The coaching layer
Coaching freefly
Flying well and coaching well are different skills. This part of the project covers the second one: how people learn a physical skill under time pressure, how to build a brief a student can carry into freefall, and how to run a debrief.
What this is for
Skydivers elect to pay for coaching. Nothing obliges them to, and many flyers learn informally, working it out over hundreds of jumps with two or three friends before booking a coached jump to demonstrate the minimum standard.
Three things follow. We publish the standard so a flyer who is learning with friends has the same target a coached flyer has. Coaching proficiency matters in its own right, because a poor session costs a student money and enthusiasm at once. And a coach should make the sessions enjoyable: a flyer who stops booking them usually keeps jumping, so an abandoned progression continues uncoached, and that is a safety outcome.
The material here draws on three things: the topics a coach is examined on, contributed coach-development notes, and the sports science on how physical skills are actually learned. Where those three agree, we state the guidance plainly. Where the popular version of an idea does not survive the evidence, we say that too.
- Principles of instruction for freefly coaches Preparation, primacy, demonstration, questioning, and why talking less works better.
- Briefing a coached jump Breakoff first, a few named phases, cues tied to what the student can see, rehearsed physically.
- The debrief Ask before you tell, coach one thing outside tolerance, and never bury a safety breach.
- Reading your student Stage of learning and load today, instead of sorting people into types.
- What a coach owns Scope, currency, conduct, responsibility, and the boundaries you enforce.
- Load organising for freefly Exit order by drift and group type, briefing a mixed load, and the authority to say no.
- Operational procedures for coaches Gear checks, altitude devices, training-jump supervision, and who to escalate to.
- Becoming a freefly coach The approval pathway in Australia, and what it looks like elsewhere.