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Sport Fitness and Health Program

College of Education and Human Ecology
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Skydiving

KNSFHP 1139.14 (1 credit)

Description:

This course introduces students to the basics of safe skydiving, personal performance enhancement, and stress management.

Find out more about the Skydiving class and how to enroll here.

Pre-requisites:

  • Permission of instructor

Equipment (students must purchase for class):

  • None

What you will learn:

  • How to identify and manage the body’s biological response to a perceived risk.
  • Basic skydiving equipment.
  • Freefall Techniques.
  • Basic skydiving safety requirements and emergency procedures.
  • Basic parachute flight and landing procedures.
  • History and modern manifestations of recreational and competitive skydiving

What to expect:

  • Course consists of 3 class days and one field trip day
  • If students wish to skydive, it will be on the field trip day but are not required to do so in order to receive credit for the course
  • Understanding the most basic skills of skydiving
  • Historical, technical, and competitive perspectives of skydiving

Potential benefits:

  • Understanding the concept of risk in extreme sports
  • Discovering a new exciting sport
  • Overcoming fears
  • Understanding the biological response to perceived risk
  • Developing skills that help you optimize your physiological performance

Fun facts:

The Ohio State University is one of the only two colleges in North America that offers a college credit for skydiving. Well over 10,000 students have participated in the Intro To Skydiving class at The Ohio State University.

When riding on a rollercoaster, the body senses rapid changes of inertia (remaining at rest) which causes that drop in your stomach-feeling as well as the sensation that you are unable to catch your breath. In reality, the rapid change of inertia, is the body’s mass changing position within your body and attached to your skeletal frame. When jumping from a moving aircraft, we are already traveling almost as fast as we will fall and therefore the body does not sense a rapid change of inertia. The feeling that we fall is almost unperceivable. We never feel like we are falling even though we fall at 120 mph until the parachute opens.

After we jump from the airplane, we lose our depth perception and the ability to judge distance or speed. While our logical brain tells us we are falling toward the earth, our eyes cannot distinguish the change in distance or the speed at which we are traveling. In summary, we do not feel like we are falling and our brains are unable to see that we are traveling and this creates the experience of true flight.

In subsequent training sessions, you can learn how to use your muscles to move through the sky or “fly” our bodies through that atmosphere. Changing our body shapes allows us to move vertically and horizontally but also allows us to perform maneuvers (or tricks) while flying within the atmosphere of the tunnel. Different forms produce different speeds while in freefall that range anywhere from 120 mph to over 250 mph when performed correctly.

 

 

 

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The Ohio State University

Sport, Fitness, and Health Program
Department of Human Sciences
PAES Building; 305 Annie and John Glenn Ave Columbus, OH 43210
Phone: 614-292-2606| Email Jae Westfall

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