talk of personal preference in diving and then try to shoe-horn everyone into the same gear, same size cylinder etc. Sidemount allows for individualized cylinder selection and customized rigging options. If one is slight of stature or has bad back/knees, smaller cylinders can make a world of difference. When you then halve the size of the cylinder by splitting the gas into 2 smaller capacity tanks, the effect can be liberating. In addition, Sidemount offers 2 redundant air supplies. Who doesn’t want a complete life-support backup system!
The most common criticisims of teaching Sidemount to Recreational divers are that they can’t handle the required regulator exchanges and they can’t monitor 2 independent air supplies.
Clearly those are both ridiculous assertions. Every open water diver learns to exchange regs for their “out-of-air” drills. Clearly switching regs between sidemount air supplies is no more taxing than a basic out of air drill.
Regardless of selected gas-management procedures, monitoring two gauges is no more taxing than one. The important concept is keep them both above reserve and know when to turn the dive. All concepts taught in basic open water courses.
That said, the biggest “threat” to the new “rec-sidemount” movement is the elitist mentality of many of the existing Sidemount cadre of instructors who can’t break out of the paradigm in which they learned to Sidemount. “Old-skool” Cave/Tech Sidemounters went to great lengths to qualify to learn sidemount. Like a Knight of old, you were not taught until deemed worthy by another keeper of the flame.
While the skill sets evolved by a hardcore Cave/tec diver are vastly different from those of a beginner recreational sidemount diver, the intent and scope of use are likewise vastly different. Hopefully it won’t require a whole generation for a new perspective on Rec-Sidemount to emerge and for Cave/Tec divers to stop feeling “threatened” by sharing some basic skills with new Sidemounters.
Today, “Recreational” Sidemount is still in it’s infancy. An instructor Corps is still growing, who can relate the skills and techniques to the non-cave/tech-inclined diver. There are a vast number of certified Recreational divers who might benefit from these Rec-Sidemount skills. The story of Recreational Sidemount is developing and still evolving.
While Rec-Sidemount came from the Tech/Cave world, it is no longer beholden to its progenitor. Making comparisons between the way – a Cave/Tech rigged diver and a Recreational-rigged diver – looks is pointless and a waste of time. Instead, the over-arching focus is safety, the rest are details…
Recreational Sidemount is not targeted at those with Cave/Tech skill-sets and therefore has to be properly taught, beginning with the basics and then more basics… Someone who learned as a Cave/Tech diver, didn’t necessarily see the whole training process for teaching these new skills to non-tech divers!
Instructor-attitudes directly affect outcomes for their students and so it behooves Sidemount instructors who intend to teach recreational divers, work with a mentor familiar with teaching these skills to the Recreational mindset and who can help them re-shape their empathy-core.
Recreational Sidemount needs instructors who can relate the skills and drills to the recreational diver and show them how to translate the benefits of this new skill-set to their Recreational needs!
Noisy criticism from “experienced-Tech/Cave”-Sidemounters and arm-chair warriors, towards the beginner Recreational Sidemount divers, is unhelpful and tends to push them away from this new recreational pursuit.
The genie cannot be stuffed back in the bottle. The benefit of proper sidemount training for Recreational divers is in-arguable as are the potential benefits of sidemount skills to certain recreational diver populations.
Just as there should be no room for peer-pressure in diving decisions, don’t allow noisy criticisms to drive Sidemount back into the darkness!
UcanSCUBA 