Harry, we're not talking about big formations. When you're STARTING FREEFLYING (Title of thread), you're probably not doing 20 ways that require you to never even think about corking. When you START FREEFLYING, you're probably going to be with your local DZ buddy chasing each other around the sky hoping to not kill each other. When you have non-pro flyers flying together (probably not perfectly on level), it helps if you can safely cork to your back when you lose your sit for several reasons: 1. Maintain as close to the same speed as you were flying when you were upright. Back is faster than Belly. Period. 2. Being able to see people ABOVE you when you are in a slower body position is quite important. Imagine this: Let's say there's a group of newish freeflyers are jumping together and things get a little off level. One guy crashes on top of another guy who just fell out of his sit and went to his back going ~140. Luckily he was on his back and could see the guy above him coming so he was able to brace for impact (or even get out of the way). That situation is much worse if the guy who lost his sit went to belly and slowed down to about ~120 and couldn't see shit above him. 3. The transition from back to sit is about 100x easier than a belly to sit transition (Not to mention the ridiculous speed you will need to catch your group after BELLYING out on a freefly formation) We're not talking about being able to turn points on your back. That's just silly and only a handful of people can even do that. It's just plain EASIER and SAFER to learn to sit with having some backflying skill. I feel like I'm in the twilight zone here even having to talk about this. There are only a few things that are taught differently in the tunnel than they are in the sky and the progression on learning how to sitfly is most certainly NOT one of them. Sure they're going to spend more time on backflying in the tunnel than in the sky. There's a much smaller margin for error in the tunnel than in the sky. But be my guest if you can just magically teach someone to sitfly who has no backflying ability. I'd love to learn that method but it doesn't make any sense to me. So in essence, it IS mandatory at least by my rules to know how to use backflying as a recovery position for someone who is STARTING to freefly. When someone bellies out of a freefly jump it almost always means that's the end of being with your group for that jump. So have a fun breakoff with people flailing around above you. STF Block Party XP http://www.facebook.com/blockpartyvfs
