Does freefly experience REALLY translate into RW skill?

[Jessica 0]

"Freeflying will help your RW skills, but RW won't do shit for your freeflying."

I've heard plenty of freeflyers declare this as an absolute truth, but to be perfectly honest, I get the feeling that it's a my-discipline-is-better-than-yours-type assertation.

So here's a hypothetical: I have 200 jumps and I'm on a 4-way team. Then I abandon formation skydiving and spend the next 400 jumps doing nothing but sit-flying and head down.

Then I re-join my 4-way team and we go out and do a jump. Are my skills as good as if I'd spent those 400 jumps on my belly? Or what? I'm looking for a way to translate this.

Skydiving is for cool people only

[TALONSKY 0]

With out a doubt most freefly skills will not help you become a better RW. Each discipline is completely different in most all aspects other than getting out of a plane and turn and track.
To really refine RW skills takes alot of jumps, timing is highly important, as well as looking to the center of the formation at all times, body position and fall rate. I personally did my first 150 to 200 jumps doing 4 way then have spent the rest bouncing around from couch jumps, birdman jumps and alot of freefly jumps. I recently did a 5 way RW and did OK but not nearly as good as I use to.
Each discipline take its own set of skills that generally will not be able to be use in other disciplines but it does make for a more well round knowlege to know more disciplines
Blues Skies
Kirk

[tigra 0]

I think the people that say that are the ones who never made an effort at belly flying once they got off student status. And these same people probably would not perform well if they started belly flying now.
Both disciplines have value, and both require you to hone certain skills.

Most of the really good experienced freeflyers have good belly flying skills as well- (Rook Nelson and Olav Zipser to name 2), and they will also tell you that it is better to learn basics like approaching and docking from a slower more controlled position (like on your belly!) before you try to do it at 150 plus mph on your head.

That said, I think freeflying gives you great body awareness which can only help you when you are belly flying. You can get away with some sloppy body positions when you are belly flying, especially f you are not on a competition team.

4 way is a totally different animal, though. The more 4 way jumps you do, with your team, the better you will all get. If you quit 4 way for 400 jumps to pursue any other discipline and then start again, I think in many ways it would be like starting over. I've never done serious 4 way, so that's just my opinion.......

maura

Just my thoughts...........

[weid14 0]

well, judging form some of the results I see when we put bigger ways together with free flying brethren (not a hybrid), it doesn't help . Not taking away their flying ability, it's like saying snowboarding will make you a better skier -- it won't, it will help with balance awareness and all that, but it won't directly translate over to better skiing. same with non-belly flight, it gives you good body awareness, but you have to know how to interpret that awareness and put it into use.... another example are the free flight folks (say that 10 times fast) that do 4way on a lark, they ususally dont' score that many points (nor would I in head down either)

[rushmc 23]

Good question! May I expand on your question?

I believe that experience, skill and focus make us better sky divers.

Do you think that adding freefly or RW skills ( the opposite of what you like to do regularly) makes you a safer skydiver?

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[tigra 0]

I think the "safer" skydivers are the ones who are willing to learn new things.

[Shark 0]

Quote

So here's a hypothetical: I have 200 jumps and I'm on a 4-way team. Then I abandon formation skydiving and spend the next 400 jumps doing nothing but sit-flying and head down.

Then I re-join my 4-way team and we go out and do a jump. Are my skills as good as if I'd spent those 400 jumps on my belly? Or what? I'm looking for a way to translate this.

I see a skydiver with 600 jumps. In your example, when did the 4 way training start? If it was a structured program starting at jump #50, the next hundred jumps or so after quitting, even if they were freeflown, will probably benefit you. But then again, you may have to spend a weekend training with your team and re-learning how to fly your slot. Heck, if you did nothing but 4 way at the IC slot for 200 jumps, then had to move to Tail, you could have a lot of difficulty there as well. I guess my point is that skill and experience are different.

[drenaline 0]

I heard a story of a very talented cameraflyer who has filmed almost all the famous skydivers (olav, fly circus, airspeed, skysurfers, etc.) and he said that the best freeflyer he has ever seen in action and filmed was jack jeffreys and some other RW people.

RW makes you know how to fly your center of gravity, the belly, belly is the key.

HISPA 21
www.panamafreefall.com

[Cajones 0]

"I heard a story..."

I heard a story about a huge white whale.

The laws of physics are strictly enforced.

[Jimbo 0]

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I heard a story of a very talented cameraflyer who has filmed almost all the famous skydivers (olav, fly circus, airspeed, skysurfers, etc.) and he said that the best freeflyer he has ever seen in action and filmed was jack jeffreys and some other RW people.

Uh huh....

I think Jack Jefferys competed in FF at nationals this year. He didn't win. Didn't even come close.

-
Jim

"Like" - The modern day comma
Good bye, my friends. You are missed.

[DivaSkyChick 0]

ROTFLMAO!!!!

Quote

Uh huh....

I think Jack Jefferys competed in FF at nationals this year. He didn't win. Didn't even come close.

-
Jim

---
www.facebook.com/mandyhamptonfitch

[drenaline 0]

Quote

I heard a story about a huge white whale.

You know that the story of moby dick was derived from a real true story...

I know who to believe and this one is a trust worthy man.

HISPA 21
www.panamafreefall.com

[billvon 2,991]

>Then I re-join my 4-way team and we go out and do a jump. Are
>my skills as good as if I'd spent those 400 jumps on my belly?

Definitely not, but your skills will be better than if you spent the same time, say, SCUBA diving. Freeflying gives you some good experience in how to fly your body, and helps in RW a bit, but nothing like actually doing RW.

[Watcher 0]

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4 way is a totally different animal, though. The more 4 way jumps you do, with your team, the better you will all get. If you quit 4 way for 400 jumps to pursue any other discipline and then start again, I think in many ways it would be like starting over. I've never done serious 4 way, so that's just my opinion.......

4 way on a competitive team with good assets will increase your skills beyond what most people dream about at the same jump numbers. You are jumping with the same 3 people over and over and over. You do not have to worry about fall rates after a few jumps and after more you know they will be in their slots too so you can really concentrate on improveing. I will use my team as an exmaple. We started with 220, 110, 65, and 40 jumps, on our first meet we did a 2.8 average. We then did 5 hours of team tunnel with some alumni (Deland Genisis), and then got very serious with training. At NSL regionals we did a 11.6 (camera took us out on one dive ) So in roughly 220-300 jumps for the team since feb, we can outfly most many jumpers with over a 1000 jumps, and our team is preparing for the AFF course, 2 members have only been in the sport for a single year. So in closing a competition team while extremely expensive, can bring your skills up faster than anything else.

On a side note, I can do Head down, and the rest of freeflying pretty well, still am far from mastering docks in a head down, but I have not done more than 10 headdown jumps, still need more practice.

4 way rocks, and I would really encourage everyone to spend atleast one season doing it, the skills you pick up I think are invaluable, its also more fun than anything I have expirenced, gotta love going vertical on blocks!!!!

Jonathan

Jonathan Bartlett
D-24876
AFF-I

[FallingILweenie 0]

My personal experience is that (and I am a freeflyer) I think doing freeflying helps you more in RW than doing RW does in freeflying. Obviously any type of skydiving helps you more than staying on the ground in whatever discipline you do. The reason i think this is when i learned to belly fly (granted, it was student status and the subsequent 30 jumps or so, so how "learned" i was is open to debate) i was taught more body position in that "this will work here, that will work there" and so on, whereas when i learned to freefly people that taught me to freefly were more like "i do this, he does that, it's kinda how you do it but you have to figure out what works for you". That sort of training helped me become more aware of how the air hits my body and what the cause and effect of the body position is. I think that helps speed up the learning process in rw. On the other hand, from what I have seen people who have done primarily rw from hundreds of jumps have a harder time trying to freefly because the whole RW-arch-harder body position thing is more engrained in their minds.

I don't know if this is a fair comparison, but the way i see it is i have about 100 belly jumps (to 300+ freefly dives) and have gone on 15-16 ways successfully and safely. Now that isn't big to a lot of people but it is to me. On the other hand, i have been on 6-7 way headdown dives. Obviously talent-wise people are different, but in general is someone with 100 freefly dives ready for a headdown dive that big? is this comparison fair?

just my 2 cents.

blue skies
Tomas

[PhreeZone 20]

A better compairison is how many points on a 4 way can you do instead of a big way since most of the biger stuff is holding a slot for a while whereas 4 way is a lot of movement. You can muscle your way around a 20 way where on a 4 way it requires more finesse and skill to be clean.

I freeflew for 300 jumps and then started belly coaching.... big difference and I had to relearn all the belly stuff to fly cleanly.

Yesterday is history
And tomorrow is a mystery

Parachutemanuals.com

[nacmacfeegle 0]

Lots of good stuff here, with some interesting "what ifs" and analogies.
But we are not comparing apples with apples.
Jumping4-way as part of a team is a great progression, team members coach each other, and every jump is debriefed, in detail. Jumpers jump with the same team each weekend, or whatever.
If the same 'discipline'were applied in freeflying the progression rate would be similar. Okay so the training techniques are a little more mature for RW, so its still not a fair comparison.

What makes the transition from FF to RW or otherwise, is the individual's ability to transfer skills like situational awareness, relativity, and close quarter control, from one discipline to the other.

Its all good folks, there are great aspects to both types of flying, that each discipline could benefit from.

Personally, I think a jumper should be at least competent at 4 way RW before going free flying, and I think a lot of RW fliers would benefit from some time with the freaks.

Me? I'm a converted belly flier.

--------------------

He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

[Zennie 0]

I think it's always dangerous to speak in generalities. All I can do is relate my own experience.

I personally think I progressed faster in freefly at the beginning having spent my first 100 or so jumps doing RW. By then I had developed at least a fundamental sense of body position, fall rate control & relative wind dynamics. So I picked up sitflying relatively quickly.

I also found that when I went back to do the occasional RW jump I performed better than I had previously because freeflying further improved my body awareness. Getting where you need to be sort of becomes instinctual.

Unfortuantely, my RW skills have probably degraded because I've floated out on practically every RW formation I've been on lately (read "hybrid"). Might need to dig out my SCUBA weight belt .

But to be really skilled at either discipline requires dedicated practice. Advanced RW requires skills, such as exit technique, block moves, etc, that freefliers don't know. Advanced freefly has similar skills that you just can't know until you practice them over & over.

But of course, IMHO, belly flying is just another dimension of freeflying. A neglected one, granted, but it is just another axis/dimension in which one can fly. And true freeflying is about being proficient in any orientation.

- Z
"Always be yourself... unless you suck." - Joss Whedon

[apoil 0]

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I think the people that say that are the ones who never made an effort at belly flying once they got off student status. And these same people probably would not perform well if they started belly flying now.
Both disciplines have value, and both require you to hone certain skills.

I say that, but it not as an absolute truth, and not as a substitute for learning
proper RW. But I also say that doing RW will improve your freefly skills.

I did RW and Freefly coming off student status. When my RW was good enough by my own reckoning (I could get into a slot on a 20+ way, and I could turn a block or two on a 4-8 way), I decided to work on freefly exclusively.
I spent two years making nothing but freefly jumps and the next time I did an 8way RW, I was right there in the slot, better than I had been before.

But when it comes down to refining a discipline, any discipline, there's no substitute for lots of practice and currency. But any skydiving discipline has some cross training value for the others.

[brits17 0]

well all i'm going to say is that i know quite a few only freeflyers who are AFF jm's. now of course being an AFF jm is a lot different than rw... but it's still flying on your belly nonetheless.

so translating over onto a much larger center of gravity (belly) from something a lot smaller (your head) is going to be a positive switch. i'm not saying you're going to be a rockin 4-way stud, but it definately improves your skills all-around. you become more of a total body pilot... and that's what i love about this damn sport. that's all i got to say about that .

_______________________
aerialkinetics.com

[weid14 0]

do you think your center of gravity actually changes to your head in vertical flying?

[Zennie 0]

If it's a female, yeah.

- Z
"Always be yourself... unless you suck." - Joss Whedon

[Zennie 0]

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do you think your center of gravity actually changes to your head in vertical flying

Seriously, though...

Yeah your CG won't change, but your surface area sure does. I think what she's driving at is that the belly position is an inherently more stable position than most freefly positions by virtue of the increased body surface area that one has to work with.

So if one is used to being stable with less surface area, going to a position with more area should be easier to work with... assuming the flier has a good sense of body flight dynamics.

And like she said, that doesn't mean that freefliers are going to kick butt in hardcore RW, just that they won't suck on their belly either.

- Z
"Always be yourself... unless you suck." - Joss Whedon

[brits17 0]

ok yeah, what he said

what i meant was, the axis in which the rest of your body is flying upon (if that makes any sense).

ok, what he said...

_______________________
aerialkinetics.com

[jumpgod 0]

I think it's a double edge sword...

1) Good -- freeflying's precision makes you an aggressive and accurate RW flier

2) Bad -- they are 2 different types of flying -- RW is arching and your orientation is conventional (if you will) -- where as freeflying sends you in all attitudes and is much more difficult to control. when you spend more time on one than another, both are affected.

peace,

jg

"dude, where's my main?"