Sitfly Body Position???

[caribadive 0]

I am still in the learning stage when it comes to sitflying. I have always tried to relax while I'm sitflying. Today I did some coach jumps, and my coach told me if I'm relaxing I'm not sitflying. What he meant was that you need to lock in certain muscles and hold them rigid for the entire jump, and only adjust them to make directional changes. This is incredibly counterintuitive from what I have been told before this. Is this correct? Is sitflying a much more rigid style of flying than bellyflying?

[woodpecker 0]

I just got back from a skydiving trip and had two coached jumped for my sit and told the same thing.

SONIC WOODY #146

There is a fine line between cockiness and confidence -- which side of the line are you on?

[packerboy 3]

I think you just need to build the muscle memory. Sitflying is a position that you are not used to, so you need to make more of an effort to hold your body in that position. Once you become more experienced with sitflying, your muscles will be able to hold you in that position in a more relaxed state.

But yes, it is more rigid. You have bigger legs than arms (I would assume), which means more drag. Your legs want to be above you, which means more work to keep them below you. Although head down is faster and more difficult to learn, once you learn how to do it, it becomes easier to be relaxed and do what you want to do than sit because your muscles are more relaxed with the bigger drag being where it wants to be.. above you. Sorry for the run on sentence. That's just my opinion, I'm not very good at either.

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In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock. ~ Thomas Jefferson

[beowulf 1]

When you sitfly you need to have constant pressure on your feet. If you relax your legs they will come up and over your head.

[packerboy 3]

See... the three people in his avatar that didn't press down on their legs have flipped up and left him hanging down there by himself!

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In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock. ~ Thomas Jefferson

[beowulf 1]

Yeah they funneled something awful. Nearly yanked my arms out my shoulder sockets!

btw that is a two belly and one hanger hybrid with two head down stingers forming a round with the belly flyers.

[Snowflake 0]

Sitfly body position= legs bent at 90 degrees from the knees the torso is 90 degrees from the legs the arms are 90 degrees from the torso and bent 90 degrees at the elbow. That's hard to do and be completly relaxed.

It's like form with any sport once you get it into muscle memory you learn which muscles need to be tense and which ones don't

In general belly flying is the "most" stable body position(easiest to hold stable) due to fact that the center of gravity and the center of pressure are in almost the same spot. When you freefly(sit or hd) the CG and CP are in 2 different places, which makes those body positions inherently unstable in freefall.

[MissMelissa 0]

This is a very good question, and for some instructors it may be hard to address. There is a certain level of strength you use in order to hold any three-dimensional position. There is no locking, however. Since we are not constant and the air is not constant, there is always slight corrections. It's like sitting and balancing on a large medicine ball.

To simplify the relaxing, but be firm, here is how I relate this to all of my students:

Be relaxed with your mind, be strong with your body.

When we tense up, it's usually because we're either thinking too much, afraid, or have performance anxiety. When we can let all this go and go back to "feeling" the air and having fun, we have connected to relaxing inside of our head.

We spend too much time on "exactly" how our body is supposed to be. Once you find your balance, we all fly a little differently as all of our bodies are different.

As we've always said, "Skydiving is 90% mental, 10% physical."

Hope this helps!

Melissa Nelson

[Jazzthieve 0]

That's a very good explanation, there is no locking and there is no straight 90-90-90 rule, I jump with a small lighter friend and with a bigger guy, both of them have a different sit but fly it excelently. It al realy depends on your body.