It came to my attention, as I reread some of the articles on transitions, that I don’t actually teach transitions. I didn’t tell you how to do one. All I said was, keep your gaze in a fixed position and do a transition. I am laughing at the simplicity of the whole thing and my simple unawareness of what the people needed. A version of this article was published in Parachutist, November 2021.

Parachutist cut the content to fit on their 2 pages. Here’s the full length article:

As the wingsuit flocks get bigger, it becomes ever more important to spread the gospel of bird traffic control.  Transitioning from belly flying to back flying is the basic maneuver for flying the suit, and not letting the suit fly you.  The essential element of the transition is to continue flying the wingsuit, flying through the transition, and maintaining lift to ensure a smooth transition.  There is a significant difference between rotating from belly to back while flying, compared with throwing your body and catching yourself on the other side.  We’ll discuss flying the transition in this article.

Patrick is the Chief Instructor at Indoor Wingsuit, has his AFFI and TI Ratings, has more than 3,000 skydives, and has flown over 1,200 hours in a wingsuit (equivalent to more than 36,000 wingsuit skydives).  Patrick’s team won the German Nationals in Wingsuit Acrobatics, and they also won the Indoor Wingsuit Games in 2021, setting a couple world records in the process.  Alex is a coach in the wingsuit tunnel and in the sky.  With more than 900 wingsuit jumps and 300 hours of wingsuit tunnel flying, he is on the way to learning a few things.

As always in skydiving, we recommend you get a good coach to teach you and help you practice these skills.  In our biased opinion, the best wingsuit coaching can be found at the wingsuit tunnel.  If you can make your way to Sweden to train in the wingsuit tunnel, you will be able to accomplish in a few hours of flying what might take months to learn in the air.  If you can’t make it to Sweden, you’re in luck because we’re getting a wingsuit tunnel in Orlando, Florida.  But honestly, doesn’t a trip to Sweden sound much more fun than a trip to Florida?

We will begin discussing proper technique and then walk through the individual steps of flying a transition.  Throwing your body and catching yourself can work to get you from one side to the other, but it does not make for a clean transition, and it is unlikely that you will keep the same altitude and speed.  Flying the suit through the transition allows you to maintain control, and it’s just an all-around better way to transition.

Doing transitions in an efficient manner, while maintaining flight, makes for a smooth transition without losing speed or altitude.  When we are able to transition effectively, we look cooler, have more fun, and we’re safer flyers.

You will learn the proper body position for doing a transition and the proper techniques for you to go practice in the sky.  Invest your time wisely in the beginning and get more out of every jump.  If you have questions, we encourage you to ask an experienced wingsuit coach.

First things first, always practice with a partner for a frame of reference.  If you are doing solos, you have no idea if the transition was good, bad, or ugly.  We define good as maintaining level flight, altitude, and speed.  They might be sloppy in the beginning, but with enough practice you will achieve that beautiful, smooth transition.

Belly-to-Back

We begin with a good flying body position.  Our bodies and the wings give us lift.  In the smaller suits, Havoc Carve, Sprint, Swift, and the like, the body is the main driver of the lift.  We gain lift with our shoulders, chest, stomach, and leg wing.

The arm wings are there to keep us flying level and stable, but, as it turns out, we can accomplish a transition without wings (we won’t go there, it’s weird and incredibly difficult). 

A good transition starts with an efficient flying position, which means arms and legs straight, the stomach flat, using our body for lift.  The body provides the upward and downward motion needed to accomplish most of the movement necessary in the wingsuit.  We are flying our bodies and using the suit to supplement the body.  Keep the head fixed and the arms straight.  You can see in the images how Patrick illustrates the starting position.

The body gives us lift with the wings, and the wings allow us to control the lift more effectively than with the body alone because of the larger surface area of the wings.  We can accomplish the transition by removing one wing (i.e. arm) and allowing the suit to continue to fly normally.  When we remove the lift from one side of the suit, the suit will rotate onto the other side, from belly to back, and back to belly. 

When doing a belly-to-back transition, we want to continue flying the suit and allow it to rotate us from belly to back.  A common mistake is pushing down with one wing and throwing the opposite shoulder into the direction of the transition.  This results in what looks like clapping the hand together and throwing the body.  This can “work” to accomplish a transition, but usually means losing altitude and speed because we stop flying.

We remove one wing by sliding a hand to the hip and across the stomach, while keeping the other arm straight and gaining lift on that side.  Keep the legs straight during the transition and allow the suit to do the work.  Keep your head fixed on something to the side (the horizon or your flying partner work well).  As you can see, the suit rotates the body from belly flying to back flying.  The finish to the transition is with a strong back-fly body position (stay tuned for that article).

Back-to-Belly

When going from back to belly, the process is similar.  We remove one wing from the equation and, once again, use our body and wing to gain lift, which causes us to rotate from the back to the belly.  Bring your elbow to your side and your hand to your chest.  As you rotate from your back to your belly, you will extend the closed wing again into a strong belly-fly position.  Your head remains fixed throughout the transition.  Keep the legs straight, and let the suit do the work.

The back-to-belly transition is important to learn early in wingsuiting because one day you will find yourself on your back, perhaps accidentally.  You need to know how to get back to the belly for deployment time.  It can be slightly dangerous to deploy on your back.  It can be done, and if you have no choice, throw the PC and deploy that parachute no matter the body position. 

As a safety tip, do not wait or forget to pull just because you are on your back.  Stay altitude aware during the whole skydive.  If you have reached your deployment altitude, pull, no matter your body position.  If you are unsure about your body position, give yourself as much altitude as needed to deploy the main and prepare for a possible cutaway.  It is safer to slow yourself down with the main canopy before deploying your reserve. 

Even if you end up chopping it away, let your main canopy do as much work as it can to stabilize you.  Going straight to reserve increases the chances of a reserve malfunction.  That could be a catastrophic situation.  Let’s not go there.  There’s also the added possibility in a wingsuit that your vertical speed may not be high enough to fire the AAD.  This is another reason to deploy your main parachute at your deployment altitude, no matter what your body position.

You can avoid any of the consequences of deploying on your back in a weird body position by learning how to do a back-to-belly transition.

Let’s recap, both transitions are similar because they involve removing one wing and allowing the lift from the other wing to rotate the body to result in a transition.

There is a slight difference in the positioning of the arm we remove in each transition.  The hand is placed on the chest and the elbow to your side for back-to-belly, and for belly-to-back, the hand is placed on the hip and extends through during the transition.  As the body rotates over when the arm wing is removed, we extend that wing again into the solid back or belly flying position and stop the rotation.

We don’t want to lose altitude because we want to stay close to our friends.  Just as many things can “work,” we often use techniques that accomplish the transition at the expense of altitude and speed.  If we don’t lose altitude and speed, we have what’s called an “in-slot transition.”  In other words, we did not move relative to our friends flying with us.  This is yet another reason to have someone to fly with.  If we fly by ourselves, we have already lost all our friends and don’t know if we might have stayed with them or not.  Don’t be the lone wolf in the sky.  It’s certainly less fun that way.

A key point of proper transitions is to maintain smooth and controlled flight.  The smoother we can do the movements, the better the transition will work.  This is tough to do at first, but do not be discouraged if it doesn’t work on the first try.  Not even Neo did it on the first try.  Find a good coach or come see us in the wingsuit tunnel to really hone your skills.  With more confidence in the air, we will have more fun and be safer while flying!

Just keep flying my bird friends.

Blue Skies,

-WSL