Briefing a coached jump

This page outlines study material for a developing coach. It is informed by the Australian Parachute Federation’s coaching material, and by research into best practice from parallel disciplines such as gymnastics and aviation.

A brief succeeds when the student can still use it in freefall. The conditions it has to survive are fixed: forty to sixty seconds of working time, elevated stress, a camera, and a review afterwards. Working memory holds about four items on the ground, and fewer than that in the door.

Stress also narrows intake. Past a certain level a student reaches sensory overload and stops absorbing new information, so material added on the walk to the aircraft tends to displace earlier material instead of adding to it.

Two practical rules follow. Keep the brief short. Make the last thing said before boarding the most important thing.

Plan the breakoff first, then work backwards

Decide the breakoff altitude, the separation plan, who goes where and what happens if it goes wrong. Then build the working part of the jump backwards from there until you reach the exit. Planning the working part first and adding a breakoff at the end produces jumps that run out of altitude mid-sequence.

Working backwards also sets the student’s priorities on the ground: the first thing planned was how the jump ends safely.

Triage before you write

Sort everything you could say into must know, should know and could know. Only must-know goes in the brief. Should-know belongs in ground school or the debrief; could-know belongs on the drive home.

The coach should craft the brief to the must-know pile: tight, focused, and three or four key things per jump, with safety-critical information first.

Chunk the dive into a few named phases

Give the dive three or four named phases, each containing its movements.

The names do real work. Movement sequences are stored hierarchically, and a name gives the student a re-entry point. A student who blanks mid-dive with a flat list of eleven items has lost the jump. A student who blanks and remembers there are four phases can pick up at the start of the next one.

So: exit and set up, first working block, second working block, breakoff. Name them, brief them in order, and let the detail sit inside each name.

Tie cues to visible events

Remembering to do something at the right future moment is its own kind of memory, and it works far better when the trigger is an event you will actually perceive than when it is a time you have to track. Vivid triggers retrieve better than subtle ones.

In practice, prefer cues like these:

• “When the coach turns to face you, start the approach.”
• “When you see level with my shoulders, stop closing.”
• “When the audible goes, you are already turning.”

Over cues like these:

• “About twenty seconds in, start the approach.”
• “Count to five, then stop.”

A count competes for the same attention the flying needs; a visible event carries its own reminder.

Dirt dive it physically, and keep the whole pattern

The dirt dive is a memory intervention. Dancers who physically rehearse choreography at low intensity, moving through the full spatial pattern, perform better afterwards than dancers who only talk it through. That is the closest thing in the research to a dirt dive, and it argues for keeping the movement and the geometry in the rehearsal.

Which means: stand up, move, use the space, walk the exit, hold the positions, turn the way you will actually turn. Low intensity is fine; keep the movement.

Run it from climb-out to breakoff, three times, and again if anybody looks unsure. Treat three runs as the minimum.

Mental rehearsal

Mental rehearsal works, and it works better with a few specific conditions attached.

• Real speed. Rehearse at the pace the jump will happen, not in slow motion.
• Critical cues. Rehearse the cues that matter, not a general impression of the dive.
• As many senses as you can. What it will look like, what the air will feel like, the noise.
• Include the nerves. Rehearsing a calm version of a jump that will not feel calm builds the wrong expectation. Let them imagine the door as it will actually feel.
• Choose the viewpoint deliberately. First person for how something should feel, third person for how a position should look.

Video during the briefing helps here: footage of the skill improves the student’s ability to rehearse the movement mentally, which is a different job from footage in the debrief. Both are useful, and they do different work.

Close the loop before boarding

Have the student brief it back to you, in their own words, without prompting.

Do it because what you said and what they heard are different sentences, and this is the cheapest way to find the gap while it is still fixable. Do it also because the act of retrieving the plan strengthens their memory of it more than hearing you repeat it would.

What they cannot tell you back is your finding. Fix that item, and consider whether the brief was carrying too much.

One objective

One declared objective per jump, with the success criteria stated. One movement skill or one transition family.

The reasoning is capacity again. A jump carrying three new objectives teaches none of them well and spends attention that altitude awareness needs. It also makes the debrief impossible to run cleanly, because nobody can tell which of the three things went wrong first.

The single declared objective also has direct evidence behind it. Across several hundred goal-setting studies, specific goals with defined success criteria produce better performance than vague instructions such as “do your best”. Aviation, healthcare simulation and the military brief the same way for high-consequence work: a short, structured brief carrying a small number of specific outcomes.

Repetition across a day beats variety. Changing too much between jumps works against the settling that turns a movement into something automatic.

The shape of a coached jump

Pulling it together, the sequence that works:

1. State the aim of the day and the aim of this jump.
2. Plan the breakoff and work backwards.
3. Triage the material, then brief three or four named phases.
4. Give cues tied to visible events.
5. Dirt dive it physically, climb-out to breakoff, three times.
6. Mental rehearsal at real speed, with the nerves included.
7. Student briefs it back.
8. Gear checks, then board.

Every step happens on the ground, before the jump money is spent.

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Advisory, educational content. Techniques and standards are guides, and the authority to train and assess belongs to your national federation and your drop zone. Some material on this page is drawn from contributed coach-development notes.