The "Accelerated Free Fall"- system of learning skydiving is based on a sensory overload under supervision of 2 trainers in the beginning and later one teacher.
So basically you first get out of a plane one time strapped to a trainer (also known as a tandem- jump).
After that you exit a plane three times with 2 trainers holding on to you, stabilizing you, to be honest, they do most of the work...
Then you are off to four jumps with one trainer(who should by now only be a safeguard in case you screw up big time).
Then you are off on your own in the sky, from the moment you decide to reserve a spot in the next plane going up, through the gear-check, the sitting- order in the plane (most people think they just throw all on a huge pile, cram them into a small plane, let them cuddle till they are at 4000m altitude and then everybody is fleeing the plane embarrassing about whatever has happened...No, there is an actual system involved and there is much less cuddeling than expected. ;-D) up to the moment when you exit the plane, falling, openening your parachute and avoiding a crash while navigating towards your landing- spot.
Most of the people now get the idea one is responsible from the first free- solo- jump up to the last one for his/her own doing...
WRONG!
One is responsible from the moment you start the theoretical course.
They tell you over and over, they ask you many times and it took me quite a while and a book by Carlos Castaneda to realize the value of the lesson for life outside the gear...
From the moment your "are", you are responsible...Even though there are things outside of yourself which seem out of control, even when not wanting something to happen, only you decide what to do with what you have been given.
Take some of those pathological optimists... No matter what is happening to them, they only see the bright- side...
Take guys like myself... I do know very well things will go bad sometimes, to me that´s life.
In the same way I challenge myself in training every day I´m looking forward to challenges life will provide me. I may be beaten down during those times, sad, even desperate for moments...Still, I got my mindset of fighting through.
Sometimes one can not change what´s happening only how to percieve it. I recently read about it as the "mood of the warrior", which seems to be one of the toughest things to develop.
You can whine. - You can remain quiet.
You can ask yourself "why me?" - You can ask yourself "How am I gonna move on and what can I learn from this?"
Who is responsible? - I´m responsible.
What does it mean, "to be responsible"? - It means making decisions and dealing with the consequences, whatever they may be. Only then can one make decisions and be sure enough to stand by them, honest enough to see and admit mistakes, flexible enough to make decisions solving the consequences.
Think abou that last few lines...Read them again and think about your decisions today.
And please remember one of the points in the code of the warrior: no whining.
There is no whining because... Right! Because You are responsible!
Train hard and enjoy life!
All the best,
Harry
Montag, 23. August 2010
Mittwoch, 18. August 2010
Lessons from skydiving (3) - Being there just isn´t enough
When I start talking with people about my general perspective of the world, my life, my development I get to a point where people come to the conclusion I believe in fate.
Well, some of them are right, some of them are wrong because I depends on how you see "fate"...
A person who sees fate as something which will occur no mather what one does wouldn´t be right... I do not believe in that kind of fate.
Because I think we all are in some way forging our destiny.
From the smallest particles known to men, up to our plane of existence in which we call a small space "earth" up to the biggest galaxies... Everything is interacting.
When there is a manipulation on one plane, there are consequences on others as well.
One of the sadest examples was the atom- bomb...
A manipulation at an subatomic level altered or ended the lives of so many, changed bodies of humans, which can be a rather difficult task (just ask someone who has ever tried to lose weight or gain muscle, wanted different looks, etc.), and, even more impressive, changed the minds of millions of people, the way they see the world, their leaderships/governments, changed the way things were done and changed the whole course of history, the lifes of people living 60 years after the first manipulation on a subatomic level... Talk about a cataclysmik reaction...
This huge amount of energy unleashed transformed a huge amount of space as well as time.
But even the slightest shift in energy has consequences... Maybe not as huge as a nuclear weapon but something is happening...
As Morihei Ueshiba once said "I who am the universe", the smallest action, the smalles fear, the smallest act of kindness can carry the waves (or particles) of energy out into the world...
So fate seems to me just a interpretation of the principle of conservation of energy...Or how my grandmother used to put it: "you will reap what you haved sowed".
(Yeah, she had some wisdom... ;-D)
So to me fate is just what you give out there into the world, what comes around...
So...Before you ask: No, I did not pass out during an Exit from a plane and came up with that stuff and therefor call it "Lessons from skydiving"...
It came to me rather late during my jumps with my trainers.
One problem I dragged through all my Level- jumps: my feet/legs were too short...
You see if you got your arms in front you kinda need something out back to equal the airstream you are falling through. Simple physics.
(That´s why the shuttlecocks in badminton have a symmetrical shape above their center of mass, to allow the nucleus an even fall)
They definetly want you to get to a state of relaxation during your free- fall- time but they also repeatedly told us (and since I´m a quite intelligent human being it took me just under 7 jumps to actually get it) to keep an active posture.
Arch your back, head back, long toes...
It is very simple although it is a difficult principle of physics and an even more complex symbol for fate:
You have to be active, control your actions, emotions, have a plan and act accordingly to control your fall and not becoming a toy in the changing air current.
Train hard and enjoy life!
All the best,
Harry
Well, some of them are right, some of them are wrong because I depends on how you see "fate"...
A person who sees fate as something which will occur no mather what one does wouldn´t be right... I do not believe in that kind of fate.
Because I think we all are in some way forging our destiny.
From the smallest particles known to men, up to our plane of existence in which we call a small space "earth" up to the biggest galaxies... Everything is interacting.
When there is a manipulation on one plane, there are consequences on others as well.
One of the sadest examples was the atom- bomb...
A manipulation at an subatomic level altered or ended the lives of so many, changed bodies of humans, which can be a rather difficult task (just ask someone who has ever tried to lose weight or gain muscle, wanted different looks, etc.), and, even more impressive, changed the minds of millions of people, the way they see the world, their leaderships/governments, changed the way things were done and changed the whole course of history, the lifes of people living 60 years after the first manipulation on a subatomic level... Talk about a cataclysmik reaction...
This huge amount of energy unleashed transformed a huge amount of space as well as time.
But even the slightest shift in energy has consequences... Maybe not as huge as a nuclear weapon but something is happening...
As Morihei Ueshiba once said "I who am the universe", the smallest action, the smalles fear, the smallest act of kindness can carry the waves (or particles) of energy out into the world...
So fate seems to me just a interpretation of the principle of conservation of energy...Or how my grandmother used to put it: "you will reap what you haved sowed".
(Yeah, she had some wisdom... ;-D)
So to me fate is just what you give out there into the world, what comes around...
So...Before you ask: No, I did not pass out during an Exit from a plane and came up with that stuff and therefor call it "Lessons from skydiving"...
It came to me rather late during my jumps with my trainers.
One problem I dragged through all my Level- jumps: my feet/legs were too short...
You see if you got your arms in front you kinda need something out back to equal the airstream you are falling through. Simple physics.
(That´s why the shuttlecocks in badminton have a symmetrical shape above their center of mass, to allow the nucleus an even fall)
They definetly want you to get to a state of relaxation during your free- fall- time but they also repeatedly told us (and since I´m a quite intelligent human being it took me just under 7 jumps to actually get it) to keep an active posture.
Arch your back, head back, long toes...
It is very simple although it is a difficult principle of physics and an even more complex symbol for fate:
You have to be active, control your actions, emotions, have a plan and act accordingly to control your fall and not becoming a toy in the changing air current.
Train hard and enjoy life!
All the best,
Harry
Samstag, 14. August 2010
Lessons from skydiving (2) - consequences or how mistakes can bite you in the a**
Some mistakes are simple: you make them and the consequences hit you in the face immediatly.(sometimes literally...)
With skydiving it is a bit differnt:
You have packed your parachute, you get a spot on the next plane up. All good, right? Yeah, so far...
After you checked your gear you get on the plane, take your seat( well, it´s more like you sit on the floor of an extremly small air- vehicle and get cramed into a spot between a 60- year old man who just got a coupon for a tandem- parachute- jump for his first day of retirement and a ridicilously hot girl who is diving out of that plance in a way that makes me wonder if she got more balls than I...).
During the 20minutes it takes the plane to get to the 4km altitude you think about the jump, what you got as your goals, what you need to practice(stuff like posture, different movements, etc.), where the wind is blowing from(so you do not get lost or end up on the freeway south of the airport or the military training area north from it), who is jumping in front of you, who is coming after you...
Immediatly before you exit the plane you give yourself another check, at least all the things you can see and/or reach and feel on the outside of the parachute.
Then it is time to exit... You wait your turn, get into the door on your knees (not because you can´t take the agony but because the plane is so damn small...), get into your position, take a look down to the ground to get a sense where the pilot is dropping you off, take a deep breath and push...( One thing I learned about in gynecology).
The free fall... To be honest, I can´t really describe that one...You open yourself up, the whole body belly down while you keep falling faster and faster towards the earth. You body accelerates up to 200km/h which you feel from your partly covered head, out at the tips of your fingers, down to the back of your foot, an awesome power developed of the one medium we hardly ever notice, like fish hardly notice the water they are living in, still so powerfull only a small adjustment of your body position causes an enormous change in dynamics, like suddenly you start accelerating like crazy, start spinning like a mad yo-yo...
You routinely check your altimeter, still enjoying the seemingly endless view.
Check! You reached you altitude, it´s time to pull the chute.
You start to reinforce your stable free- fall- position, with one hand you reach back to your hand- deploy, the other one executes a compensating motion to remain stable, you get a grip on the hand deploy, rip it out, get back in to stable position, start counting...
21...
22...
23...
Nothing.
That´s not right...
Nothing...
I already should have been yanked like crazy by the unfolding parachute decelerating my fall...
Nothing...
CRAP!!
I will not tell you what to do now because that was the topic of the first lessons from skydiving- post ("Have a plan...Then another one")
My point this time: Nothing wrong was done during the free- fall.
Nothing wrong was done in the plane.
Nothing wrong was done during the check before the flight.
The mistake happened a while back, one hour before, one day before or even one week before the jump.
Packing the parachute, while you or someone else(I´d like it to be someone else so I can complain for eternety about it in heaven...) were joking around with a buddy, looking at the scared faces of people about to jump out of a plane for the first time in their life thinking "Maaan, I´m way cooler than that!", twisting a little cord, making a mistake when closing the bag which carries the folded parachute...
Overall skydiving is quite a safe sport, I´m not trying to display myself as a bada** here.
But one thing is for sure: if you make a mistake at a critical point each following step will unleash a whole new group of problems and those problems...You catch my drift.
My martial arts teacher once said "Wing Tsun is basically a straight punch. Only if you make a mistake you will need all those fancy hand positions and movements."
I think this is something inherently true for a lot of things.
If you have a plan (in which you put a fair amount of time), stick with it and have mastered the basics you will basically get through whatever you you are doing.
The earlier you make a mistake (and are not man enough to take care of it, be it out of pride or embarrassment) the harder it will come back to you...
Be it cheating on your new girlfriend, hitting the big weights without a proper athletic base or trying to do a job without a base of knowledge...
Most of the time life is giving us the chance to correct a mistake wether we want to or not.
One tends to ignore small mistakes in the beginning and brushes them under the rug. Because one still can...But the longer you drag them with you, the wider the consequences spread into other parts of your life...
Making a plan, re-thinking it, repeat the step before, work diligently and one will be fine most of the time.
And the other times? Well, call it bad luck or bad karma but you better have a plan B.
Train hard and enjoy life!
All the best,
Harry
With skydiving it is a bit differnt:
You have packed your parachute, you get a spot on the next plane up. All good, right? Yeah, so far...
After you checked your gear you get on the plane, take your seat( well, it´s more like you sit on the floor of an extremly small air- vehicle and get cramed into a spot between a 60- year old man who just got a coupon for a tandem- parachute- jump for his first day of retirement and a ridicilously hot girl who is diving out of that plance in a way that makes me wonder if she got more balls than I...).
During the 20minutes it takes the plane to get to the 4km altitude you think about the jump, what you got as your goals, what you need to practice(stuff like posture, different movements, etc.), where the wind is blowing from(so you do not get lost or end up on the freeway south of the airport or the military training area north from it), who is jumping in front of you, who is coming after you...
Immediatly before you exit the plane you give yourself another check, at least all the things you can see and/or reach and feel on the outside of the parachute.
Then it is time to exit... You wait your turn, get into the door on your knees (not because you can´t take the agony but because the plane is so damn small...), get into your position, take a look down to the ground to get a sense where the pilot is dropping you off, take a deep breath and push...( One thing I learned about in gynecology).
The free fall... To be honest, I can´t really describe that one...You open yourself up, the whole body belly down while you keep falling faster and faster towards the earth. You body accelerates up to 200km/h which you feel from your partly covered head, out at the tips of your fingers, down to the back of your foot, an awesome power developed of the one medium we hardly ever notice, like fish hardly notice the water they are living in, still so powerfull only a small adjustment of your body position causes an enormous change in dynamics, like suddenly you start accelerating like crazy, start spinning like a mad yo-yo...
You routinely check your altimeter, still enjoying the seemingly endless view.
Check! You reached you altitude, it´s time to pull the chute.
You start to reinforce your stable free- fall- position, with one hand you reach back to your hand- deploy, the other one executes a compensating motion to remain stable, you get a grip on the hand deploy, rip it out, get back in to stable position, start counting...
21...
22...
23...
Nothing.
That´s not right...
Nothing...
I already should have been yanked like crazy by the unfolding parachute decelerating my fall...
Nothing...
CRAP!!
I will not tell you what to do now because that was the topic of the first lessons from skydiving- post ("Have a plan...Then another one")
My point this time: Nothing wrong was done during the free- fall.
Nothing wrong was done in the plane.
Nothing wrong was done during the check before the flight.
The mistake happened a while back, one hour before, one day before or even one week before the jump.
Packing the parachute, while you or someone else(I´d like it to be someone else so I can complain for eternety about it in heaven...) were joking around with a buddy, looking at the scared faces of people about to jump out of a plane for the first time in their life thinking "Maaan, I´m way cooler than that!", twisting a little cord, making a mistake when closing the bag which carries the folded parachute...
Overall skydiving is quite a safe sport, I´m not trying to display myself as a bada** here.
But one thing is for sure: if you make a mistake at a critical point each following step will unleash a whole new group of problems and those problems...You catch my drift.
My martial arts teacher once said "Wing Tsun is basically a straight punch. Only if you make a mistake you will need all those fancy hand positions and movements."
I think this is something inherently true for a lot of things.
If you have a plan (in which you put a fair amount of time), stick with it and have mastered the basics you will basically get through whatever you you are doing.
The earlier you make a mistake (and are not man enough to take care of it, be it out of pride or embarrassment) the harder it will come back to you...
Be it cheating on your new girlfriend, hitting the big weights without a proper athletic base or trying to do a job without a base of knowledge...
Most of the time life is giving us the chance to correct a mistake wether we want to or not.
One tends to ignore small mistakes in the beginning and brushes them under the rug. Because one still can...But the longer you drag them with you, the wider the consequences spread into other parts of your life...
Making a plan, re-thinking it, repeat the step before, work diligently and one will be fine most of the time.
And the other times? Well, call it bad luck or bad karma but you better have a plan B.
Train hard and enjoy life!
All the best,
Harry
Donnerstag, 5. August 2010
Lessons from skydiving (1) - Have a plan; then another one.
If a young child is interested in something it usually can learn it by trial- and- error.
You want to walk? Stand up, walk a few steps, fall down, get back up,...
Speaking...No biggie.
Soccer? Hit the ball. Did not shoot a goal? Well... Hit it again. Till you know how to do it.
You just turned 18 and now you are taking your first driving lesson... And that other car is closing in very, very fast? Well... You may be stressed and a little freaked out by all the things happening around you(the car, the driving- instructor screaming next to you, the windshield- wiper which is all of a sudden turned on magically,...) but there is one thing you can do: hit the break!!
Guess what? That´s it. You put weight on that one pedal and usually all is good. You got another chance to try driving
But this is called "Lessons from skydiving"...
If you get out of that plane in 4 kilometers above ground and your parachute doesn´t work, you got no altimeter, you become instable, pull your parachute and get tangled up in all the cords, you are heading straight into a obstacle, you got no cords to stir the parachute, etc, etc...
If you got no plan here... Well, you are dead now.
I´m sure you get another chance for trying... At least if you belief in reincarnation.
Most will say: "Well... Of course you have to have a plan."
Right.
So let´s stick with the skydiving example...
You jump out of the plane, do your thing, reach the proper altitude, pull your parachute and... Nothing happens...
So...you gotta have the next step planned out. Pull the reserve.
You pull your main parachute, you feel a pull but not even close to what you should feel because it´s tangled up between the cords and the cords somehow got stuck to you... What now?
The parachute opens but both cords used to pilot it are ripped... WHat now?
You have to have a plan A, then a plan B.
Lets switch to another example close to my field of experience:
A patient has surgery. If a doctor would perform it only educated in the exact steps necessary to do it when everything is working as it should many people would not get out of the operation room alive.
Many banks where not prepared for the economic crisis and therefor a lot of them had to close, leaving thousands, millions without savings.
Where things mather experience has shown you have to think three steps ahead to be save.
Or to be successful.
Do not just cruise through life waiting for something to happen and then complain life is always hitting you the hardest.
Think about the consequences of your doings, create options for every possible way and then create the next line of options...
Be active when thinking about your future.
At first it can be difficult but with time it will become natural.
One thing, especially when dealing with risk risk situations are checklists.
Basically you think through an emergency situation, sort out the most important steps which secure your own safety and the safety of others, prioritize them, put them in an order, write it down and in case of that emergency you go through step- by- step.
For most real- life situations checklists are enough.
Then there are those events which go far too fast to pull out lists and start crossing of points. Maybe it is all happening too fast, you are in a situation where you can not work with lists(on a bicylce, falling from the sky, ...).
For those you still follow the same plan: think about what can happen, what you can do in this situation, what are the priorities and in which order to sort them and then comes one thing each and every man who served in the military dreaded: drills.
You memorize the checklist and perform it in an non- threatening environment over and over again.
Not the most fun training but for certain thing the most essential.
Train hard and enjoy life!
All the best,
Harry
You want to walk? Stand up, walk a few steps, fall down, get back up,...
Speaking...No biggie.
Soccer? Hit the ball. Did not shoot a goal? Well... Hit it again. Till you know how to do it.
You just turned 18 and now you are taking your first driving lesson... And that other car is closing in very, very fast? Well... You may be stressed and a little freaked out by all the things happening around you(the car, the driving- instructor screaming next to you, the windshield- wiper which is all of a sudden turned on magically,...) but there is one thing you can do: hit the break!!
Guess what? That´s it. You put weight on that one pedal and usually all is good. You got another chance to try driving
But this is called "Lessons from skydiving"...
If you get out of that plane in 4 kilometers above ground and your parachute doesn´t work, you got no altimeter, you become instable, pull your parachute and get tangled up in all the cords, you are heading straight into a obstacle, you got no cords to stir the parachute, etc, etc...
If you got no plan here... Well, you are dead now.
I´m sure you get another chance for trying... At least if you belief in reincarnation.
Most will say: "Well... Of course you have to have a plan."
Right.
So let´s stick with the skydiving example...
You jump out of the plane, do your thing, reach the proper altitude, pull your parachute and... Nothing happens...
So...you gotta have the next step planned out. Pull the reserve.
You pull your main parachute, you feel a pull but not even close to what you should feel because it´s tangled up between the cords and the cords somehow got stuck to you... What now?
The parachute opens but both cords used to pilot it are ripped... WHat now?
You have to have a plan A, then a plan B.
Lets switch to another example close to my field of experience:
A patient has surgery. If a doctor would perform it only educated in the exact steps necessary to do it when everything is working as it should many people would not get out of the operation room alive.
Many banks where not prepared for the economic crisis and therefor a lot of them had to close, leaving thousands, millions without savings.
Where things mather experience has shown you have to think three steps ahead to be save.
Or to be successful.
Do not just cruise through life waiting for something to happen and then complain life is always hitting you the hardest.
Think about the consequences of your doings, create options for every possible way and then create the next line of options...
Be active when thinking about your future.
At first it can be difficult but with time it will become natural.
One thing, especially when dealing with risk risk situations are checklists.
Basically you think through an emergency situation, sort out the most important steps which secure your own safety and the safety of others, prioritize them, put them in an order, write it down and in case of that emergency you go through step- by- step.
For most real- life situations checklists are enough.
Then there are those events which go far too fast to pull out lists and start crossing of points. Maybe it is all happening too fast, you are in a situation where you can not work with lists(on a bicylce, falling from the sky, ...).
For those you still follow the same plan: think about what can happen, what you can do in this situation, what are the priorities and in which order to sort them and then comes one thing each and every man who served in the military dreaded: drills.
You memorize the checklist and perform it in an non- threatening environment over and over again.
Not the most fun training but for certain thing the most essential.
Train hard and enjoy life!
All the best,
Harry
Montag, 2. August 2010
Clubbells
One part of the workshop with Steve Maxwell was the "Hindu Workout".
Hindu Pushups, Hindu Squats, Macebells and Clubbells.
Since I worked with some of Scott Sonnons Yoga stuff lately and Steve Maxwell really got me interested I thought I´d give Clubbells a chance.
Those of you who read my Blog regularly know, I do not like to buy stuff pre- made, I like to build my own training equipment.
So I put some thought into how Clubbells work, what I think is important and what I did wrong in the past.
See for yourself...
Sorry for only giving you half the screen, somehow my cam was lazy today.
Train hard and enjoy life!
All the best,
Harry
Hindu Pushups, Hindu Squats, Macebells and Clubbells.
Since I worked with some of Scott Sonnons Yoga stuff lately and Steve Maxwell really got me interested I thought I´d give Clubbells a chance.
Those of you who read my Blog regularly know, I do not like to buy stuff pre- made, I like to build my own training equipment.
So I put some thought into how Clubbells work, what I think is important and what I did wrong in the past.
See for yourself...
Sorry for only giving you half the screen, somehow my cam was lazy today.
Train hard and enjoy life!
All the best,
Harry
Sonntag, 1. August 2010
Lessons from skydiving
Over the last years I was able to save enough money to treat myself to something I was looking forward to since 2003: a skydiving- course which will enable me to jump out of planes all over the world.
After two days of theory one comment of a teacher clinged to my mind:
"Everybody changes thanks to this course. Most of the time to the better."
So I will watch very carefully, like I always do regarding to my training, how this education and learning this new skill will change me.
It certainly will as every experience of an extreme situation with high sensory input and fast reaction time does.
I´m also very curious how people who do not see me face- to- face will experience me after the summer, since a lot has already and will change in the coming months.
So enjoy the ride.
Train hard and enjoy life!
All the best,
Harry
After two days of theory one comment of a teacher clinged to my mind:
"Everybody changes thanks to this course. Most of the time to the better."
So I will watch very carefully, like I always do regarding to my training, how this education and learning this new skill will change me.
It certainly will as every experience of an extreme situation with high sensory input and fast reaction time does.
I´m also very curious how people who do not see me face- to- face will experience me after the summer, since a lot has already and will change in the coming months.
So enjoy the ride.
Train hard and enjoy life!
All the best,
Harry
Abonnieren
Posts (Atom)
