So, you’ve got your team, agreed your goals and made your training plan. Phew! Difficult bit out of the way. All you need to do now is go and do lots of skydives – right?

Wrong.

A team that stays together is a team which plays together

Keeping a team together can be difficult. There are issues to deal with all the time which include, more likely than not, the occasional argument or disagreement.

A team that stays together is likely to be a team that is happy and is on track toward achieving its goals. 

1. During training

Enjoy!
Take a step back every so often and consider why you’re doing the team. Your personal goals might be to do some good scores and have a lot of fun. Never forget the latter and recognise that when it doesn’t make you happy or you’re not having fun, then it’s probably not worth it. If you’re there because you want to be there you will have a lot to gain.

Be comfortable with the plan
You agreed on your goals before you made your training plan. It’s important that everyone really buys into that too. Don’t commit to something that you can’t do either financially or in terms of time commitment. Be realistic about what you can do – don’t kid yourself. Be honest with the rest of your team-mates.

Try not to put anyone under pressure to do something they aren’t able to, such as commit money they can’t afford or time they can’t spare. It results in too much stress for that person and is likely to result in disaster further down the line.

Communicate well
You might think chicks would communicate well because we’re meant to talk a lot. Maybe we do, but we still use rock sessions sometimes. This involves sitting down at the end of each days training or at the end of the weekend somewhere where you won’t be disturbed. Everyone takes a turn, whilst holding the rock, at saying what they think about the way things are going, good things and bad things. Only that person speaks and the rest listen. If you need to get something off your chest that you couldn’t deal with during the day, now’s your chance. Don’t let things brew. It will affect your performance.

This isn’t the only way of dealing with issues. At least one of VMax would not agree that this is the way to handle things and would say that often it’s better to deal with things as they arise. Rock sessions fill some people full of fear! But they’re not meant to be a place where you pick on your team-mates, just a comfortable place to speak your mind uninterrupted.

Be sensible about time off
We learned this the hard way, in fact we’re still learning it. No matter how many times your coach tells you this, it’s really hard to do when you’re only doing a couple of training camps a year. But it’s true, quality not quantity should be at the front of your mind when training. Recognise when you’re tired and call it a day before you get frustrated and before arguments start to brew. It’s really easy to waste a day’s training because you worked that bit too hard the day before. Remind yourself how much each team jump costs!

Don’t lay blame in debriefs
If you can honestly say to your team-mate “you really were awful” and you both think it’s funny then okay. But in general, it’s a much better idea to let people spot their own mistakes or for your coach to point them out.

Have an opinion
Team decisions can take a long time, take it from us. We’ve found it helps if everyone has a vote whether they feel particularly strongly or not. If there is a difference of opinion in the team, then vote on it and accept that the decision may not be what you wanted.

Each day, have a team leader
We don’t have a team leader but we try to have a leader of the day. This person is responsible for knowing what load you’re on, making sure dirt dives happen when they are supposed to, making sure tickets are purchased and making sure everyone knows what they are supposed to be doing and when. It’s a job that most of us would hate to do all the time especially when our team-mates are being naughty! 

Be on time
Be on time in the morning, be out at the plane on time, be on time for dirtdives, debriefs, meetings. Just be on time always. Spending half the day hanging around for your team-mates is a waste of energy. 

2. In Competition
You’ve done all that training, the team has run like clockwork and you’re all the best of friends and skydiving like super sky gods and goddesses. Right now, here you are at a meet. This is where it gets stressful. Here’s your chance to show what you can do and you’ve got just under six minutes in a ten round meet to prove yourselves.

A poor performance is difficult to deal with and can often be attributed to things that happen on the ground. Time on the ground is free. Here’s what you can do with it.

Keep your energy levels constant
Take the time to recognise what happens to your energy levels in between rounds. You could find yourself on the ground for hours. It’s enough time to get cold, get tired, go to sleep and wake up feeling groggy and on a 20 minute call. It’s important to stay warm, keep moving, don’t cat-nap, eat little and often throughout the day. It’s really easy to get caught out and it feels really disappointing when you know you didn’t perform at your best.

Get your coach there if possible
If it’s possible and affordable this could be a good idea. Our coach Solly comes to the Nationals. Having him there helps to get the best out of us in the competition. It’s someone to guide you with puzzling dives at the very least, but it’s also someone to help you with any last minute questions, nerves and it’s someone who can make useful observations on the way things are going during the competition and help to bring things back on line if they are starting to go wrong.

Do what you trained
You probably did your best skydiving during training, rather than in competition. So don’t invent any funky moves in a competition, or try to go faster. If you didn’t do it in training then don’t do it now. It’s always hard trying not to go faster, especially when you’re on roughly even scores with another team. We’ve found that you don’t need to skydive frantically to get good scores. It’s better to make small moves and avoid a breakdown in communication.

Deal with any bad rounds positively
At some stage during a competition you might have a bad round. This could become a bad meet very easily if you let it. A bad round is very hard to get over and will try very hard to affect your performance in the next few rounds. How do you think it feels to funnel an exit in round one of a World Meet? You need to leave it behind, get over it fast and move on. A very large part of competition is all in the mind. Remember, it’s never over until the fat lady sings.

Keeping a team together that has fun and achieves its goals perhaps has less to do with skydiving than you might think. Or rather there is a lot that you can do to improve the team’s performance without even getting in the air. But all this stuff is free and it all contributes towards the team’s performance in that short time it has to prove itself, and towards everyone’s enjoyment and satisfaction. And if you’re not enjoying it, what are you doing it for?

 Photos by Andy Ford, Brian Vacher and Rusty Lewis

 Article by Liz Groucott
egroucott@uk.ey.com

www.vmax.org.uk

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