Weight

[pchapman 279]

Learning to fly one's body helps. Although for the very flexible, as has been pointed out, being bent in half makes it difficult to dock with others too.

Getting a good, tight suit helps too and can solve the problem for some.

But often that's not enough. Weights are still the key item in the end when a lot of adjustment is needed.

Weights are not a crutch for the inept; they're an important tool to be used. "Just learn to fly your body" is crap! Learning to fly your body is good, "JUST" learning to fly your body is not enough in many cases.

When to introduce weights for a student or novice is something I'm not really sure about. Adding weight to their body when they aren't yet landing consistently is to be avoided if practical to do so. But I think one also wants to introduce weights as a tool while the jumper is still with instructors and coaches providing initial RW instruction.

(When I started I was 140 lbs and 6'1". Buying a new, custom, tight RW suit was not enough at all. I sucked in RW until I got weights, and I leaned some bad habits in the meantime.)

[popsjumper 2]

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Well, to be fair, you were taught it the old-school hard way.
LaughLaughTongue

Yeah, we learned from the experienced jumpers on the DZ after we got off AFF level 7. Instead of paying 200 jump wonder coaches to jump with us.

The new system is much better...said the 200 jump wonder coach getting his jumps paid for.

My comment to Billy was a about technique, Chris. Not teacher's abilities.


I agree that the 200-jumps is better than the current Coach requirement of 100 jumps. And yes, I agree...you can't beat experience.

My reality and yours are quite different.
I think we're all Bozos on this bus.
Falcon5232, SCS8170, SCSA353, POPS9398, DS239