Bad habits in sidemount?

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kr2y5

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Many of us live in areas, where sidemount is not as popular and the density of sidemount instructors not as high as in cave country, and when accumulating experience with less access to feedback about one's diving, there comes the danger of developing bad habits that one may have to struggle to unlearn later. What are some of the potential bad habits to be aware of, and to avoid, that are specifically related to sidemount diving? What did you have to unlearn, or teach someone to unlearn? Thanks!
 
if you have a good fundamental base then you are less apt to develop bad habits. The biggest thing with sidemount is trim, so the way to avoid it is to have a buddy get some gopro video of you regularly and constantly critique yourself and your buddies. Diving is diving, regardless of singles, doubles, sidemount, ccr etc. the basics are the same. Buoyancy, trim, propulsion techniques do not change regardless of where, what size, or how many bottles that you have.
 
Some of the potentially bad habits I've helped people fix include tank trim, hose routing, SPG placement, and bungee methods. We used to have a guy in this area who was training sidemount as basically slinging a tank on either side. That defeats most of the benefits of sidemount diving. I "remediated" a few of his students ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)
 
I run routine clinics to help remediate sidemount qualified divers who are less than ecstatic about their performance (after going to cheaper/less experienced instructors and doing quicker/less expensive courses).

The biggest areas of remediation are:

1. Fundamental skills. Where courses are taught by an instructor who, themselves, have weak fundamentals and/or no experience developing high-level fundamentals. Sidemount doesn't work well if the diver isn't able to hold effective trim...and this causes knock-on problems with equipment as cylinders, bungees etc do not 'sit' properly when the diver isn't in trim.

2. General Equipment Configuration. Where courses are taught by instructors who don't possess basic expertise in sizing, configuring and setting up sidemount equipment for individual divers. This includes effective hose routing, harness sizing, cylinder set-up and the selection/sizing of appropriate bungees. Less experienced instructors fail to appreciate the 'fine points' in sidemount set-up; where an inch here or there, or a wrong bolt-snap, or a too thick/thin bungee etc.... can catastrophically degrade the 'feel' and function of equipment. There is also a problem with instructors who are not expert enough to appreciate differences in approach for cold/warm water, or steel/aluminum cylinder sidemount diving considerations...teaching and trying to apply inappropriate concepts for a given environment or rig.

3. Rig Specific Configuration. Where courses are taught by instructors who have very limited range of sidemount equipment knowledge; being restricted to one, or a few, brands only....and cannot effectively hep the student to get the best out of their chosen rig or method. For instance, there's a lot of sidemount instructors in SE Asia that did fast-track SM instructor courses in rigs like the SMS50.... who then face a gross knowledge deficit when trying to instruct students who invest in rigs like XDeep, Razor or Apeks.

4. Insufficient Practice Time in Initial SM Training. Where courses were taught to the bare minimum duration/dives specified by the given agency.... and students did not have time to fully ingrain skills. This leads to students 'qualifying' with errors remaining in their skillset and knowledgebase. Those errors compound as further experience is gained.... leading to ingrained bad habits. These are the hardest to rectify subsequently.
 
There are some splendid answers above. I will add just two short comments.

1) Trim and gear issues are important. I have seen an experienced backmount diver mount a badly adjusted sidemount rig - and after that seeing was not an option. General unfamiliarity with the rig finally led to silt out+reel jam+panic+unwanted buoyancy+line entanglement+bad breathing+unconsciousness under water.

2) I would say that not changing the regulator often enough is a risk.
What if you breathe one tank empty and then the other fails?
 
I'm not an expert, just a big drip. But I've learned that there are good methods and better methods, and the best methods and set ups are what work best for you with your kit. I started out with just a rig, got it fit, and learned to dive sidemount and wreck. When I wanted to step beyond the rec world and start learning Tec, I found that Tec instructors had many useful comments to help me improve my trim, tighten up my rig, and make many of the movements easier.

Things like sliding d-rings, floating o-rings and a loop bungee, mounting my SPG down the tank rather than blinkers. There probably wasn't anything WRONG with how I did things before, but I'm not so proud as I can't take some professional level critique.

I recently dove with Andy. We spent the better part of a morning working my rig over, and I'd have to say that the results were very useful. And there's still a couple things I want to do. I could have just blown him off when he started suggesting ways to modify my rig, but I was PAYING him to TEACH me, why would I reject good solid, highly experienced critique?

The point is that there isn't a sidemount police. Some people might not want to dive with you if your set up doesn't satisfy them, but you can have good buoyancy, half decent trim, and perform all the critical sidemount skills and slip thru wrecks without constantly tweaking your kit and pulling it apart and redoing it. But what are you going to learn about how well it really works if you don't try anything different?
 
In a Wreck, once you've committed to penetrating a tight restriction (i.g. prop shaft tunnel; engine boiler room passageway; inter-cargo hold accessways etc), there better be a complete non-obstructed traverse passage going through or least an opening space big enough to turn around for egress --else you've gotta back out as best you can (try doing that without silting-out the whole area), or worst case you get jammed-in stuck. (Lesson learned from traversing length of I-169 Submarine in Truk Lagoon).

Also run a primary reel/spool line leading back to that restriction if it opens up to an antechamber like a engine room control station --that is, never assume you can make a "short distance visual jump" and can still find your way back to that small passageway restriction for egress. (Lesson learned from penetrating the Engine/Boiler Room of the Fumizuki Destroyer).
 
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. . . when accumulating experience with less access to feedback about one's diving, there comes the danger of developing bad habits that one may have to struggle to unlearn later. What are some of the potential bad habits to be aware of, and to avoid, that are specifically related to sidemount diving? What did you have to unlearn, or teach someone to unlearn? !
I don't think I have had to necessarily 'unlearn' bad habits, as much as learn additional procedures, primarily as a result of expanding my experience base of rigs and cylinders, and figuring out how to streamline different configurations. I actually cannot recall a habit that I decided was simply bad/wrong and needed to be put aside. I have found that certain different (from what I started with) approaches to certain things - SPG placement in particular - suit me better than what I initially learned.

The primary problems I have seen in other divers have to do with cylinder and body trim. Bob's point is a good one - in some cases divers look like they are simply slinging deco bottles on both sides. Or, in using longer HP steel cylinders, they join the '45-er' club, and simply don't realize it. tbone makes an excellent point as well - video is a phenomenal tool, to help others and to help yourself.
 
I think there is a primary bad habit to avoid during sidemount training: overconfident diving.
Normal restrictions for beginning rec divers mostly do not apply:
You have enough gas to do several dives on a single set of tanks,
you never have to be scared by any type of equipment malfunction.
Most sidemount divers never have a single 'life threatening experience' during their first 100dives, something many backmount divers might consider 'lucky' (depending on the location, mostly).
All sidemount divers I meet vastly overestimate their own contribution to the superiority they feel after a few hundred dives with mostly backmount divers.
Using the right equipment solves most technical problems but aggravates one of the most dangerous psychological ones.

Some start entering the water insufficiently prepared, leave behind backup mask or the secondary compass, forget their computers, don't carry replacement bungees or do not bother to check those occasionally...

The most extrem cases stop doing proper gas planing even on challenging dives and extend dives way beyond the planned maximum depth or return distance on an impulse.
I sometimes get concerned thinking about what will happen when all those people start going beyond normal rec diving limits in a few years.

There are also a lot of 'small things':
Long loops in the hose routing, dangling equipment, putting equipment in places that are hard to reach when you need it...
There are a lot of small decissions to make that will not cause a significant problem either way for a long time but will come back to haunt you a few hundred dives later.
 

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