How do we go up in a wingsuit? That’s the question we are going to answer definitively. So many people ask how to get higher, and smoking weed ain’t the answer, my friends.

Sipping the coffee and writing this piece on the wonders of going up in a wingsuit. First, we nee to make some distinctions on what we’re talking about when we say “go up.”

“Up” is a term used to indicate the relative movement in the suit, relative to those we are flying with. This does not mean altitude gain in an objective sense. We are talking about lift. Increasing lift causes us to go up, relative to someone flying next to us. If we’re flying in the wingsuit tunnel, up means up, objectively. Although, we’ll talk about this is bigger terms, sky terms.

“Up” can also be thought of as a temporary change in glide ratio. If we are flying together at a constant glide ratio, when you go up, you have changed your glide ratio to be more forward than down (increased glide ratio).

Increased lift is what causes us to go up. We can accomplish this in 5 ways. And before you start questioning, admittedly, there are certain body positions that decrease lift that we will assume you’re not doing (e.g. closing the tail wing). We will only discuss the 5 ways for now. If you have specific questions, leave them in the comments, or call me.

Okay, increased lift, thanks for the tip… But what the hell does increased lift actually mean? How do we move our bodies in a way that increases lift? That’s our question, and the answer is coming, be patient.

Lift = Shoulders + Arms + Stomach + Hips + Knees

Shoulders

We can use the shoulders to increase lift. To do this we push the shoulders forward. Forward, meaning forward of the body, down and forward. I can take this moment to share one wingsuit never. It is never shoulders up, up meaning toward the ears. When we put our shoulders up, we limit the mobility of the arms and make the flying heavier. This is because of anatomy. Shoulders in the up position don’t move as freely as shoulders in the down position, and the arms don’t move as freely when the shoulders are up.

Pushing the shoulders forward, we create lift. We also create a bit of drag, and that will be consistent with most of the up moves. Keep this in mind to be able to compensate for the increased drag when going up. There’s a chart below that ranks the 5 ways in lifting capacity and drag creation.

Arms

Arms must be defined so that we are doing the correct movement. When using the arms to create lift, we are pulling tension in the wings. We are tensioning the wing so that we get more effective lifting surface in the relative up direction. This works according to Newton’s 3rd Law, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” By pulling tension into the wing, we are causing the wing to push against the relative wind. Our arms are not pushing against the wind, the wing is. We cause the wing to push against the wind by pulling tension into the wing. This is a pulling motion. Pull the arms up toward the ears. This move is accomplished with a straight arms. We can think of it like putting our elbows on our ears (although, when I do this without the suit, it’s my bicep that touches my ear, and my elbow is slightly above my head). Lock the triceps out to keep the arm straight, raise your arm up toward your head. We want to keep the arms slightly behind the body during this move, resisting the urge to push the arms forward. This is a pull move, not a push move. Pull the wings to increase the tension along the wing.

Stomach

This is a simple move that is all too often complicated by overthinking. Suck in the gut to go up. Push the belly out and we go back down. Simple as that. Imagine you’re walking down the beach and you see someone cute coming in the opposite direction. You might suck in the belly a little to give a lift to your appearance. That’s what I do to lift my appearance on the beach and to lift myself in the wingsuit. Belly in, going up. Belly out, going down. Even folks that have sizeable bellies can use this move, no worries there. It’s relative movement that we’re looking for. We can increase lift from neutral by sucking in the gut. Don’t overcomplicate this move. I like this one a lot for small corrections when my arms are occupied doing other things.

Hips

The hips are typically my set-it-and-forget-it move. I like to maximize lift on the hips in my neutral flying because this allows me to keep the body flying while I relax my arms, shoulders, stomach, and legs. I also find the hips a difficult body part to move and get accuracy in the movement. The hips tend to make abrupt movements that are tough to dial in for smoothness. The max lift will be hips back. Or if we say it another way, hips toward the sky. This is a pelvic rotation. Rotating the pelvis back increases the lift we get out of the body. This is not bending at the hips. If we bend at the hips, it has a different effect. It will usually pitch the wingsuit down and cause a big forward movement, or a dive. I prefer to think of the hips as down and not down. Arching will cause a decrease in lift and forward speed. De-arching (hips back) gives us the lift and forward speed we typically want. As I write this, I am beginning to realize that these words can have different meanings to different people. If you’re doing this move and you’re getting some weird result, you might not be doing what I mean when I use the words. Send me the video. We can fix it.

Knees

Knees in the breeze, baby. This can be our thought, but it doesn’t help us much just to think that. What to do with those knees, and how does the breeze affect our lift? So glad you asked… By pushing the knees forward (toward the earth while flying), we increase lift. Be sure to keep the knees apart, keeping the legwing open, tension along the left/right axis of the legwing. This move is powerful creator of lift, but it has its disadvantages. The lift comes with a lot of drag. The lift also changes the airflow on the belly-side of the suit. We increase our stall speed when flying in this position. Flying with the knees down is an easy way to slow and stall the suit. There are very rare instances where I truly use the knees to generate the lift that’s possible. Only because it requires very active control, and it messes with the airfoil shape that is my body. Using the knees to break is taught a lot (I was taught this at first), but it comes with the typical popping up and getting behind the place you wanted to be. So we reset, get back down with a lot of speed, use the knees, and pop up again. There is a way to do this correctly, but after nearly 1,000 hours of wingsuit flying, I can say that I don’t use it much.

Conclusion

We need one amount of lift to maintain flight. We get this amount of lift from the combination of the body parts we discussed. If I remove lift from one area, I will go down. If I add the lift back in another area, I can maintain the position. We can take most of these body parts and split them in half. We have two arms, two legs, and two shoulders. This allows for asymmetric lift using those parts of the body. Asymmetric lift and directional lift are topics to be covered another day. Just think about the sweetest of pancakes transitioning the wingsuit to a different lateral position in the sky, that’s asymmetric and directional lift at work.