Indoor skydiving and bodyflying
'Indoor skydiving', also known as ‘body flying’ has evolved from skydiving over the last ten years and has become a sport in its own right. Many people who outwardly appear to be excellent skydivers in a windtunnel have actually never been under a deployed canopy (parachute). Some of the most amazing ones are children, who take to bodyflying like ducks to water. We've seen flight simulators become reality, up to the stage where all airline pilots are required to visit them periodically to check out their emergency procedures and many of us have a chance to use them to try our hand. Skydiving simulators do the same job for the skydiving world and they are designed with the first time flier in mind.
What's bodyflying all about?
Well, for starters bodyflying is tremendous fun! Its a real personal challenge to learn to control your body in the way a pilot uses ailerons, elevators and rudder to control direction and movement, you can be taught the basics in a very short period of time and do some good flying, getting very good at it however, takes a little longer and some practice. A few years ago I called it ‘skydiving without the fear’ and it still seems to be true today. So if its part of your preparation for a full skydiving course, or perhaps a ‘warm up’ to get you ready to go and book that one-off Tandem skydive, its something which almost anyone can do.
Skydiving without the fear
Indoor skydiving is clearly the mass market version of the real thing – but is it easier than actual skydiving? Well no, not ‘easier’ but there are less variables to consider. According to BPA (British Parachute Association) statistics, less than 2% of the UK population make a skydive each year (actually closer to 1.6%) therefore the math says that 98% don’t! So why don’t they? It’s a combination of factors really and it mostly boils down to fear, medical and money ;
Fear of heights/fear of flying
Let's not knock people for being afraid to skydive! It turns out that fear (in moderation) is a healthy thing and it has ensured the survival and evolution of the human race so far. Even so, some people feel that they still want to exercise their adrenal glands, in case they whither away, or perhaps simply because they can! So they go and skydive and climb and run with bulls and do other things. Of course it’s a stressful environment and even the most adventurous may find their development of skills hampered by excessive anxiety when they are still learning to control their bodies in freefall. If we can significantly reduce any irrational fears or anxieties by de-sensitising you to the different parts of the skydive, then the fear factor decreases and you can achieve some real progress. Combined with this, you have the benefit of a tunnel instructor right there in the tunnel next to you, with her feet planted squarely (well, usually) and if you wobble too much, he can sort you out with physical contact (a hold onto your jumpsuit grips or a reassuring arm around the back) then communicate to ‘relax and reset’ you and the skydiving show goes on.
Medical reasons for not skydiving
you’ll see on the skydiving pages that before you make a skydive you have to fill out a medical declaration and possibly even get a medical signature from a doctor. Its a similar thing for indoor skydiving and you still need to complete a disclaimer form (a legal requirement). Because you don’t have a parachute landing to make, and because there is no exit from an aeroplane (don’t laugh but people have been known to injure themselves stepping out of a ‘jump ship’) these medical requirements for indoor skydiving are much less stringent and the pictures of President Bush senior flying in a windtunnel have raised a few funny comments, but it does get the message across that you only need a very basic level of fitness to make an Indoor skydive.
Skydiving outdoors is an expensive game
With skydiving courses starting from special deals at about £145, it can be an expensive game. So then you see a chance to try out indoor skydiving for maybe £50. Its much more of an ‘impulse buy’ and you still get the fun (although maybe not quite as much adrenaline).
Skydiving for all the family
One of the main reasons why people say they won’t skydive is because of their family (“what shall I do with the kids”….. “what would happen to the kids if I got hurt”….”I try to spend as much spare time with my family as possible”….) These are all very valid and good reasons and have contributed to the development of the human race…etc etc. So how can the sky-dive be de-risked and packaged for the consumption of ‘normal people’.
So it turns out for the price of you making one skydive, you could take the family on a great day to your local indoor skydiving windtunnel. You’ll all get trained together, bond, laugh, have the experience together and be talking about it for days afterwards, maybe more. I've been asked " how old do you have to be to indoor skydive" and the answer surprises most of them. Four years old is the youngest I've ever seen in a wind tunnel. Remember, there are no parachute to open, and no landings to make. You also have an instructor right there with you, one on one during thewhole experience.
Before and after you make your Indoor skydive, you can hang around and watch others doing their Indoor skydive and believe me, this can be almost as much fun as doing it yourself. Sure, it's worth watching the next bunch of ‘newbies’ and their faces and how excited they get, and of course that brings a whole new perspective. Then try to watch the instructors doing their indoor skydiving ‘party pieces’. Usually it’s an aspect of skydiving called ‘free fly’. You will be amazed at the speed, agility and grace they can demonstrate and although I’ve seen it many times I still enjoy ‘the show’. I especially like watching four way formation skydiving teams training in the windtunnel, particularly the girls teams (did you know that UK are world champions in the four way FS skydiving event? Cool eh? Guess where they do much of their training? You guessed it…. They also pay it back by teaching those competition and skydiving skills they’ve mastered to those who are coming along behind. So if you see four girls in Milton Keynes tunnel with dark blue jumpsuits (‘spray on’ fit) and full face helmets with Union Flag patches on their suits, give them a high five as they go in to the windtunnel. Our champions all deserve more recognition...... Back to the performance – well, my favourite performance is ‘spiderman’ (I haven’t seen a spidergirl yet….) and I won’t spoil it, but ask the staff at the windtunnel if any of the instructors or flyers do the spiderman routine I first saw Marco do this at Orlando and I… well, let 's just see if I can find a video somewhere of it to post here. I digress….
So before and after your indoor skydiving, you could go and do the retail thing if that’s what does it for you, take the family to lunch at McDonalds or Pitza Hut or maybe pick up on one of the specials which your windtunnel operator will have set up with your local fooderies. If you’re feeling generous, maybe you could also book an hours skiing at the Snozone which is just a few metres away from the door in Milton Keynes. Alternatively if you are in Bedford, you could go and do some more fun rides.
Learning to skydive indoors
As a training aid for skydiving there are three technology factors which have moved the sport forward in leaps and jumps – windtunnels, camcorders and freeze frame video repeat. Combine these three intelligently and you start to realise by those people who take up skydiving today can advance much more rapidly than those who came before them (I’m not jealous really, well maybe just a little…).We all know that airline pilots do lots of training in flight simulators, and that that same concept has arrived in freefall skydiving in the form of skydiving simulators. The best thing (in Europe) is that training in a simulator isn’t directly affected by the weather, whereas European skydiving in tends to be subject to some very variable conditions. Here's a list of windtunnels in Europe, Russia and the Gulf. If we miss any, please feel free to drop me an email and let me know. We'll get a list of US locations together soon. I haven't included aerdodiums1 in this list because I haven't tried them out for student training.
How does bodyflying help improve skydiving skills?
A skydive can be broken down into 5 parts; the aircraft exit, the freefall, the canopy ride (parachute), the landing and the ‘what to do if xyz happens’ (emergency drills). The concept of ‘breaking this movement down into parts’ was something coined on military drill squares over fifty years ago (sorry to all those new age skydivers, but some older things ain’t that bad really). So by focussing on just the freefall part in the windtunnel, you can ‘research’ and prepare yourself before going on a real skydive and make that real skydive much more successful by having first used indoor skydiving to prepare your body position and control. If you are planning to do an accelerated freefall course, you’ll definitely perform better if you’ve done a windtunnel indoor skydiving course first. You’ll feel more confident that you can control your body in freefall and you’ll remove one of the variables, which of course will act to remove anxiety and which will help you to learn faster – it’s a virtuous circle! I advise each and every one of my accelerated freefall students to do some time indoor skydiving if they possibly can. I’ve taken many of them along to the windtunnel myself and worked with them. It doesn’t make me any more money, in fact it reduces the number of re-jumps they make and you could argue that indoor skydiving should actually reduce my income. In fact the world is a strange place and it turns out that cosmic law applies!
Less re-jumps = faster progression and graduation = happier student
Happier student buy more skydiving instruction services (I can coach them in formation skydiving skills too if they want) and they tell more friends. Those friends come along and want to skydive with me.
I love the way ‘pass it forward’ works, don’t you?
Indoor skydiving as part of a personal fitness plan
Did I say that you only need a basic level of fitness for indoor skydiving? Well, that’s true at least for the short introduction/taster course (usually a one hour experience and two flights in the windtunnel). If you decide to go on and do an accelerated freefall course and you are learning to Indoor skydive as preparation for that, then you’d better start thinking like a licensed skydiver, and that means getting fitter for your sport! Doing a session of 10, or multiples to 20 or 30 in the windtunnel are physically demanding and I don’t care who you are, you’ll feel your back, leg, arm and chest muscles aching the day after a long indoor skydiving session. Just imagine that you are pressing your muscles against a 120 mph wind stream for minutes at a time in varying attitudes. This is a real freefall workout and you’ll encounter the same stresses that you feel in the freefall aspect of skydiving and it really takes it out of you physically.
Indoor skydiving is fun, great for fitness and skills and you can do it with your friends, family and colleagues in corporate team building sessions. So I strongly advise you to try it! You won’t regret it, the only thing is, you may end up wanting to go an make a skydive as a result and your next step may possibly be a tandem skydive.
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1. Aerodiums are first-generation skydiving simulators which are usually found outdoors. They are either un-enclosed or have a net around the outside. There is no documented training system, standards or certifications for the staff who operate these. Because I haven't been able to validate them for use in AFF student training I can't list them here. Nor can I say whether they are safe to use.
