On November 4, Sharon Har-Noy Pilcher and Luis Prinetto, longtime organizers and coaches with years of experience organizing movement jumps, held a Leading Workshop at Skydive DeLand in Florida. The program gave attendees the tools to make informed decisions when leading and participating in any type of jump in which the jumpers fly away from a single column of air. These include tracking and angle jumps, as well as wingsuit skydives.

All types of movement jumps have risen in popularity recently, and the complexity of some of these jumps has increased. Today, it’s common to have multiple movement groups on the same plane. Since these groups may be flying at different speeds and angles and performing maneuvers like carving and layouts, it is critical for jumpers to understand the fundamentals of freefall air traffic and how to navigate around it, as well as how to engineer a jump that is suitable for the group and the conditions around it. Pilcher and Prinetto believe that it is almost impossible to set hard rules that encompass all scenarios, so they’ve developed the Leading Workshop to create guidelines that help with decision making and build a common language that allows good communication.

The DeLand workshop accommodated 10 participants and included classroom theory, jumps and group discussions. The discussions were particularly important to the learning process since the participants—who all had different jumping backgrounds—learned from each other. Attendees included newer jumpers who simply wanted to learn how to be safe while participating in movement jumps to experienced movement-jump organizers who sought to expand their knowledge and enrich themselves from the experiences of others. Espen Fadnes and Amber Forte, both avid wingsuit flyers, joined them to add their expertise. The interaction between such diverse participants was invaluable to all parties.