Zen, I feel your pain, but don’t get discouraged...you’ve received some very good advise from your fellow skydivers in this forum. Let me add my own. If you want to be a kick-ass RW flyer, learn from the experts. I strongly recommend the basic body flight course offered by Skydive University. For starters, get the Basic Body Flight Theory video and watch it, study it, and absorb it. Next step is to go through the course. You say that you jump at Spaceland so you probably know that the 8-way team Deguello trains there. One of the team members, Don E. is a Skydive U coach. When he isn’t training, he jumps and coaches at Skydive Houston in Waller. The course consists of 20 jumps, with or w/o video, and covers everything you need to know about body flight, including lots of ground prep. You learn a stretching routine that will limber you up and prepare your body for the rigors of skydiving. You will learn how to mentally prepare for each jump, how to set goals (short term and long term), how to train you body through muscle memory techniques to do whatever you want to do in the dive. The basic skills you will learn are forward / backward movement, vertical control, center-point turns, out-facing turns, sliding, transpositional movements that combine elements of some or all of the basic moves, and much, much more. This course will give you confidence and provide you with a great foundation on which to build. You will learn in 20 jumps what will take you many hundreds jumps to learn on you own. If you get the chance, talk to Don. He is very approachable and a terrific coach. You can contact him via e-mail at SkyUHouston@aol.com or catch him at Spaceland next time his team trains. He may even do some coaching at Spaceland. For a change of pace, come to Waller some weekend. We have lots of great guys and gals to jump with. I’d like to meet you and do some dives with you. Blue ones! Denis
