Redefine Your Profile: The PADI Tec Sidemount Diver Course
If you’ve looked into technical diving, you quickly realize that tec divers always wear more than one tank to ensure redundancy and extended bottom time. Traditionally, this meant strapping a heavy, rigid twinset to your back. But there is another way—one that is rapidly taking the technical diving world by storm.
Welcome to the PADI Tec Sidemount Diver course. Sidemount is an increasingly popular, incredibly streamlined way to configure multiple cylinders. It relieves back strain, increases your maneuverability, and completely changes the way you balance and interact with the underwater environment.
What is the PADI Tec Sidemount Course?
This course teaches you how to efficiently configure and dive with dual sidemount cylinders for enhanced gas management, redundancy, and maneuverability in technical diving scenarios. Whether you are a recreational diver looking to enter the world of technical diving with a more physically accessible gear configuration, or an existing tec diver looking to transition away from backmount, this course provides the ultimate foundation.
Upon successful completion, you will be a certified PADI Tec Sidemount Diver, qualified to:
- Dive safely with a dual-cylinder sidemount configuration.
- Easily transport and don your cylinders in the water, drastically reducing topside physical strain.
- Seamlessly integrate your sidemount training as a prerequisite for further TecRec courses (like Tec 40, 45, or 50).
The Bohol Advantage: A Streamlined Experience
Bohol’s diving logistics and spectacular topography make it an ideal place to master sidemount. Navigating traditional bangka boats is infinitely easier when you can simply walk to the water in your harness and clip your tanks on at the surface, rather than carrying a massive twinset across a rocking deck. Furthermore, learning to glide along the steep, plunging walls of Balicasag or Doljo Point in a perfectly streamlined, low-profile sidemount rig offers a sensation of underwater freedom and balance that simply cannot be matched.
What You’ll Master in the Tec Sidemount Course
Sidemount diving is as much an art as it is a science. Under the direct mentorship of your Sierra Madre Divers PADI TecRec Instructor, you will:
- Master Gear Configuration: Learn the intricate details of setting up a custom sidemount harness, adjusting bungees, and configuring regulators and hose routings for a clean, snag-free profile.
- Perfect In-Water Trim and Buoyancy: Sidemount requires a completely different approach to balance. You will practice hovering in perfect horizontal trim while seamlessly un-clipping and re-clipping tanks to navigate tight spaces.
- Execute Advanced Gas Management: Learn the strict protocols for switching regulators fluidly to keep your cylinder pressures balanced throughout the dive.
- Solve Problems Fast: Practice managing out-of-gas emergencies and free-flows with the massive advantage of having your tank valves easily visible and accessible right under your arms, rather than hidden behind your head.
- Handle Multiple Cylinders: Progress beyond your two primary tanks to learn the techniques for carrying additional stage or decompression cylinders in a sidemount configuration.
Course Details & Structure
Diver Prerequisites:
- Certified PADI Advanced Open Water Diver
- Minimum of 30 logged dives
- Minimum age: 18 years old
- (Highly Recommended: PADI Enriched Air Diver certification)
Included in the Course:
- PADI Tec Sidemount Diver eLearning materials
- Practical application and workshop sessions focusing on custom harness fitting and hardware setup
- 1 Confined Water training dive
- 4 comprehensive Open Water training dives
- Full rental of specialized technical sidemount harnesses and regulator setups
Duration: 3-4 Days
Take the Load Off Your Back
Earning your PADI Tec Sidemount certification is a complete game-changer for your diving career. It opens the door to longer dives, safer redundancy, and a level of underwater comfort you never thought possible, perfectly paving the way for advanced deep, wreck, and cave exploration.
Contact our expert TecRec team at Sierra Madre Divers today to enroll in your PADI Tec Sidemount course and experience the absolute freedom of taking the tanks off your back!