ground exercises, keeping current without jumping???

[andy2 0]

Is there anything one can do besides practicing arch, turns, emergency procedures, etc, on the ground in the intermittent time between jumps? Im speaking mainly in terms of student exercises. It seems like a pattern (money issues) that its going to be 2-3 weeks between jumps. Every couple weeks I get in 2 jumps, but it seems after a week or two with not jumping things seem to get a little less sharp in my mind. Is there anything I can do besides jump more? That said, this problem will probably be solved when all I have to buy to jump is a jump ticket, but AFF is hella exspensive

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let my inspiration flow,
in token rhyme suggesting rhythm...

[CrazyIvan 0]

You can hang out at the DZ, staying home arching alone and pulling imaginary handles won't help much, but keeping in touch with skydivers, will help.

My 2 cents.

__________________________________________
Blue Skies and May the Force be with you.

[Skylark 0]

The best thing you can do is download all the malfunction videos from skydivingmovies.com. I only had 12 jumps and didn't jump for a year but watched them over and over and over again. Last week I went to Empuria and had bad line twists on my second jump. I felt fine and kicked out of them instead of panicking and cutting away as I did on my first mal, because watching those clips hundreds of times, it almost felt like I'd had line twists hundreds of times myself and it was no big deal.

"Into the dangerous world I leapt..." William Blake, Songs of Experience

[CanuckInUSA 0]

Unfortunately skydiving is a sport which you must participate in, in order to progress. No amount of arching, practice pulls, etc, etc, etc will substitute for the real thing. If we all had wind tunnels in our back yard we could work on certain free fall skills without being in the air, but they're not cheap either.

One area that you can help yourself on the ground is in knowing your emergency procedures and your equipment. One way I found to help train myself with my emergency procedures is to watch my training video called "Breakaway". It's a little dated, but it does provide some excellent malfunction recognition and reaction training. It's been a couple of months since I last watched it, but I did try and watch it every few weeks off of AFF in order to get my mind in the mindset of recognizing the malfunctions and how to react to them. Of course in my short 9 months and 212 jumps in the sport, I've yet to have a cutaway. So who knows how I'll react when the time comes.

Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

[jumpjunkie 0]

Another thing you can do is work on movements through muscle memory exercises. If you do a lot of belly flying, get with a Skydive U coach or other belly flier that you respect. Ask him or her about several things that you can do at home to work on movements for freefall.

If you freefly, you can do things like walking around the house. Imagine what attitude you are flying in and concentrate on what muscles are used to say 'fly from one room to the next.

For both belly flying and freeflying this will build muscle memory on the ground so that once you get back in the air, you will have your skills honed a little more without spending all that money on jumps.

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Tubing, so easy a caveman can do it.

vivo non solum exsisto

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[brabzzz 0]

Mental imagery does a whole lot of good, but only for stuff you CAN do, not stuff you're trying to. No matter how much I think about head-down, i won't learn it without jumping - but by mentally repeating the basic exit-fall-pull-mals-land scenarios they'll be embedded. It works for me anyway. My jumping is in 'spurts' - loads a day for a week or so - and then not much for a while so I find 'mental' jumps handy. Not ideal, but I am a student (of the financially poor academic variety...where lectures are a great time to mentally dirt-dive!).

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Ex-University of Bristol Skydiving Club
www.skydivebristoluni.com

[riggerrob 643]

Let's get back to Andy2's student dilemma.
Advice about watching videos is good.
Malfunction videos are good rainy day homework.
He might try to borrow AFF instructional videos, but remember that there is little point in studying more than one or two dives ahead of his progression.
Another good video is Pack Like a Pro. Packing lessons should parrallel skydiving lessons, but who knows, if he gets too far ahead on learning how to pack, his instructors may end up paying him so they can skydive with him.
Hee! Hee!

[KATO33 0]

Another thing you can always improve is your all around physical fitness and flexibility. Unfortunately you don't get in shape skydiving but you need to maintain a certain level of physical fitness to withstand the occasional bad landing and such.

Blue Skies Black Death

[andy2 0]

Great advice from poster above me. I love to keep up a routine of weights, running, and biking, not only is it fun but it keeps me in top shape. Im sure that I am inadvertently helping my skydiving by doing so. Thanks for the advice, guys!

---------------------------------------------
let my inspiration flow,
in token rhyme suggesting rhythm...

[Tonto 1]

Firstly, practice the drills you know, and do them slowly, and right. Practice makes permanent, not perfect.

So, from your AFF freefall body position, do some alti checks, some practice touches etc. Go through your emergency procedures. Visualise.

Next. Cross-train. Most students have poor lower body awareness, unless they are climbers, martial artists, soccer players, dancers etc. Find something where you need to think about where your feet need to be. If this is going to eat money, buy a few tennis balls and leave them lying about the house. Kick them each time you walk by. No power, just reach out and push.

Next. Realise that "trolley time" teaches tension, and that you should be using those muscles at about 85% for the 3 seconds after exit - but that a really great (flat fly) body position comes from pushing your belly out. Relax your abdominal wall. Everything you know is going to want that tensed up when you're under pressure. Why only 85%? Because non of us are naturally symetrical, and if you are 100% arched, you will turn - unless you are completely ambidexterous.

Try and skydive as much as you can, but try and put as much as you can into each skydive too.

Relax. Think fast. Fly slow. Plan your dive - dive your plan.

t

It's the year of the Pig.

[bill2 0]

Let's get back to Andy2's student dilemma.
Advice about watching videos is good.
Malfunction videos are good rainy day homework.
He might try to borrow AFF instructional videos, but remember that there is little point in studying more than one or two dives ahead of his progression.
Another good video is Pack Like a Pro. Packing lessons should parrallel skydiving lessons, but who knows, if he gets too far ahead on learning how to pack, his instructors may end up paying him so they can skydive with him.
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Does that Pack like a pro video really help? I thought I read, on this forum, that some people thought it was not worth the money. The reason I ask is that I haven't jumped in over a year, due to back problems awhile ago and now I'm unemployed. I've passed the jumping your own pack job but still had a hell of a time trying to pack - it was always a frustrating experience and will be when I start jumping again. Why, I don't know - it seems simple enough. I need to do only 2 more things to get my A license - hop /n pop & catch an instructor who jumps out ahead of me. I'm assuming that I'll have to do some sort of refresher course also.

[robskydiv 0]

Brother, if I were you now or me back when I was a student, I would save up a ton of money, then go to the wind tunnel, back to the DZ and breeze through my course. Just a thought. Harry