What a coach owns

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.

Coaching is the part of skydiving where somebody else’s outcome becomes your responsibility. Worth being deliberate about what that includes.

Teach within your scope, and say when you are at its edge

The most useful professional habit available to a new coach: own the gaps out loud.

If a student asks about something you have not done, say you have not done it and find them someone who has. Doing so models the behaviour you want from them: a student who watches their coach name a limit learns that naming limits is what good flyers do.

Teach the jumps you have actually flown. A coach improvising a progression they have never personally flown is guessing, and the student cannot tell the difference.

Stay current in what you teach

A coach who has not flown the thing recently is coaching a memory.

Coach approvals typically carry renewal requirements with minimum activity in a recent window, plus a chief instructor’s statement. Those set the floor. The working question is whether you could fly the standard you are about to assess.

You are not a canopy coach, and you still have canopy responsibilities

Freefly coaching stops at deployment; a coach’s duty to notice continues under canopy.

If a student is doing something dangerous under canopy, that is yours to raise even though it is outside your discipline. Raise what you see, refer the coaching to somebody rated for it, and refer swooping questions on without exception.

The same applies to gear. A gear check is a set procedure done the same way every time, and out-of-date documentation means no jump. With a visiting jumper, assume nothing is in order until you have looked.

Conduct is part of the instruction

The strongest influence you have on a student is being a competent skydiver with a professional attitude. Junior jumpers copy senior behaviour closely, including the parts you did not intend to teach.

Which means: turn up on time, do the gear check properly, keep your energy up across the day, and do not write yourself off the night before you are coaching. Party, but not on a coaching eve.

It also means how you talk about other coaches. Another coach with a different teaching style may be the person who makes something click for your student, and running them down in front of a novice costs the novice a resource.

Take responsibility for your jumpers

If you put someone on a load, their behaviour on that load is partly yours. That means screening who you take, briefing properly, and being willing to pull someone off a jump.

Communicate clearly with manifest, with the drop zone’s safety officer, and with the other instructors and coaches working that day. Step up to load organising, or at least help with it, because the person who organises the load controls how safe it is.

Lean on the people who are better at parts of this than you

Instructors who teach first-jump and progression students spend all day with nervous people. They read apprehension faster and more accurately than most freefly coaches do, and they have techniques for it.

If you have a student whose problem is nerves rather than technique, that is a conversation worth having with an instructor.

The boundaries you enforce without negotiation

There is a difference between a learning environment, where a student is allowed to experiment and get things wrong, and a set of boundaries that are not up for discussion. Both need to exist, and the student needs to know which is which.

On angles, the non-negotiables are the horizontal divide, quadrants, no-fly zones, bailing out of the jump, corking, and breaking off incorrectly. On vertical, they are bailing onto the belly and departing from the briefed plan.

The handling matters as much as the list. You need to hear the jumper acknowledge the breach and say what they will do differently. A nod is not acknowledgement. Expect that repeated or serious breaches get written up, and be clear with your students in advance that this is how it works, so it is never a surprise.

This is where the ninety-five-five rule lives: a jump that was excellent apart from a dangerous five percent was a bad jump. Say so.

Know who to escalate to

Most problems resolve with the chief instructor. Some do not.

If you have an instructional problem your chief instructor will not deal with, there is a chain above them, and in Australia the next step is the safety and training officer. Learn the chain at your drop zone before you need it. Going to the media or to social media with a safety concern is the wrong move and it burns your standing.

Training descents sit under supervision arrangements that are not yours to waive. If you are visiting a drop zone that does not run training and somebody asks you to do a training jump with a student partway through their progression, the answer is no, with an explanation, regardless of what they are offering to pay.

Look after yourself, and them

Coaching is more tiring than fun jumping and carries more risk. A tired coach makes worse calls.

If something frightening happens, to you or to your student, stop and give it room. A student who has just had a genuine scare is not in a state to learn, and pressing on teaches them that the response to fear is to ignore it.

Stick with students when they are struggling and keep their enthusiasm alive. They elected to pay for this, and a demoralised student simply stops coming. Do not compare students to each other, and do not let them do it either.

What coaching gives, and what it costs

Worth knowing before starting.

What you gain. Jumps, sometimes paid. People to fly with who are better than they were. A part in bringing people properly into the sport rather than leaving them to work it out.

What it costs. Higher risk than fun jumping. Difficult personalities, occasionally. Fewer of your own jumps doing what you want. Responsibility on days when you would rather not have it.

The load is lighter the more coaches there are, which is a decent argument for helping the next one along.

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Advisory, educational content. Regulatory requirements vary by federation and drop zone and change over time, so confirm the current position locally. Some material on this page is drawn from contributed coach-development notes.