For years, sidemount diving and DIR philosophy have often been treated as if they were fundamentally incompatible. In reality, the problem was never sidemount itself. The problem was trying to force a backmount solution onto a completely different system.
At some point, somebody decided:
“DIR means longhose.”
And from there, many sidemount configurations became nothing more than an awkward attempt to replicate a backmount setup underwater.But DIR was never about the longhose.
DIR is about standardization, team awareness, simplicity, and most importantly:
You donate what you are breathing.
That principle is the foundation of a reliable gas-sharing procedure. In a real emergency, under stress, a diver will instinctively hand off the regulator they know is working — the one currently in their mouth.
In classic backmount DIR, the longhose simply enables that procedure cleanly.
The issue is that a “standard” sidemount setup does not naturally support this philosophy.
In traditional sidemount configurations, divers often breathe the necklace regulator while the donation regulator sits clipped off with a boltsnap. Gas-sharing then becomes a complicated discussion about which regulator is primary, which one is deployed, hose routing, and whether the donated second stage is actually the one confirmed to be functioning correctly in that moment.
That creates inconsistency.
And inconsistency is exactly what DIR tries to eliminate.
Rethinking Sidemount for True DIR Principles
Instead of forcing a longhose into sidemount simply because it exists in backmount, we approached the problem from first principles:
How do we maintain a true “donate what you breathe” philosophy in sidemount?
The answer is surprisingly simple.
Our sidemount configuration uses:
- Two independent first stages
- Two second stages
- Both second stages on approximately 100 cm hoses
- A swivel connection at the second stage for unrestricted routing and comfort
This means that regardless of which tank you are breathing from at the moment, you can immediately donate the regulator from your mouth.
No hesitation.
No switching.
No searching for a specific hose.
You simply hand off the working regulator you are already using.
After donation, the next step follows naturally:
You donate the entire tank to your teammate.
This creates a clean, predictable, and genuinely team-oriented gas-sharing procedure that actually reflects DIR principles instead of copying backmount aesthetics.
The Longhose Was Never the Goal
The longhose is a tool — not a religion.
In backmount, it solves a specific problem elegantly. But sidemount introduces different constraints, different routing, and different equipment dynamics. Blindly insisting on a longhose in sidemount misses the point entirely.
A DIR configuration should not be defined by hose length.
It should be defined by whether the system supports:
- immediate and reliable donation,
- team consistency,
- simplicity under stress,
and efficient problem solving underwater.
When viewed through that lens, a properly configured dual-100 cm sidemount system makes far more sense than trying to imitate a backmount setup that was designed around entirely different equipment geometry.
DIR is not about copying equipment.
DIR is about building systems that work.
And in sidemount, donation-first thinking changes everything.