by Will Bond
Sure, some tunnel flyers can make it look like they were born in the airflow. But I have some bad news for you friends, tunnel flying… it just isn’t natural.
In order to fly well in the windytube, you have to go through what can be an extremely awkward period of learning, the period where you have to break habits of movement that you started crystallising the moment you first met gravity. These habits are ingrained in us on what feels like the molecular level: the habit to work with gravity by leaning.
When you first start to interact with 200mph wind blowing up through a vertical column, you will try to find stability there using your ‘normal-human’ tools. It is at that point, perhaps painfully against the glass, you realise how inclined we are to lean into movement. When we walk forwards, we lean a forwards; when we sit up from a chair, we lean forwards; when we get up out of bed, we lean forwards. These habits are so baked-in that, if you pay attention, you’ll see that even when you want to drive faster or move a character in a video game, you’ll lean forwards.
When you’re driving or gaming, no worries, the outcome is neutral. However, in the tunnel, this universally habituated pattern of leaning into movement often has exactly the opposite effect that we’ve become so used to experiencing.
Bummer.
What we are aiming to feel when we are in the tunnel is lift. In the airflow, we have to work towards understanding that lift in an embodied way so we can potentially exploit it. For example: a transition where we travel across the tunnel, like a layout, is the outcome of a single part of the body gaining more lift then the other parts of the body, creating an angle and therefore a forwards (or backwards) drive.
And here’s where the counterintuition comes in. If you fall off a head-up and your legs get swept out from underneath you, you can’t simply lean forward to get back up as you would if you’d fallen out of a chair. You need to gain more lift in the torso to keep yourself in a head-up orientation. If you think about it in skydiving terms, your torso, as you are falling out of the head-up orientation, is “falling” faster than your legs. Therefore, the solution is to slow the torso down or present more surface area to the relative wind.
What’s most common for people to do in the sky is to stick the arms out for balance and try and hold the position, as you would if you were a totally normal human slipping on a banana peel in the hallway. Unfortunately, in the context of the airflow, the arms act as rudders to the torso.
In essence: your body operates very differently in the wind. It takes lots of time to come to an understanding of how this works in practice. Take it easy on yourself! Work with your coach to slow the process down, so you can manipulate it and get the results you’re working so hard for. The only way out is through.
…And don’t worry. It’ll be natural before you know it!
Will Bond has been flying in wind tunnels for more than a decade and has been working as a full-time instructor for four years. Currently an IBA Level 4, Will teaches and spots all skills on the IBA progression pathway and also coaches in the sky. Nothing gives him as much joy as a stinking angle jump to wake himself up in the morning. He’d be stoked to get help you level up, indoors or outdoors, so give him a shout on Instagram (@will.bond1) and he’ll get you shredding in no time.
