Someone might ask if you just want to fly around on your belly, staring at the earth the whole flight. And you’ll be like, “Hell No! I wanna fly on my back and stare at the sun…”

How do we even fly on our backs? Birds don’t do much backflying, and squirrels certainly don’t backfly, but we, as bird people, do backfly.

We won’t discuss the transition in this article, that is covered in another article. This article purely focuses on how to fly once you’re on your back. We will begin backflying the same way we begin belly-flying, in a straight, flat body position. The arms have a slight upward angle, a dihedral angle. This angle of the wings allows for more stable flight. It also allows for range of movement in the flight.

When we talk about range in wingsuiting, we are referring to the ability to change speed and lift in the suit. It’s the ability to go up/down, faster/slower, and left/right. The range of a suit is correlated to the suit type, and it is also correlated to the flying position. An inefficient body position robs us of our ability to maneuver the suit. This is because we must use the suit to compensate for a lack of lift in the flying position. This topic might be an article of its own one day… Moving on for now… Backfly….

Legs: Fully straightened, toes pointed.

Arms: Straight arms, dihedral angle (hands will be in front of the body)

Head: Chin off the chest, rotating the head backwards to aid in aerodynamics and forward speed control.

Back: Straight (imagine being pulled straight with a string running from head to toe)

Butt: We like big butts, cannot lie, but that wingsuit butt should be less. This is not sitting in the suit; it ain’t a hammock.

Shoulders: Can be used for lift and speed control. Shoulders forward tends to increase lift and drag, and shoulders backward can have the opposite effect.

Hands: Hands can be palms up or palms down. Both methods work. I teach palms down because this tends to put the arms in a position where the larger back muscles are used for moving the wings instead of the smaller shoulder muscles.

There are folks who will tell you that back-flying is easy, and there are folks who ride bicycles backwards with ease. Perhaps, it’s one of those things where it’s easy to do but hard to do correctly and efficiently. Or some people learn faster than others. Took me a long time to figure out back-flying techniques and have the proper control over the suit in this flying position.

One common mistake is arching the back. This leads to a loss of lift and can cause the suit to dive. The best lift position is a fully straight back, like a board. This is key because many people will try to push the head back, but they will also bend backwards while doing it.

This article needs more. We need more pictures, and we need concrete examples. Be on the lookout for Part 2 where we will look at some of the theory in practice.

Keep flying my bird friends!

Blue Skies,

-WSL