How to make a slidig landing?

[w4p2 0]

What is the correct procedure for sliding landing?
PLF is well explained and trained, but on this one
I have not seen / received any instructions.

Cheers: JL

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[tombuch 0]

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What is the correct procedure for sliding landing?
PLF is well explained and trained, but on this one
I have not seen / received any instructions.

My very strong suggestion is to NOT do a slide landing. It is a reasonable landing method for tandems, but NOT individual skydivers.

Lifting your legs for a slide landing can result in putting all the force on your butt and spine, and can easily cause a spinal compression.

If you believe your landing is going to be a bad one, get your legs together and below you, and do a PLF. Do NOT try to slide.

Tom Buchanan
Instructor (AFF, SL, IAD, Tandem)
Author, JUMP! Skydiving Made Fun and Easy

Tom Buchanan
Instructor Emeritus
Comm Pilot MSEL,G
Author: JUMP! Skydiving Made Fun and Easy

[w4p2 0]

That was clear and straight answer. Ty, it will be observed.

Kind Regards: JL

P.S. The origin of the question is in the forums. I read more experienced jumpers referring to it and I was wondering of the technic. Once more, tx for clarification.

[skycat 0]

Usually it is only used when you are injured (ie. knee injury) but still jumping. Where the landing is still a good landing and would be stood up if it wasn't for the injury preventing the ability to run. If you are going to have a bad landing, PLF.

Fly it like you stole it!

[Kris 0]

If you are talking about sliding in on one's bottom, well, that's bad and can cause serious spinal injury.

If you are talking about sliding landings for experienced jumpers, then that's a different thing. Many experienced jumpers pilot higer-wingloaded canopies and they may not be able to bring them to a complete stop on landing. You'll usually see them running their landings out. The canopy planes out, they're out of flare, and they still have a pretty good amount of forward speed so they start sprinting like Carl Lewis while they run out the landing. This is a bad thing.

The reason it is bad is that it is easier to sprain / break an ankle, or go for a tumble.

If you have the landing terrain for it, it is much better to put your feet down at that point and to slide out the landing on the soles of your feet. Think running across the lineoleum kitchen floor with your socks on and sliding. Same thing.

Sky, Muff Bro, Rodriguez Bro, and
Bastion of Purity and Innocence!™

[drenaline 0]

Always try to do stand up or PLF, don't go for the slide because, like said above, you can get some serious injuries in the spine.

The only common procedure I know for slide landing is landing with your feets, slipping with the wet grass and end up doing the butt slide.

I have scoliosis because I thought that landing and sliding with my butt would of been better than landing hard on my feets. How it happened? well I landed without flaring (well actually I did flared but my feets where already on the ground) was going to fast and I sliped, ended with my butt on the ground, slide a bit and finnished with huge pain in my spine.

ADVICE: go for the PLF or the Stand up, your spine and coxis will thank you for it.

HISPA 21
www.panamafreefall.com

[w4p2 0]

For all above:

TX WILCO

Cheers: JL

[SkymonkeyONE 3]

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My very strong suggestion is to NOT do a slide landing. It is a reasonable landing method for tandems, but NOT individual skydivers.................If you believe your landing is going to be a bad one, get your legs together and below you, and do a PLF. Do NOT try to slide.

I am going to totally disagree with this for the following reason: trying a PLF while going downwind at 20 mph will likely injure you very badly. I teach sliding landings as the preferred option when caught, for whatever reason, in that fast downwind situation. That said, I also beat into my students that flaring too high and attempting to slide can potentially injure you just as badly. The single most common landing problem today is flaring too HIGH. I am not talking just students here; that's all jumpers. Stalling your parachute too high, then attempting to run out landings while still carrying forward speed is not the hot ticket. I have seen far too many people land "feet, knees, face" to recommend PLF's in an unintentional downwind landing, so now I preach flaring at the correct altitude no matter which direction you are landing. One where you land much like getting off a swing at the playground. If you "come around the corner" at the correct altitude, then you will have VERY little possibility of incurring a spinal injury as you transition your weight from the soles of your sliding feet to your butt. Arbitrarily telling someone that sliding is bad in all instances may work on your dropzone, but that is absolutely not the view at my dropzone.

PLF's are still taught as the primary survival skill for too-high flares as, generally, there is not sufficient altitude to regain your natural glide before impact. In those instances they are absolutely needed. To land safely, a parachutist must either cancel his/her horizontal speed, vertical descent, or, preferably, both. I have, even with two-way radios on every student, many, many instances of people flaring too high. PLF's have helped prevent a lot of injuries in that respect. Likewise, a butt-slide halfway across the dropzone has saved just as many.

Chuck Blue
D-12501
AFF/SL/TM/BM-I, PRO, S&TA
Manager, Raeford Parachute Center School

[andy2 0]

what about sliding in on your side? I've seen a few people do this in a "high performance style". i.e. ending the swoop sliding in on the side of their leg, skidding to a stop. Comments on that?

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let my inspiration flow,
in token rhyme suggesting rhythm...

[riggerrob 558]

Skymonkeeone is right,
However sliding landings are a subtle technique, usually mastered by tandem instructors.
If a downwind landing or late flare results in you landing with more forward speed than Carl Lewis could run-out, then you resort to sliding the landing.
There are two techniques to sliding landings.
Graceful technique (i.e blade running professionals) only works on perfectly flat grass. With one foot in front and the other trailing, behind, you try to slide off your excess forward speed.

The less-graceful technique (after a botched approach) involves trying to do a horizontal PLF. Like a PLF, you are trying to absorb the landing shock with your leg muscles. The only difference is that all your excess speed is in the horizontal direction. The trick is to lean your head back, get your feet out in front and tighten your as cheek muscles, so your spine approaches horizontal. That way your leg muscles absorb most of the bumps.
Again, you are trying to avoid vertically compressing your spine.

I have learned the hard way that deliberately sliding in on one side only results in one sprained knee and one bruised thigh. There is a subtle difference here between pros "brushing" the grass with one thigh and juniors absorbing most of the landing shock with one thigh.

riggerrob: sprained left thumb twice, sprained left ankle twice. sprained left knee twice, etc.
Guess which side I should not slide on?

I want to conclude with the thought that sliding landings are a salvage technique at the end of botched approaches and cause far too many injuries to be used on a regular basis.

[fundgh 0]

Agree and Disagree...I would not want to attempt to slide a landing in, and I play ball and understand the mechanics of a slide. I don't think most people I see jumping and the location of most of the places I jump are condusive to sliding it in. However, my AFF instructor who has well over 3000 jumps would slide in 90% of her landings because she had a bad ankle. I think she is better at landing on her ass than on her feet. But again, she has a ton of jumps and would jump 20 per weekend.

I wouldn't consider it an emergency procedure unless instinct called for it, but it seems to be a valid technique for highly experienced jumpers.

...FUN FOR ALL!

[billvon 2,400]

There are two sliding landings worth discussing.

The first is a survival manuever. You're flying your brand new 1.5 to 1 loaded canopy to a perfect landing in the grass, when the wind switches suddenly to a 20mph tailwind. You wisely decide not to try to turn at 20 feet. Instead, you flare normally, and you're now moving 25mph over the grass.

Trying to run this out may injure or kill you. It killed a jumper here in San Diego several years ago; he tripped, landed on his face, and his body kept going. A PLF, where you stick your feet into the ground, may break your back. Instead, get yourself into the PLF position (body twisted, feet and knees together, hands protected, chin down) raise your legs and put yourself down on the side of your calf or thigh. This will result in your sliding on your side, feet-first, at 25mph. This will get you very dirty but is not likely to break anything, since the strongest/toughest parts of your body (calves, thighs and butt) are taking most of the abuse. And if you do hit something like a rock or a big lump of dirt or something, your feet will hit first, which is a good thing.

The second landing is a more advanced manuever. If the landing area is good (damp grass) your shoes are good (slippery but not too slippery) and your canopy control is excellent, sometimes you can get your feet down and start to take the load off your canopy before you come to a stop. To do this, put one foot in front of the other, flare such that your feet just barely touch the ground, and start putting weight on them. If you do this gradually you'll start to slide. It's very important to remember that, at this point, your canopy is _still_flying._ You have to keep on the toggles to keep the canopy flying straight, and keep flaring to slow yourself down. When done correctly, this can let you slow down quite a bit before having to run it out; I've used this to land after even nasty downwinds without having to over-run the runout.

[Genn 0]

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If you believe your landing is going to be a bad one, get your legs together and below you, and do a PLF. Do NOT try to slide.

I agree with Tom on this one. In your profile it states that you are a student. Given your current situation, I'm assuming you're on a large canopy with not much forward motion while landing. If you landing is going to be a bad one (flared too high and dropping straight down) a slide could cause serious injury to your spine, therefore..IMO, a PLF is in order.

However, when you downsize to a smaller canopy with more forward drive, a sliding landing may be in order (as previously described).

[w4p2 0]

Once more, tx for all. A lot to learn....
good two weeks and back to air.

Cheers: JL

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[lazyfrog 0]

The less-graceful technique (after a botched approach) involves trying to do a horizontal PLF. Like a PLF, you are trying to absorb the landing shock with your leg muscles. The only difference is that all your excess speed is in the horizontal direction. The trick is to lean your head back, get your feet out in front and tighten your as cheek muscles, so your spine approaches horizontal. That way your leg muscles absorb most of the bumps.
Again, you are trying to avoid vertically compressing your spine.
*****************************
beware if you land horizontal on hour back... your rig is basically quite solid and the reserve might injure your spine too... Seen people impacting after a low turn finishing on the back with a spine broken (apparently by the reserve) and which are now in a wheelchair...
the general tendancy apparently says PLF with low horizontal speed, whatever you can (depending of your experience) with high speed

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Fumer tue, péter pue
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ourson #10, Mosquito Uno, CBT 579

[herv 0]

NOTE TO MODERATOR, please remove this post if you feel that my advice is wrong.

Normally, on a subject like this, I would defer to the more experienced jumpers and just watch the thread to learn. But I totally disagree with the "never make a sliding landing" school of thought. I agree with Skymonkey. This is based off of personal experience not just my thoughts.

I have done many PLF's in that I first started jumping as a Paratrooper and Jumpmaster at Ft Bragg. (Often I am called upon to demonstrate PLF's at my DZ to the new students).

About two years ago I was skydiving in some stronger (not excessive) winds. I misjudged my final approach and realized that I probably would not be able to complete my turn into the wind in time. In that split second I decided to land downwind.

With my canopy speed and the wind gust, I was probably going anywhere from 30-40 mph. As I was doing my flare I remember thinking "Ohh, this is going to hurt" I got into a baseball slide type configuration just like I was sliding into home plate. I was going so fast that everyone at the hanger saw me touch down and slide, and slide, and slide. I wouldn't doubt that I slid 100-200 ft.

A couple of people got in a jeep and came racing out to me probably sure that I had been injured. When they got to me I was standing there gathering up my chute with a "don't I feel stupid" look on my face. Not a bump, not bruise, not a scratch on me.

If I had tried to do a PLF, I am willing to bet that something on me would have been broken. I was going way to fast.

IMHO, on occassion there might be a time when doing a PLF is not the best way to go. But this would be in a basebal slide configuration. Not just landing on your ass. If you do not know how to baseball slide, I would suggest find somone that does and have them show you how to slide.

I feel this it is better than having both feet in front of you. Your foot is under the back of your knee on your your other leg so your legs are in kind of a figure 4. You make contact with your calf, thigh and ass cheek at the same time and your kind of on your side with your upper body leaned back "so your spine is horizontal with the ground".

Please let me re-iterate YOU MUST MUST HAVE SIGNIFICANTLY MORE HORIZONTAL SPEED THAN VERTICAL! Practice this at home by running across the lawn as fast as you can and then sliding until you are totally comfortable with this.

I am only suggesting this for an extremely fast, (probably downwind) landing. Everything else, the PLF is the way to go.

I am only a B rated skydiver with a little over 350 jumps, so please take that into account when considering my advice. I will not pretend to know more than the more experienced skydivers.

[b1jercat 0]

I'm going to agree with the guy ahead of me. I've been favoring a knee and if I'm smoking in to fast to run out I do the baseball slid to scrub off speed and usually wind up standing it up. OTOH if I flair to high I try to keep those toggles down and prepare to PLF. MY DZ's doing a canopy control class with video which I'm taking to try and avoid the above scenario.
blue skies
jerry

[BlueEyedMonster 0]

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With my canopy speed and the wind gust, I was probably going anywhere from 30-40 mph. As I was doing my flare I remember thinking "Ohh, this is going to hurt

I'm gonna agree with the slide if you can in high speed downwinds. Last winter I was in this exact same position. Different outcome (GPS said I was going 36mph for the 3 sec before impact) The terrain was frozen, plowed field (sliding impossible) I PLF'ed. Marks on my jumpsuit showed I hit the ground just like I should have. Except I twisted as my torso hit, my face hit the dirt. (Glad I bought that Z1) My head was trapped by a furrow. I flipped once pivoting on my visor hinge, slammed my chin into my sternum as I turned a vertebra into a little wedge shape. I completely stopped in two body lengths.

Owwwiee. Now I am an inch shorter and it cost me 6 weeks of good jumping time! ...and yes, I get a dumbass point for loosing alt awareness under canopy and ending up in that downwind situation in the first place.