here's the link to a dicussion we had about this before. there is a suggested weight at the end of the post. beware the information is inaccurate and incomplete. if i remember right the post with the suggested weight started with a disclaimer. i checked your profile and at 260 jumps you have no business being in the air with a spaceball. not trying to be ugly
Maybe not as ballmaster...I have seen people with 130 jumps who are solid and can fly with a ball...the best thing for him to do would be to get the advise of an expierienced ballmaster.
i would say on average 400 jumps on your head before you develop the skills to gain anything new from jumping with a ball and 800 - 1000 headdown jumps before you even consider ball mastering yourself. i will not take anybody on a ball jump that has not yet developed the skills to have decent control of their movements and fly their column. and even at that stage i think it would be more beneficial to do a good 2 way with that experienced (ballmaster) freeflyer than a ball jump.
i would say on average 400 jumps on your head before you develop the skills to gain anything new from jumping with a ball and 800 - 1000 headdown jumps before you even consider ball mastering yourself
What about standing?.......can you stand with a ball?
Since the control surfice for standing is your arms, it would make it harder to be in control and still have the movement to keep the ball. I woudln't think that sitting would be that hard, but I don't know a whole lot of FFers who can sit fast enough to keep up with a normal Spaceball...
Not that I have any experience with this, me and my 1 spaceball jump, just "what I think" response.
Of course it's gonna be harder but check party mix dog boy (don't know his name but I love his suit)has no probs flying the ball in a stand or check Omar and his thingie in crosswind(to sick). I would also disagree that your arms are your control surface.....your body is the control surface! I was just wondering if Levin could sit/stand with a ball and how long it took him to be able to do it if he can
Yes, but when falling in a collum, what has the most surface area exposed to the wind? The arms do, until you start leaning in a certain direction, creating movement by introducing new surface areas to the wind.
What about standing?.......can you stand with a ball?
If i'm not mistaken, Mike Swanson did the AD-A test flying head-up.
As for arms being the main control surface- I'd say they're the main source of stability, and the control surfaces people are most used to using- but you can fly and turn with your legs too.
As for the main control surfaces, I'd think they'd be your chest and back, as well as legs -looking at the surface area size of your back compared to your arms.
As for people not being able to fly fast enough in sit, that's I think because of the "sitflying" misnomer. - people usually don't get upright enough in "sit" so they catch lotsa wind.
Seeing Mike Swanson fly in "sit" before, it looked like he was pretty much in an upright headdown position more than it looked like he was sitting in a chair.
I totally agree with you. I've personally seen the guys from GF, Chris Fiala and MC and all of them can fly in the sweet spot either sitting, standing and on their head. I think that people only think of their arms when sit or standing and therefore those are the only surfaces they use, but you can just as easily use your legs, chest and back. I just think everyone needs to learn to fly both halves of your body lower half and upper half, whether it be in a sit, stand or head.
And I think that's why people only concentrate on one half when flying head-up - because being aware of both halves of the body working independently is frickin hard and requires awareness of what your whole body is doing.
I think people learning to freefly would really benefit from taking kungfu or any martial art to learn how to do things with their arms and legs separately at the same time, while maintaining fluidity in the motion.
I think it would help people's flying if they made no distinction between sit and stand, but rather thought of it as head-up flying - which of course has different speeds.
Like, people don't make a distinction betweeen really slow headdown flying with all yer wings out and really fast headdown rocketting, so why do it with sit?
And again, calling it "sitflying" makes people stick their butts out instead of their legs.
I think it would help people's flying if they made no distinction between sit and stand, but rather thought of it as head-up flying - which of course has different speeds
That's a good way to look at it, never really thought of it that way. Maybe its because just about every time I stand its only to rocket down to a lower group. I guess this is due to the speed I normally reach when doing a stand, I don't get to do it much on normal jumps. Thus I never thought about using my feet and such as control surfaces. In a sit, though, I'm using feet more and more, controlling my position so I can use my hands for docks and stuff.
of course, if you tell them it's like dancing where guys dress up in colourful costumes, hold hands a lot and do thiings like pirhouettes, they might get another idea..
Seeing Mike Swanson fly in "sit" before, it looked like he was pretty much in an upright headdown position more than it looked like he was sitting in a chair.
Rook also has lots of surface area and so he sits very upright with a greater than 90 angle at his hips and knees in order to speed his fallrate.
Man though, there's this guy I know who wants to get headdown and he's long in the body but has amazingly short legs and lots of upperbody mass with big arms.
I'm wondering how he'll get to a comfortable speed headdown and still be able to dock since he'll probably have to get his arms out a bunch to slow down.. maybe a nice baggy suit with legs trailing like freeflytubes? haha
I agree with you completely. As a fledging free flopper I have experienced many problems. First is that I'm all upper body. Even when I swim I use all arms and drag my legs. As a result, in a sit or stand, where I can over use my arms...I'm pretty rock solid. Go to HD, and the legs stop working as soon as I look around and forget about them.
The martial arts thing is a good idea, but I would tend to think the soft styles of Kung Fu are better suited to FF than the hard styles. Most of my life I studied a lot of hard Japanese styles and kick boxed. The emphasis there is a lot of power movements, or as the Japanese call them: Male percussion strike. Very few American Japanese stylists use Female strike, (Aikido,Jiu Jitsu and some Kempo perhaps). The soft styles as they are called are a lot more fluid, use lower stance work and subtler strikes/blocks and such. This is a general statement of course, but it has been my idea that FF is much more like meditative soft style rather than a hard agressive style. Most of the best Freefliers look like they are in that totally relaxed zone, kinda like David Carradine in Kung Fu....like he gets to lay some deep zen shit on you before he subtly kicks your ass by moving his pinkie toe....rather than a Jean Claude type getting all enraged and flinging limbs all over the place..........hmm. Maybe I need to do a little meditating, lay off the gallons of coffee, stop getting all worked up and maybe the head down thing will kick in...... JJ
What about standing?.......can you stand with a ball?
ceratinly you can stand and sit with a ball. i've taken eric butts on a few ball jumps where he sit flyed the whole time grabbing it changing hands and doing his transitions. but in order for me to take you out in a sit jump with a ball you have already developed the same skills in a sit that i would require of a headdown flyer. since sitting is not as efficient a body position as headdown it is harder. if a freeflyer wanted to go out and do a ball jump while staying in a sit the whole time because they have not developed the headdown skills i would probably decline because there would obviously be other things that freeflyer could better spend his time on than playing with a ball. it's not a toy, it's a training aid. the only reason i take eric on sit ball jumps is because he is very good sit flyer. meaning he can accomplish many things in a sit with the same proficiancy as an accomplished headdowner. and also because my ball falls at 155mph and it's a little slow for eric to stay with on his head.
The martial arts thing is a good idea, but I would tend to think the soft styles of Kung Fu are better suited to FF than the hard styles.
Ya, like tai chi...relaxed but still moving, but still holding correct postures while moving.
It seems to me that people starting off headdown tend to use a lot of arms cause they want to fly with them like in sit and belly. What's more, when they lift their arms up, they actuate the shoulder muscles too, which causes an arch or dearch..
It is possible, like in tai chi, to have your arms out, but your shoulders relaxed.
I'm thinking though, (I just started coaching) that I'm going to get people to not think about or even use their arms too much at the beginning - they seem to get in the way of feeling where the tube is.
anyway, blah blah I could go on.. ... : ) cheers!
(This post was edited by blazingcannon on Oct 9, 2002, 2:17 PM)
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