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Parachutist
It’s All in Your
Head
_________________
A conversation with Craig Girard (in Parachutist, February 1999, pages 36-39, by Nancy J. Koreen)
As a member of two world champion formation skydiving teams - the Golden Knights and Arizona Airspeed - for more than a decade, Craig Girard knows what it takes to be successful. Working on both military and civilian teams, he also has a unique perspective on different approaches to mentally preparing for a skydive. Here, he talks about the importance of mental preparation and how skydivers can use their heads to improve their performances in the air.
What's the most important element in mentally preparing for a skydive?
The big factor that probably weighs the most heavily in mental preparation is your arousal level. I like to explain arousal level like it's a graphic equalizer. You know how music plays on your stereo and you can see those things going up and down in the display? Well, all of us perform our best at a certain point, and what we all individually need to do is determine where we fit on that scale.
Some people perform better at a somewhat higher arousal level - on a scale of one to ten, let's say toward a six or seven, which is pushing the pace. Somebody else might find they perform better at a three or four, which is much calmer. And that's all very individual. Each person has his own little place, and it's always in flux.
For years, I was over the line - the line being your optimum place. You need to work at that level for your whole jump. First, you need to get yourself there in the plane. Second, you have to be ready when things happen during the skydive - whether it's someone ripcord floating or something crazy happens, somebody's helmet flies off, whatever. And then all of a sudden, you'll find that graphic equalizer changing. The trick is to make sure you are controlling it through the whole jump.
How do you know what your optimum level is?
In order to find your optimum level, you've got to start keeping track of it every single jump. And you've got to keep track of it the same way. There's one thing that is absolutely mandatory. You've got to do your system your way every single time, identically. You are the only person who has to be able to tell yourself in the plane, "I got this." And that is the secret.
Controlling your arousal level starts in the plane. You want to make sure it's the same for every jump. When it's pressure time, you start thinking, "This is not like training, and I'm really nervous, and I'm scared about making mistakes." But on a practice jump, you might not feel that pressure. On Airspeed, we work that feeling artificially in training. A lot of times, like when you're on your tenth jump of the day and it's hot, it's tough to keep your arousal level up. You may find your mind drifting off, and your arousal level's not where you want it to be. By keeping track of it on every jump, you can do artificial things to get it back up if it's low, or to do other things to calm it back down if it's too high.
I do the same thing on a boogie jump as a competition jump - but maybe not as intensely because maybe the sequence isn't as long as it's not as difficult mentally. But I still do it in the same way, and there's always a point where I say, "I got it." And I can convince myself of that. Even if I'm not sure, I tell myself that.
What do you think makes people brain lock?
The other thing that goes along with arousal level is distraction control. When I coach or organize, I hear a lot of people talk about, "I don't know why I locked." It's simple. Granted that everybody has the same preparation and your prep's good, the two things that cause brain locks are the wrong arousal level and bad distraction control.
In-air coaching is my big downfall for distraction control. When I brain lock, 90 percent of the time it's because I'm looking over at something as it's happening, and I'm thinking, "What's going on?" And then it gets keyed. I've totally left the here and the now. The thing to remember is that once you're in the air, you can't do anything about it. When I leave that plane, it's Craigland. That's it. If they're making mistakes, they're just going to do it.
When you do have brain locks and make mistakes, in your debrief, say what was causing them. I find that if I keep track of them, I see a trend in myself. And I see the early warning signs way before. I see them coming in the plane when my arousal level's off. Arousal level almost always keys into distraction control.
What is your system for mentally preparing for each skydive?
With Airspeed, we have a very set system of preparation. We get the jump and we walk through it. We walk it through with a lot of repetition, not worrying about angles or anything, just worrying about what the next point is. Because we jump together a lot, we already know who keys everything. But if you were to do it on a fun load, that would be the time to decide who keys each point. And you don't have to get everything figured out just yet, assuming you're going to lay it down.
During the dirt dive, it's really important that you are looking up at your opposite. So many times I see people looking on the ground through the prep. It's like they're playing a slide show of the next point.
Then we lay it down on creepers, and we go through angles. Here, we totally de-emphasize grips and just feel our moves, seeing the angles. We do that three times. Then we move on to pauses. We do the sequence with very pregnant, exaggerated pauses to totally get off the speed of it. We're thinking about what the next point is. That's all that matters. And when you're moving, as you're going through those pauses, de-emphasizing that speed is really good because some people are going to learn that faster than others. And you always hate being that one person thinking, "Why is everybody getting this faster than me?" Then all you start doing is worrying about grips and playing catch-up. You're not able to think, "I'm in this point. What's the next point?"
Going through the jump with pauses, you start thinking, "All right, what's that next point?" It's almost like you're transparently overlaying the next point onto each subsequent point.
Then we do it with our eyes closed. This is not for perfection. It's not about grips. Eyes closed is about trusting your move and knowing what that move is and getting a muscle memory for it. Often, when there's a high degree of movement all over the formation, you start thinking, "Well, Craig's off. I'm going to compensate for it." Then Jack looks at Kirk and says, "Kirk's off, I'm going to compensate for it." Everybody starts hedging their bets.
This is also true when you have a random series with very subtle, very small moves. If you stick to how small that move is, then everybody believes in it, and you know it, even if there's some funk going on. You know what your move is, and you do only that. It's really important to trust that and also get this inner compass feel for it. With a lot of our moves, you don't have a lot of reference. We may have to do them based off of trust, like moving back three inches and then sliding sideways a little bit.
The we do the sequence at speed. And at speed is very calm. It is not hurried at all. Our philosophy is that as long as it's calm and that calmness is the last thing that you program into yourself, then it's so easy to jack it up. But when you ingrain it as something frantic, like I see all the time on teams, you've got that programmed in your mind.
We do that same process every single time. It keeps creeping down to a minimum, and it's very efficient. It doesn't become a labor-intensive thing. People don't get get distracted, thinking, "Isn't this done yet?". We come in, we walk it, we drop down. Bang, bang, bang, boom. And then everybody goes off on their own.
And it's really important that from the time you dirt dive until the time you get on the airplane, you do what's necessary for you. From that point on, you need to let go of all the details about anybody else, and the only thing that's important is that you stay calm and do your job.
Let go of any technical details. I pick out the two most important things to me that I know are really the bread and butter of this jump, and I know that those are definitely going to happen. But other than that, the prep's taken care of.
The most important thing is to have a process and do it the same way for every jump.
How do you find the system that works best for you?
I've seen a lot of different ways, and really, they all work. A lot of times when I talk about my system, I get a lot of laughs. I've always been able to remember things with music and rhyme. I can recite all 50 states in alphabetical order right now.
In 8-way, we have a lot of different names. Like a springbok, which basically means you're either in a donut or a bipole. Everything is like that. I can tell them my own little names. Diamonds - there's an open-facing diamond, a hope diamond, a long diamond. So I shorten them up. I'll call those long, hope and ope.
When a new jump comes up, even before I see the pictures, I get a little rhythm going: "OK, next jump is spider, donut, T, zipper flake, compass." So I say in my head, "Spider, donut, T, zipper, compass. Spider, donut, T, zipper, compass." I don't even think of pictures. All I do is get that rhyme into my head. As I'm sitting here right now, it's going, "Spider, donut, T, zipper, compass. Spider, donut, T, zipper, compass." And as I get that rhyme down, I'm plugging those pictures into it, and I'm seeing it from above. I'm seeing my slot in that whole thing, like my slot glows brighter than everybody else's. That's my little thing. I give those names to it, and I try to call it the same thing every time.
These are just little idiosyncracies that are personal things. The thing that is the most important is that it's my system
For jumps that are really hard to remember, I'm talking to myself the whole time. In 8-way, you can feasibly have a never-get-home - 24 points on a very long skydive. You will never do the same point twice, ever. Part of being able to do that is maintaining a moment-to-moment focus at all times. From the time I'm climbing out that plane, I'm always asking myself, "Where am I now, where am I going next?" Eighty-five percent of what we do is mental. Physically, it's actually quite easy, as long as you are mentally ahead of the game.
So for myself, the next thing I do is plug the pictures in and start letting those run through my head. And I go very slowly at first. I'm probably heading for the loading area by now. And I try not to do a lot of socializing. If you really have to remember a jump, the last thing you want to do after you brain lock is say, "Gee, I wish I wouldn't have talked so much." It's nice to socialize, but if you're having a tough time, if you're the type of person that knows you're capable of brain locking very easily, you need to knuckle down. In training, I know that I really have to knuckle down. And it never gets easier. It just keeps getting harder and harder, because the things you consider errors start getting more minute, and you want to keep getting those narrowed down more and more.
At what point do you find your brain working the hardest?
From the time I get on that airplane until the time I get out, that is the most quality time for me personally. That is where I get that jump locked down. Most of the time, I will hardly even open my eyes until four grand. I just close my eyes, and I just start hearing that rhyme and seeing those pictures. And I totally get off the technical stuff and think about my move and stopping and how I'm going to pick up grips - I always see those grips. And then I look for the key guy.
As I'm dirt diving in my head, I'll start ingraining movements. If I have to turn around, I'll get a little shift with the body. I use it with my head mostly. So if I have a 540 to the left, I'll start moving left. I've rally found that by programming that in, a lot of times it's very spontaneous - saying the move just automatically gets my body moving that way. It's very calm. To reemphasize a million times, it cannot be frantic. When it's getting frantic, you need to stop, take a breath and chill it out and go slower. After you get it down at a certain speed, kick it up a bit.
I like to visualize it at first from above. And then I'll move that down as I get more comfortable with it. I'll move it into my own visual space, seeing it on level through my own eyes.
If it's a particularly easy jump, I might be done with that process by a grand. Then I'll see it from my opposite's viewpoint. I'll go into that other guy's head, and I'll look at myself, visualize seeing myself, what I'm going to look like doing it. Or I'll look at myself from my piece partner's perspective, what I would want myself to do if I were my own piece partner. I create different things to visualize and occupy time.
I have two check points - one at four grand and one at eight grand. I almost never have the jump down as well as I want it at four grand. And it's pretty rare that I don't have it by eight. I go through the jump at various speeds. I'll do it almost unrealistically fast - but not hyper. And if I can go through that whole jump three times without a glitch, without a hiccup, everything I wanted to do - head switches, everything - I've got it. This big green light goes on, and I can just look at myself and say, "They don't want none of this!"
There's a lot of affirmation of yourself and blind confidence in yourself. Even if I don't have it down, I'll tell myself that I've got it, even though there are some sketchy parts. But I'll get it when I get there, as long as I stay focused. Other times, I never have the jump down, and even as I'm getting out of that plane, I am still sketchy about some things. But I never worry about it. I always keep calm. I always tell myself, "You'll get it. You know what you're doing. You know it."
It's like a road map, and you know that up there on that road it's kind of blurry. You can see yourself working up that road. And you know that as you got there, if you maintain that moment-to-moment focus, you're going to be A-OH. Being calm is so important because it will give you that ability to make adjustments.
I was on a jump a few weeks ago where I had to do something that I knew I had trouble with all the time. In the plane, I was trying so hard to visualize myself doing it correctly on the jump, and I couldn't. Every time I tried to think about it, I saw myself messing up.
That's very common. This is the big clue for me: I'll find myself staring out the window, and I'm not really thinking about the jump. I'm just replaying how it's going to go wrong. A lot of times in the plane, someone right before exit will say, "OK. Let's make sure that we do this and make sure..." Well, they're just confirming their own fears to everybody else about what they're afraid is going to happen. A lot of times when you're dirt diving in your head right before exit, somebody interjects that. And you weren't even thinking about that.
When you find yourself looking out of the plane and just replaying the mistakes, you can physically say to yourself, "Stop!" Another thing I do is visualize balloons. Put that bad idea in a balloon, and just let that balloon go. It goes. If you don't have something down, you totally feel it fester. And it grows. If you tell yourself, "Don't think of pink elephants," guess what's going to happen.
What is the biggest difference that you've found being on both the Army and a civilian team?
There's definitely a different approach to it. There's definitely a kinder and gentler approach to a learning environment. In the Army, there's a more do-or-die approach to it. Our big thing on Airspeed is that it's OK to make mistakes. Make lots. But don't be making the same ones over and over. You're totally going to learn from mistakes. the more mental mistakes you make, your little problem becomes clearer. Not having fear of making mistakes is wonderful. When I was on the Golden Knights, there was a lot of pressure to not brain lock. We don't have that same intensity about it. That doesn't mean it's any less important. But the penalty isn't as severe. When I was on the Golden Knights, we would be very tough with each other about that. Mental toughness was a very, very strong point there.
The thing is that it's a system. Have a system. If everybody on the team is on a different system, then the series of checks and balances aren't the same for the whole team. But if you work with a plan, it's going to work. I've used two different plans. But I think I was really fortunate, because I took all the things I really thought were great in the Army, and then I also took all the things that Airspeed brought to the table, and my thing now is a very combined system. And I think I'm better because of it. And I brought a lot of those things that were important to me from the Knights, and Airspeed took that to heart.
We all get really comfortable with our systems, and we don't want to break them. But that stagnates growth. As we mature, we start realizing that we don't have a handle on everything. But give something new a go, and give it an honest go. Give it some time, and commit to work the plan. As long as you have a plan and everybody believes in it, it's going to be successful.
I think the big difference between the Knights and Airspeed is Airspeed has a plan for everything. There's a key plan, a bust plan, a collision plan. We have a dirt diving plan, a post diving plan. There's a plan laid out in print. We never wrote that down in the Army. Even though we did it the same way, it wasn't as structured.
Airspeed also does a lot of outside mental work. We bring a team psychologist in every year. We spend five days locked away in a room with no jumping. We do problem solving and team exercises and a lot of self disclosure. We set a plan and talk about how we're going to do it. And we have the psychologist check back in and make sure we're following through with it and everything's good.
Your team has a set way of doing things. But what if it were just fun jumpers on the weekend, and eight people who were doing a pick-up 8-way have different ways to do everything?
Take charge. When I do stuff on the weekend, I come to the group with a known experience level, so there's an automatic amount of respect and trust. But I hear this a lot: "I just went to this Airspeed thing. I went back home and tried to bring this out, and everyone's thinking, 'Dude, who do you think you are, Airspeed?' " Don't be afraid to take charge. You don't have to go through everything from A to Z, but get a system. If you don't have creepers, then walk it a bunch, and walk through it calmly. Walk through it with pauses.
If you start something at your drop zone, it gets contagious. Especially when people who jump a lot start doing something, it becomes the norm. You know how we are in this sport - we really eye people a lot, and we check things out. We imitate people who we admire and respect. definitely come up with a plan, some type of preparation.
I have written down my procedure. You might not jump for six months in the wintertime, or I've had like a year off before from skydiving. I came back, and I was really wayward in my process. I forgot. It took me a couple of months to figure it out.
What do you emphasize most when working with a group?
The calmness is so important. There's a big difference between slow and calm - mental and physical calmness. And when you think you're calm, you can try to go another couple of steps calmer. Have you ever found yourself breathing really hard after a jump? You know why that is? You are holding your breath! Most people breathing like that think they had a kick-ass jump. You've been holding your breath because you're so over the line!
I've had jumps where I've gotten like that and, in the middle, just hit my reset button, like this big red button on my chest. It brings that graphic equalizer back to neutral. And then all of a sudden, I was way ahead. There have been times I remember being so ahead and knowing I was way ahead of everybody else. I could see that really frantic look in people's eyes, and I'm thinking, "I know what the next two pints are." And all of a sudden it just stands still. I'm slowing it down in my mind, but it's not moving any slower or any faster. I start seeing things out of the corner of my eye. That guy's shoelace is undone; that guy's ripcord is a little bit out of the velcro right there. It's this very, very cool place to be. And it doesn't happen a lot, but it happens more and more the harder I really work that calmness.
Obviously you don't need to concentrate as hard when you're making fun jumps as when you're training. Everyone's socializing, and you're talking to everyone on the airplane. Are you still going through your whole mental process?
I am. I'll have moments where I'll do it. One of the things about socializing as an organizer is putting people at ease in the plane. But I'm working it the same way every time. When I'm organizing, I'm also checking people out. I can help control things a lot. There are different levels of experience and arousal. people tend to get keyed up. They get really over the line. They feel like they've got to do something incredible. You want to impress people. But the biggest way to impress people is by being calm.
I think people just don't put that much into mental prep, or they fluctuate based on importance of a jump. "This jump's not as important as the other one, so I don't have to do it." Sure you do. Do the same process, maybe not as intensely. But you still have to have points where you can say, "I got it." And believe it.
Sometimes in the plane, you're concentrating so hard. Where's that line between concentrating and relaxing and overdoing it?
There have been times when I've had to dirt dive the whole plane ride up. If you're not getting it, you're probably focusing on the mistakes you're going to make. You have to let go of those mistakes and see it perfectly. But definitely take some breaks. A lot of times I'll look out of the plane just to get my mind off of it for a second. I'll look out there and visualize the exit leaving and see the first couple of points going. Or I'll look out and see the skydive on level.
Something else that I know a lot of people do in the plane is dirt dive with their eyes open. With your eyes open, you're seeing a lot of things, but you're not getting distracted. You can focus and see what you need to see.
What do you think of the way all the freeflyers breathe together on the airplane?
I think that they're relaxing. There's a lot of improvising in what they do. The only thing I can relate to it is being on the outside of a skydive. Right now, I'm in the center, so I control a lot of angles and keys and things. But when I go to the outside, it's much more improvisational. You're totally reactionary. You're just shooting and moving. I think freeflying's a lot more like that. Maybe they're trying to get to a very calm, very relaxed state.
Those guys are good. When you see somebody that's successful, they're doing something right. It's a good idea to look deeper into what they do. I've really learned to not shut down any creativity.
For you, is skydiving more mental or physical?
The more I skydive, the more I realize that the advancements I've made aren't physical; they're mental. Repetition does so much, but your self-confidence and believing in yourself is so important. So do the hard stuff. Come on, do it.
The last 5,000 jumps compared to the first 5,000 jumps
I made, the gain has been totally mental. It's a calmness game. It may look fast
on video, but if you pick one person out on our videos, he's not that fast, and
he's really calm.
Have you ever been in the
air with somebody who's really frantic? They're just keying everything. You're
thinking, "Geez, I better jump on this thing. It's going to go." On
the other hand, you get in the air with somebody who just exudes calmness; they
just control it. And your confidence soars. And you think, "Man, I'll
follow you anywhere." It's nice.
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