Part 5 of 6—Jump Preparation (Dirt Diving) and Debriefing

During jump preparation, a team should repeatedly practice team communication skills and personal flying skills, habits and discipline. It is during this process that a team has the best opportunity to develop and train the correct behavior so that it becomes almost instinctual. For this reason, it is crucial for the team to perform each skill correctly every time. If the members are complacent about this, the team will inevitably perform the skills incorrectly as many times as it does correctly and will have ingrained the wrong behaviors. The team will be repeating the exercises either way, so be sure to do them right. more »

The USPA Board of Directors traveled to the North Central region for its 2012 summer meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota, August 3-5. As a prelude to the weekend, North Central Regional Director Merriah Eakins invited the board and USPA staff to Skydive Twin Cities in Baldwin, Wisconsin, the Thursday before the meeting. Board and staff members enjoyed a day of fun jumps, a barbecue dinner courtesy of the DZ and the opportunity to meet USPA members in the region. It was a great way to get in the skydiving spirit before spending the next three days getting down to business, addressing a wide array of issues important to the skydiving community. more »

Part 4 of 6—Block Training with Stage Drills

When training to improve your team’s block formations, it’s important for the members to understand what the technically perfect move is for each. Understanding it is fairly simple. However, even the best teams whose members have thousands of jumps together don’t perform the blocks perfectly every time. But by understanding the blocks, your team can execute them well, even if they are less than technically perfect. more »

Part 3 of 6—Building the Foundations with Random Drills

Once your team has a clear picture of the ultimate goal it is trying to reach, it will need to develop a well-thought-out training plan that will help build a strong foundation of basic skills, discipline, work ethic and attitude. Don’t underestimate the importance of this. You can only reach heights that your foundation is strong enough to hold. If you try to reach for performance levels that are too high before your foundation of basic personal and team skills is strong enough, the team will forever be in a cycle of taking two steps forward and one step back (or possibly even one step forward and two steps back). But if your foundation is strong, you will be able to layer on new skills one at a time and continue a steady climb toward reaching your goal. more »