- In this video, I'm giving you some exercises
to do under a canopy.
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Hey there, this is Catherine Bernier from Skydive Vibes,
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All right, so there are some exercises
that are very important to do
in order to better understand our canopy,
and those exercises are actually recommended
by many skydiving associations.
So I wanted to share them with you,
so that you can practice and become better canopy pilots.
So before diving into the exercises,
I want to do my due diligence for safety,
so before performing any of those
make sure you are above 2,000 feet,
and that you are in your fun area in the sky,
meaning that you are at the right place
not to get further away from your landing zone.
And that you take a particular attention to traffic,
so make sure before doing any turns
that there's nobody around you.
So first, let's talk about toggle turns,
spiral, stall and flares.
So first the spiral.
If you want to spiral down, you simply need to grab
your toggles as usual, and then stretch one arm
and hold your toggle down there.
By doing so, you'll complete a full 360 degree turn,
and then if you keep it down longer,
you'll end up going faster and faster in a spiral motion,
and your body may end up being flat to the ground.
This is fun, but when it's time for you to recuperate,
you want to slowly bring your hand up.
Never go too fast because you could end up
in some line twists.
Like I said earlier, prior to starting your turn,
make sure there's nobody behind, below you,
and also that there's not too much traffic.
If there is other canopies around,
wait for them to clear, go somewhere else
or simply abort the maneuver for that jump.
Next, stalling your canopy.
This is a maneuver that it's important to do
whenever you have a new canopy,
because knowing the stalling point of your canopy
is very important to make sure you avoid it,
especially in your landings.
So to do it, simple, you grab your toggles,
and then pull your toggles, both of them down.
You're gonna have that flare motion,
and if you hold them down a little bit longer,
you'll start to feel yourself fall down.
This is normal, keep calm, and simply to recuperate,
you simply raise your hands slowly up.
Slowly is the key there, because if you recuperate
too fast you may end up in a line twist.
So I know your heart will squeeze, that's normal,
but then when it does that, simply recuperate slowly.
Flat turns: flat turns are very important to know
because those are the turns you wanna do
when you want to lose the less altitude possible.
So whenever you are, for example, in your landing pattern,
you don't want your canopy to do aggressive movements,
aggressive turns, so flat turns are how you do it.
How they work, it's very simple.
You pull down your toggles halfway.
Let's say you wanna turn in that direction.
You slowly raise the opposite hand up.
This way, you'll end up turning very slowly
without losing much altitude.
Some variation of it is to actually pull down further
in the direction you wanna turn,
or also doing both movements, it all depends.
But I know that depending on the canopies,
if you hold the brakes too long, too deep,
you might end up in a stall.
I would recommend you to raise one hand
instead of going further down with the other,
but all of those techniques work well.
Like I said, it's the most important canopy move
that you wanna learn to be safe above the ground,
so practice it and use it.
Finally about the toggles, let's talk about the flaring.
By the way, I did a whole video on tips and tricks
to help you improve your landings,
so you can watch it right here,
but as an overview, when it's time for you to flare
you simply grab your toggles and then you slowly
pull them down both at the same time.
A couple of tips that I want to give you
is that you want to always complete your flare.
So as you're reaching the ground,
let's say you're touching the ground
and you still have some extra movement
that you can do with your toggles, do it,
and complete your movement.
When I'm landing, I'm actually already walking
when I'm pulling the extra loose that I have
on my toggle.
This assure me that I'm in control of my canopy
'til the end.
I've seen so many people barely touching the ground,
and then raising their hands up
which puts them in a situation where they're going
still too fast and then fall on the ground.
So you wanna make sure that you complete your full flare,
even if you already touched the ground.
When you flare, you also never want to stop your flare
movement to go back up, so if you were too soon
in pulling your toggles, simply stay at the position
you are, and then wait to complete the movement
at the right height.
By the way in the other video about improving your landings,
I did mention a trick that helped me a lot in timing
myself to flare at the right time,
so do not forget to check it out after this video.
Now let's talk about rear risers input.
We are talking about the same things which are turns,
spirals, stalling and flaring,
but at any time when you do rear risers input,
you want to still have your toggles in hand.
So let's say you have your toggles in hands,
and then you can still grab your risers and pull on them.
Another tip, you'll find that pulling the risers
is a little bit harder than simply the toggles.
When it's time for you to grab them, grab them like this.
Turn your hands backward, and you grab your risers,
and then when it's time for you to pull,
simply give a little input on the wrist,
and then after that you're gonna have more strength
to pull them down.
Of course, you'll see that you don't need to give
that much input before feeling your canopy reacting to it.
So just give it a little bit of input
and feel what it does with those different exercises.
And the reason why you'll see it's harder to pull them,
is that you're pulling a larger part of your canopy
than by just using your toggles.
You're actually pulling kind of the quarter of the canopy.
So again, if you wanna do a turn,
you simply pull one of them and you start to turn.
If you want to spiral, grab again one of them
and hold it until you enter in that spiral.
Again, when you want to stop, you simply recover slowly.
The stall is very similar as well,
so you simply grab both risers and then pull them down
and wait a couple of seconds
until you feel yourself going backward.
At that point you want to slowly, again, recover.
And of course, flaring, simply grab them,
pull them slowly down both together,
and you'll feel your canopy doing just like when you flare,
so slowing down, and you'll feel your body
going a little bit forward in front of your canopy,
so this is the end of your flare.
Before diving into the front risers,
again I want to remind you that always make sure
you are above 2,000 feet doing those maneuvers,
and one other reason is that you have an AAD on your back,
and if you are accelerating too much doing a spiral
or something like that, under the set altitude for it
to fire, well, you may end up in a double canopy situation
and that's not a good thing.
So make sure you are always above 2,000 feet.
So for the exercises with your front risers,
it's the same thing again.
You keep your toggles and hands,
and you can do the exact same movements,
so a turn, a spiral.
Again, you can reuse the small wrist movement
that I talked about, and if you pull them higher,
you're gonna then have more force as well.
You'll find out that the front risers are a step ahead
in terms of force needed than the rear risers,
so make sure to work out those biceps.
You'll notice that you also lose way more altitude
than by using your rears or the toggles.
So we talked about the turn, the spiral,
and the other exercise that you can do
with your front risers are diving.
So this is used a lot by swoopers,
but when you want to dive and have more forward speed
and downward speed, you can grab both of your front risers
and pull them down.
This way you'll accelerate your forward movement way more.
On a side note, in turbulence, severe front risers
maneuvers can cause your canopy to momentarily collapse.
Try to avoid those maneuvers when you are in turbulence.
So, of course, you won't really be able to do
all of those exercises in one jump,
so try to dissect those and try them
in different jumps so that you have time
to perform them between the time you're in your fun area,
and without any traffic, and the time that it's 2,000 feet
and you need to stop everything and start looking
in entering your landing pattern.
Question for you, did you already take a canopy course?
Go ahead and let me know down below,
and let me know also which one it is.
I think it's very important for every skydiver
to at least have one canopy course to help you become
a better canopy pilot, 'cause in a skydive
it's not only about the freefall.
It's about the canopy piloting,
and that's where most of the injuries happen,
so you want to become a master at canopy piloting
to remain a safe skydiver.
So go ahead, I myself recommend the Flight-1 course
because I've done it myself, so down in the description
you'll see a link to their website.
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On that, keep jumping, stay safe, and blue skies.