Okay, Everyone,
First off, thank you all VERY MUCH for critiquing my technique. Had I known that I could have obtained so much feedback from you guys so quickly, I would have brought my attempts to your attention right away.
It has been rather painful, personally, improving my technique using feedback from the pain, and I shall read through all of your comments when I get back to my campus, and implement your suggestions.
For my training, thus far, I primarily used these videos (in no particular order of importance):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5Gzzle_GqI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QB8DeUbkEY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgpaOFAwF6U
There was one more video that I used, in which the airborne jumped off a 'bench' with their hands where the risers would have been (had they been jumping with their 'chutes), but I cannot find that video, right now.
As for my background, and why I did all this, I am an electrical engineering student, in New York, and when I discovered parkour during my senior year of my undergraduate studies (I am a graduate student, there, now), I started jumping off of higher and higher places (bad technique had prevented me from jumping for most of my life, and I was enjoying my new found freedom -- I suddenly felt like anything was possible). When I jumped off an 8 feet high wall, that year, I decided I wanted to fall thousands of feet (with the ground rushing at me, ever faster, and ever faster, till the world around me whizzed by so fast as to cause my peripheral vision to blur, and that sinking feeling in the stomach took greater and greater hold, until I was at the knife edge between desperation and ecstasy -- in other words, an amplified and longer version of how I felt my wall jumps to be), with a mental timer that at one point I would have to execute a quick, and smooth, action to brake my fall. I soon discovered BASE jumping, and found that the way into the sport was through skydiving. Hence, my interest in skydiving and parachuting, and my interest in the PLF arose out of my having watched PLFs in every WWII movie that I had seen as a kid, that featured parachute landings. It also turned out that every AFF course seems to teach PLFs.
That video that you guys are all critiquing was probably my first PLF critique request video. I can only say that I have had two PLFs that were from any decent height (one flight of stairs, where there are two flights between two floors) that I was ever satisfied with, so I am hoping that I will get better under your guidance.
Thank you all so much for your feedback.
Sincerely,
Faissal
