How to prepare for for your first skydive in 30 minutes
The end result of my skydiving experience was happiness, but it took an exhausting gamut of emotion to get there.
How to prepare mentally for your first tandem skydive
Skydiving is an intense activity that requires a decent level of mental preparedness, mental toughness or both.
Unlike my experience, you’ll ideally have a few days or weeks to prepare. Your local skydiving center is sure to have some practical tips like what to wear, what to eat for breakfast and what to do in the air, but here’s a quick list that might help you prepare mentally.
Evaluate: My first instinct was to study my surroundings and grade them. Did I trust the instructors? Did the plane look air-worthy? Because my first tandem skydive was a birthday surprise, I didn’t have the opportunity for in-depth research, but ideally you’ll read reviews about the company and instructors you’re jumping with and be able to think critically about that information.
Stay positive: Once I finished evaluating the risk and had decided to go for it, I focused on success and tried to cast worry from my mind. The inevitable fear isn’t avoidable, but you can do your best to manage it by staying positive.
Meditate/stay calm: In the minutes before boarding the plane and once flying to the drop zone I consciously worked to breathe deep, slow my pulse and clear my mind.
Have faith: A tandem skydive is the ultimate trust fall. You aren’t in control, and you shouldn’t be. The only way to jump with any kind of grace at all is to believe in your, instructor and let him or her to their job.
Skydiving is one of the ultimate tests of overcoming fear, but what if you didn’t know it was about to happen? How can you get ready to jump out of an airplane with a half hour or less to prepare?
It was Groundhog Day, the day after my birthday, and the plan was a mystery to me. My wife, Wendy, had cooked something up, and I’d agreed to go along for the ride.
We were on the Big Island of Hawaii for a week of snorkeling and relaxation, and before we went to bed the night before, she’d said we needed to gather some gear. It was an incongruent list that went like this: rain coat, rain pants, sneakers, snorkeling gear, swim suit, towel, water bottle and regular street clothes. She'd previously asked to make sure I was okay being close to one other person. It was a Covid-19 related question, and I'd told her I was comfortable with her judgement.
With those tidbits as my clues, I thought passively about it. I wasn’t like a detective trying to crack the case, but more of a curious husband willing to go along with the ruse. What I came up with was that she'd hired a boat to take us to an off-shore snorkeling destination that couldn’t be reached from land. At a distant second, I thought she might have found a cool hike that required a guide.
We woke at 5:45 a.m., the second morning in a row getting up before sunrise. We stopped at a coffee shop to fuel up, then drove to the far-north tip of the Big Island where Haleakalā was visible across the Maui Channel. Where the highway intersected a small paved road, she turned left toward the ocean. We descended through a thick forest that blocked most of the view. I still couldn't tell what awaited near the water, but I felt the truth in my intuition: a boat, open ocean, snorkeling, magical reefs. I worried about sharks and did a quick internet search to inquire about recent attacks.
When we arrived at the bottom of the hill, the trees parted to reveal a couple small buildings next to an airstrip. I was confused, but quickly determined that I’d been wrong about the boat and that she'd booked a scenic flight. We parked in the grass, and some folks waved us toward a blue shipping container that had windows cut from its sides. I was a little disappointed we were going for a scenic flight of a volcano we'd climbed the day before, but as we walked toward the container something didn't feel right. That's when I put it together.
Small plane.
Men in ponytails.
Shipping container office.
Someone yelled across the grass: "Have you guys been skydiving before?"
Holy shit.
It was a perfect morning for it. Clear skies. No wind. I had butterflies from the moment I figured it out, but I wasn't upset. Like many others, jumping out of a plane was on my bucket list. In fact, I’d always imagined taking an intensive class and making my first jump solo. I’d have appreciated more than a half hour to mentally prepare, but it was, oddly, doable.
My wife tells me I went quiet, and I guess she’s right. What that means is that I went inward to try to mentally prepare as efficiently as I could. I studied the sky for clouds and evaluated the strength of the wind. I watched the instructors to make sure they seemed competent. But as much as I wanted to study, learn and harness some level of control, I knew I’d have to either relinquish that or walk away entirely.
That’s really the only secret. To succeed at tandem skydiving, the only real trick is to give up control. In every other way, you’re just along for the ride. I saw that part the commitment coming, and my pulse quickened.
I experienced a bunch of emotions in the half-hour that ensued. I don't expect I'll capture them all, but I'll try to pin down a few.
Watching my wife fall out of the plane, I felt a genuine pang of fear. I had no idea how plain it would be on my face when they sent us a video of our jumps.
Fear: From the moment I figured out what was going on to the moment my feet touched the ground again, I felt the gentle tug of fear. For the most part it wasn't overwhelming, just enough trepidation to raise my pulse and make it tough to sit still. As you can see in the adjacent photo, however, I experienced a genuine pang of terror in the moments leading up to and shortly after jumping.
Reflective. I did not think back over the events of my life or consider my mortality, but I got quiet and thought inward thoughts about what free-fall would be like. It was similar to the way I used to feel on the put-in for a class V river. It’s a gradually-building game face that’s the product of mounting fear and usually results in acute focus and ability.
Surprised. Wendy caught me off guard, but the operation we jumped with was decidedly low-key. My jump instructor was late for work and rumbled onto the air strip on a motorcycle after we'd been waiting 15 minutes. His hair was disheveled, his clothes wrinkled. At a minimum he hadn't slept well. At worst, he was hung over. He wasn't chatty. I didn’t know his name, and he nor Wendy’s instructor told us what to expect. We didn't wear helmets. Hell, my instructor didn't wear shoes. I didn’t let these things bother me too much, though. He didn’t need to be good at anything but skydiving, and that proved to be the case.
Faith. I didn't choose to ponder faith; it sort of just happened to me as I looked out the plane’s window on our way to 10,000 feet. I was in the back, strapped to my instructor's harness while he sent text messages to a girl named Cassidy. The plane was rickety, with duct tape on the windows, a few missing rivets. The pilot wore a parachute. As the plane banked along the island’s north coast and turned back toward the airport, someone on board announced we were halfway: 5,000 feet and en route to the jump zone. That's about the time the cumulative effect of the morning's emotions came together, and I remembered something I'd read about faith being when you can't see, so you trust the one who can. I've often struggled with the notion of faith, but I realized how much I was exercising in that moment.
Faith that the rickety airplane would stay in the air. Faith that my instructor was with it enough. Faith that Wendy would be okay. Faith, I guess, that God had our backs. I generally have a lot of belief in my abilities and aptitude for difficult activities, but in that moment I was completely blind. I was completely dependent on a man I'd never met, whose name I didn't know and whose mental state I knew nothing about. Faith is all I had.
Exhilaration. I watched with shock as the plane pitched right and dropped Wendy and her instructor through the open door. I was worried about her, but my own nerves were overwhelming in those fast minutes. My instructor tapped me on the shoulder. Time to go.
I pivoted across the back of the plane and stuck my feet into the wind, onto a small metal platform they'd pointed out when boarding the plane. Below that was 10,000 feet of open air. I felt my instructor push my head to the left, I assume to make sure I didn't hit it on the door frame when we jumped. But we didn't jump.
I'd seen it a minute before when Wendy vanished from the plane, but jumping wasn't how it worked. I wasn't thinking, though, only experiencing, and the whole plane pitched to the right. What had been a door was suddenly a hole that we simply fell through. We rolled forward, flipping. I hadn't realized we'd start free-fall in a forward roll, and I screamed like a little boy. We rolled once, and then stabilized belly down. Free-fall.
Then, rather instantly, there was nothing but - bliss.
Like floating, only flying - not scary at all. Stillness while falling at 120 miles per hour.
After about a minute - it could have been more, but not nearly enough - the man whose name I didn’t know pulled the chute, and I felt the tug of gravity on the leg loops of my harness.
We did some aerobatics on our way to the ground (perhaps my least favorite part of the whole thing), but the morning of mounting nerves and wild up-and-down emotions was finally over.
A few minutes later we were in the car again, and Wendy asked if I wanted to find a trail for a hike in the woods.
I was numb and uninterested, wanting nothing more than to sit on a beach and digest the experience, to understand the electricity that seemed to be coursing my body even after 15 minutes back on the ground.
What does it feel like to skydive?
The big skydiving sensations come from three key moments.
Jumping out of the plane and acceleration
Freefall
Deceleration
Of those, jumping is scariest, free-fall is most blissful, and deceleration produces the highest g-forces.
Jumping: For me, the process of leaving the plane was by far the scariest part of the experience, but it didn’t produce sensations like feeling your stomach drop or tipping over in a chair. It’s scary because staring at 10,000- to 14,000 feet of open space beneath your feet is always going to give you pause. It’s also hard because you’re not in control and don’t know the exact moment you’re going to jump. You’re strapped to your instructor’s chest and along for the ride. Your jump starts when he or she pushes you out. Maybe I have control issues, but that’s just always going to be uncomfortable for me.
Free-fall: Skydiving does not make your stomach drop, but it does make you feel like you’re flying. Falling at 120 miles per hour is the most blissful part of skydiving. It’s really windy, but you’ll hardly notice because it feels like you’re floating. I remember opening my mouth to say “wow” and then quickly closing it because it filled with wind that puffed out my cheeks. That’s how I was feeling, though. Skydiving was a WOW experience.
Deceleration: When your instructor deploys the parachute, you’ll feel the tug of gravity gradually at first, and then more intensely as the chute fills with air. It’s the highest amount of g-forces you’ll feel, but you probably won’t notice at all because you’ll be bummed your free-fall is over. (There was also a brief moment after deceleration when I starred at 5,000 feet of open air beneath my feet and felt the tug of gravity on the leg loops of my harness. It felt unnatural, but I focused on the beautiful view and my concern quickly faded.)
What does skydiving not feel like?
Skydiving is a one-of-a-kind experience that’s difficult to put into words because it’s so unlike activities that most people do on a regular basis. It may be easier to relate to by considering what skydiving does not feel like.
Skydiving doesn’t feel like falling
At least, it doesn’t feel like what most people imagine falling feels like. Most people say they have dreams about falling that describe a sensation like sitting in a chair that’s tipping over. Skydiving isn’t like that.
Skydiving doesn’t feel like cliff diving
I used to find lakes and quarries where there were high cliffs to jump from. I eventually topped out over 100 feet and experienced a small injury that caused me to question the activity and give it up. The free-fall you experience in cliff diving is scary in its own way, but Skydiving is nothing like that, either.
Skydiving doesn’t feel like riding a roller coaster
A roller coaster is designed to harness positive, negative and linear g-forces in a way that makes their mixture unpredictable for your body’s inner equilibrium. The deceleration phase of skydiving when your pilot deploys the parachute produces some g-forces, but you’ll hardly notice. (Aerobatics performed after the parachute is open could produce g-forces, so if you don’t want that, talk with your instructor before you leave the ground.)