Principles of instruction for freefly coaches

This page outlines study material for a developing coach. It is informed by the Australian Parachute Federation’s coaching material, and by research into best practice from parallel disciplines such as gymnastics and aviation.

Flying well and coaching well are separate skills. The first time you teach, you are starting a new skill from the beginning, whatever your flying record.

The Australian Parachute Federation’s coach assessment tests coaching technique in its own right, separately from flying skill and from the regulations. These are the skills it looks for, with the reason behind each.

Prepare the session

Plan each session before you meet the student. Settle the objective, what the student needs to know before boarding, the ways the jump is likely to go wrong, and the fallback if the weather changes.

The student can see the preparation too. A student who sees a prepared coach settles sooner.

Sort what you could say into three piles

Before you write a brief, split everything you could say into three piles:

• Must know. Without it the jump is unsafe or pointless, so it goes in the brief.
• Should know. It is useful and relevant, so it goes in ground school, the debrief or the drive home.
• Could know. It is true and interesting, and it can wait for another day.

Working memory holds about four items, fewer than the often-quoted seven, and it shrinks further when someone is keyed up. A student standing in the door has less room than the same student sitting on the grass.

Build the brief around that limit: three or four key points per jump, with the safety-critical information first. Anything past four is likely to be lost.

Get them doing it

For a novice learning a physical skill, doing teaches more than watching, and watching teaches more than being told.

So get them moving on the ground. Walk the exit, hold the position, and rehearse the transition standing up. A student who has rehearsed a movement arrives at the door with it in their body. A student who has only heard it described arrives with a sentence they are trying to remember.

Keep spoken instruction to key cues

In the brief, limit what you say to the key phrases and cues the student needs in the air.

Extra instruction has two costs. It uses up the student’s limited capacity. It also gives them more rules to monitor consciously under pressure, and conscious monitoring is what makes a well-practised movement fall apart when someone is watching.

One vivid cue carries further than a paragraph. “Stand on the outside edge of that foot like you’re tipping a surfboard” is something a student can still use in the door.

Get it right the first time

What a student learns first sticks hardest. A badly learned movement is hard to remove, and under load the student will keep going back to it long after being told it is wrong.

Demonstrate and rehearse the correct movement before the student practises a rough version of it. Correct a fault early, before five jumps of repetition settle it in. For the same reason, steer students away from building a progression out of guesswork and video clips: unlearning takes longer than learning.

Demonstrate to the standard

Plan and rehearse your demonstration, because it shows the standard the movement is meant to reach. Demonstrate one thing at a time. Combining several to save time leaves the student unsure which part to copy.

Talk as little as possible while you demonstrate, because the student cannot watch and listen at full capacity at the same time. Show it, talk about it, then show it again.

Use anything that helps the student build an accurate picture, and appeal to as many senses as you reasonably can. Video of the skill in the briefing improves their ability to rehearse it in their head, so show it before the jump as well as in the debrief.

Training aids do three jobs. They cut the amount of spoken instruction the student has to absorb, they hold attention and help understanding, and they give the student a more realistic model to rehearse against. Diagrams, a whiteboard, a creeper, models, hand positions and physical props all count.

Ask before you explain

Asking questions keeps the student thinking. It shows you what they have understood, which can differ from what you hope they have understood. It also teaches, because recalling an answer strengthens memory more than hearing it again.

Before you explain, ask. Before you correct, ask. “Talk me through what you’re going to do” shows you the gap in about ten seconds, while there is still time to fix it.

Check what they heard

Any instruction has three versions: what you think you said, what you actually said, and what the student heard. They are rarely the same.

Have the student tell you the plan in their own words before boarding. If it comes back different, you have found the problem on the ground, with time to fix it.

Your conduct teaches too

The strongest influence you have on a student’s learning and attitude is being a competent skydiver with a professional attitude, every time they see you.

Newer jumpers copy what you do, including the parts you did not mean to teach. They learn from how you handle a gear check, how you talk about other coaches, whether you own your mistakes, and whether you stand down when you should.

One useful description of a good coach: competent and knowledgeable, resourceful and creative, analytical, and wanting to teach.

Learning styles

You will hear that students have learning styles, visual, auditory or kinaesthetic, and that teaching should be matched to each student’s style. The idea has been tested, and the evidence does not support it.

A proper test sorts learners by style, teaches some in a matched style and some in a mismatched one, then looks for a difference. Reviews that searched for studies like this found almost none, and the few that exist show no effect.

Some related points do hold. Appealing to several senses helps everyone. People differ in aptitude and prior experience, and they do have preferences. The evidence does not support sorting students into types and teaching each type differently.

The useful questions about the student in front of you are how far into this particular skill they are, and how loaded they are today. Reading your student covers both.

---

Advisory, educational content. Techniques and standards are guides, and the authority to train and assess belongs to your national federation and your drop zone. Some material on this page is drawn from contributed coach-development notes.