How will you cope without your skydiving fix during the cold season?
Photo credit: Skydive Voss Facebook page
If you live in a climate that experiences the “joy of seasons”, you might begin wondering (or panicking!) how you will cope without your skydiving fix as the leaves start to fall. With a long, dark, and cold winter ahead, now is a great time to plan out how to use the break to improve your skydiving skills. With a little planning and work, you can keep your skills up and perhaps even show up sharper when the weather warms up again!
Tunnel workshop
Plan for winter tunnel! If you have a local tunnel, make regular plans to fly with friends or local events. If you don’t have a tunnel nearby consider traveling to do a camp.
Take a weekend or two and join some other skydivers to get some focused coaching and flying practice. When you step back onto the dropzone in the spring, you’ll be significantly better than when you left.
Research
If you have been filling all of your free time with actual skydives during the on-season, congratulations! However, it might have left you lacking for time to keep up to date on all the skydiving information out there. The winter is a great time to check out a skydiving book (perhaps Above All Else or Sugar Alpha) or the Skydiver’s Information Manual. You can spend the time to catch up on back issues of Parachutist, Blue Skies, skydivemag.com, and of course FuryCoaching.com.
Educate yourself
Have the information but need the time for it to sink in? Now is a great time to learn the basic 2, 4, and 8-way formations which can be downloaded for free on the FuryCoaching.com website. Learn the details of competing with the Skydiver’s Competition Manual, or learn some great 2-ways with the Rhythm Instructional Series on YouTube.
Go to a non-skydiving event run for skydivers. The European Skydiving Symposium (6-8 March 2024) and the PIA Symposium (2025) are held on alternate years in the winter. Packed with safety information, seminars, activities and catch up with the skydiving community. Get your knowledge on!
Visualizing
Keeping up to date is hard, but if you learn to visualize your skydiving skills you will avoid the backsliding. Read up on how to visualize, and put the skill to practice visualizing your flying, emergency procedures, canopy flight, and even packing. You think about skydiving all day already, with some practice it can be a productive way to keep your skills fresh.
Vacation
Cold? Go someplace warm! Plan to attend a boogie, a skills event, or just pick a warm dropzone that looks welcoming and fun. Get your own skydiving friends to come along, or go solo and be ready to make some new friends. For an extra skills bonus, contact a coach to take your flying to the next level.
Photo shows Will Penny landing at the Maldives, photo by Andrey Slepnev
Projects
If that doesn’t keep you busy, you could always start a side skydiving project. Make the dropzone new creepers, create the ultimate video upload system, or edit all that Go-Pro footage. Pick a mission and get rocking!
If you have to suffer a winter with no skydives, stay warm and use that energy wisely! Be productive, increase those skills, and sneak away someplace fun to meet some new friends.
