The debrief

Study material for coaches. It draws on the Australian Parachute Federation’s coaching material, and on research from other fields such as gymnastics and aviation.

The debrief is the part of coaching with the strongest research behind it. A structured debrief improves performance on the next attempt substantially, and the features that make it work are known: it sticks to the jump’s objective, the student does much of the talking, and it follows a structure.

Ask before you tell

Start by having the student talk you through the jump.

When a student who flew badly asks how they did, the answer the APF looks for from a new coach is to hand the question back. Have them think the dive through first, then discuss it. There are three reasons for this.

• It tests awareness. What the student can recall shows how much spare capacity they had. A student who cannot tell you what happened between exit and breakoff was saturated, and that matters more than any body-position note you were about to make.
• It strengthens memory. Recalling the jump strengthens it more than being told it again, so the recall is part of the training.
• It shows ownership. If something went badly, watch whether they raise it before you do. A student who names their own error is in a different place from one who has it pointed out, and you learn something either way.

So open with a question every time, then go to the video.

Coach one fault, chosen from what sits outside tolerance

Pick one fault to coach, even when the video shows several. Two ideas decide which one.

Only faults outside tolerance

A fault is up for comment only when it falls outside the tolerance. Anything inside the tolerance is fine, even if it does not look pretty. On a complex aerial skill, correcting only the errors outside a tolerance band gave better retention and continued improvement than correcting everything.

The heading tolerance used on this site, 45° either side, lets you decide from the video whether a heading fault is outside tolerance.

Then only one

Of the faults outside tolerance, name the one that matters most. The tolerance alone can still leave you with five faults and a demoralised student.

Half the reason for the cap is retention of the skill. The other half is that the student is paying for this. A debrief of thirty-five flaws makes improvement look out of reach. A flyer who stops booking coaching usually keeps jumping, so whether they enjoy a session is a safety question as well as a professional one.

Feedback can also make things worse. Across a very large body of studies, feedback improves performance on average and makes it worse in more than a third of cases. So decide how much feedback to give, and what to aim it at.

Safety faults are always named

The one-fault cap covers skill faults only.

Name a safety-critical breach every time, have the jumper acknowledge it out loud, and act on it. Deal with it on the day, even when the focus of the jump was something else, such as chin position. When a jump has both, the debrief carries two items: the safety item and the one skill item.

A rule to give students as well as coaches:

If ninety-five percent of the jump was excellent and five percent was dangerous, it was a bad jump.

Put the safety item first. A corking incident mentioned as a footnote after four minutes of praise gets lost. The same rule applies when a coach assesses a course here: if a safety-critical item on the checklist is not yet met, the course is not finished, however good the rest of the flying was.

Aim the rule at the jump. “That was a bad jump” is about the task. “You are careless” is about the person, and feedback aimed at the person is the kind most likely to make performance worse. Kept on the jump, the rule fits with everything above. Aimed at the person, it produces the demoralising debrief this page is trying to help you avoid.

Attach a cue to the video

Footage shown without a specific correction can be worse than no footage at all. A student who watches themselves fly badly, with nothing attached, only confirms what they already know.

Pair every clip with a cue: what to do instead, in words the student can carry to the next jump. “Watch this bit. Next jump, I want your chin down before you commit to the approach.”

A structure for the debrief

This structure comes from fields that debrief high-consequence work formally, and it works well for a coached jump:

1. Reaction. Ask how it felt, and keep it short. It lets the emotion out at the start, so it stays out of the analysis.
2. Analysis. The student recalls the jump, then you work through the objective with the video. Say specifically what you saw and ask a curious question about it in the same breath: “You came off level at the second approach and stopped closing. What were you working with there?” The cause is often something you would not have guessed.
3. Summary. Agree the one thing for next jump. Say it out loud and write it in the logbook.

Keep the whole debrief to two or three points at most, which is also what general skydiving instructional guidance recommends. End on something that went well, with one thing to improve.

The order helps with nerves

For many students the pressure on a coached jump is social: flying on camera, in front of a group, with a review to come. A new movement that is not yet automatic, flown while being watched and assessed, is the hardest case for nerves and self-consciousness.

Two simple choices in how you run the debrief help:

• Let the student speak first, before you or the group, and describe what they did. It reduces the feeling of being judged from outside, and it doubles as the recall test.
• Think about the group debrief. A shared review saves time, and it puts the pressure on whoever flew worst. Consider debriefing the weakest performance privately.

What to write down

In the student’s logbook, write the jump, the results against the checklist and the one thing for next time, naming the course and the skill. An entry that names what was assessed and what comes next turns the logbook into a training record you can still read months later.

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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.