What is Self-Defense Masterclass?
Will you go beyond your SIV? Maybe you will too will stall your glider more than a 1000 times. It takes about 500 just to start to understand. I’ve had 70%+ assymmetic collapses, riser twists, full frontals, reserve deployment in emergencies, but because of the practice, not much panic and no injuries, just a smile on my face :) for taking correct actions.

Your Biggest Enemy is False Confidence, Passivity & Herd Mentality
Emotionally, fear and anger feel like the truth, but the real world is far more complex than those feelings admit. Don't learn from your peers. Learn from the people who go to the limit — they hold knowledge about the extremes that others simply don't have. Embrace the chaos.

What manufacturers are making now, and why?

Manufacturers today obsess over making wings feel "safe" and "stable" in order to calm nervous pilots, who make up the majority of the market. In doing so, they sacrifice critical awareness — prioritizing comfort over the massive safety margin that comes only from active flying: feeling the air, reacting fast, and flying accurately enough to respond to it. This is a dangerous and unfortunate misstep, driven by commercial pressure from the bulk of their customers rather than by the realities of flying.

An atom bomb almost never explodes, but it is far more deadly than a bomb that explodes often. Likewise, I would rather have a wing that warns me so I can be ready for a possible big collapse. The wing's ability to communicate danger has been classified by most pilots as "nervous" and "uncomfortable." A big limousine is comfortable; a McLaren F1 is uncomfortable but keeps you safer, when things go wrong. That is the dangerous trade being made.

Active piloting prioritizes feedback, precision, and agility. It used to be the norm. Today seeking sensitivity makes you the black sheep. Most pilots now perceive feedback as “discomfort”, and active piloting as "too demanding." Safety always depends on a good match between the pilot's ability, the equipment, and the elements. As a beginner, you need to understand what the feedback means and how to respond to it. As we fly more and push toward new limits, we need a wing that teaches us to help us survive and thrive. A wing that feels safe and then collapses with little warning is comfortable precisely when you need to be careful.

The false sense of security

The trend toward comfortable wings gives the pilot a false sense of security. The EN tests are not what happens in turbulent air. High-performance, easy-to-fly wings stay mellow — right up until conditions surpass the EN test envelope, at which point they suddenly become too aggressive for the pilot's skill level.

Paragliding insurance rates rise and rise as this comfort dogma takes hold and as more mainstream, risk-oblivious people enter the sport on the back of the passive safety improvements in glider design. Even very experienced pilots find themselves in danger on a wing that is too easy to handle, because the lack of feedback lets their focus drift. There is an optimal stress level that keeps you in flow — so select a glider that keeps you in FLOW, where you are most focused and most competent.

Two perspectives on risk

In Germany, a culture known for heavy-handed bureaucracy and mental rigidity, paraglider acrobatics were banned. The ban was a shallow-minded quick fix, enacted out of fear and justified in the name of collective "safety." In Switzerland, acrobatics are permitted, and the Swiss view is far wiser over the long term. Learning advanced maneuvers is never risk-free, but your risk in an emergency diminishes as your skill grows. Not practicing advanced maneuvers — the foundation of active safety — is riskier across a lifetime, and it will eventually come to bite your head off.

The uniqueness of the Swiss mentality comes from centuries of living in the dangerous, treacherous mountain environment of the Alps. The Swiss refined self-reliance and self-responsibility, in contrast to the victimhood mentality and heavy-handed regulatory mindset common in most modern western countries.

What actually keeps you alive

The best way to stay safe is to understand our wings deeply and to train for extreme situations — that is the foundation for flying safely in the unpredictable real world of the Alps.

Basic acrobatics should be our foundation for staying in control at the edge of chaos and returning back to control. You may not need infinity tumbling, but wingovers, spins, and stall training are essential to staying in control in turbulence. It is like learning the basics in martial arts, so that you can defend yourself and escape the majority of attacks. And, as in martial arts, the training itself teaches you to de-escalate — so you usually avoid getting into a brutal fight in the first place.

I think the biggest risks are herd-validation behaviors — chasing competition wins, buying new equipment to display status — combined with wishful thinking and passivity, the hope that the inevitable bad, unpredictable situation will miraculously never happen to you. One bad crash can bury your paragliding dreams in seconds. But with the right experience, you know you are prepared for almost every situation you will meet in your life — with a little bit of luck, of course.

What manufacturers should build instead

Many modern wings sell comfort and false confidence, because that is what most customers want. I think manufacturers should build the wings most effective for surviving strong conditions rather than the wings most comfortable to fly. EN certification is conducted over water, in unrealistically non-turbulent conditions during recovery, and it tests spirals only up to 14 m/s. Sometimes the design compromises made in order to pass EN certification leave a wing at greater risk of dangerous collapses than some uncertified wings flown outside certification parameters. So things are more complicated than learning about A, B, C, and D.

Confidence has to be earned

I believe confidence must be a by-product of having gone through frightening experiences and knowing, from evidence, that you can handle them correctly. Confidence without actual ability is dangerous. Do not upgrade your wing or your harness until you have done full stalls and fly-backs at least 500 times. Over time you will learn to stall the wing gently. If you haven't done that work, your confidence is an illusion.

Instead of focusing on what other people think of you, focus only on what you can control. Your response to a huge collapse has to be faster than your conscious awareness of it: by the time you look up at the wing, you should already have responded, and the collapse should already be gone.

Being comfortable with stalls, wingovers, and spins — basic acro — is probably the best investment you can make in long-term survival. You think practicing basic acro is dangerous? Your regular drinking habit may be eating your nerves and slowing your intelligence and your reactions, exposing you to far more danger over the long run.

This coaching isn't about winning cross-country races or ticking off an SIV course. You can ask someone else for that. Here, it is about survival — learning to identify and handle hostile situations, and to avoid them when you can.

“A warrior’s blade must be sharp, fast, and dangerous if not respected; One’s blade is an extension of one’s soul. A dull blade betrays the lazy impotent warrior. A sharp blade honors the disciplined effective warrior. Who will be better able to cut through adversity?”

The Self-Defense Masterclass: Your Journey to Mastery

This program is designed to build your skill step by step, ensuring you’re ready for the real world of paragliding—where the weatherman is often wrong, and luck may not be enough.

Level 1 - Solo certification (You need this in Switzerland)

Level 2 - SIV/SIKU (Recommended)

Level 3 - Self-Defense Masterclass <—This Course

Level 4 - XC Adventure Coaching (After you learned how to defend yourself, ask Chrigel to take you on an adventure!)

My coaching is about self-defense and surviving hostile conditions from my personal experience. I’m not here to coach you on what everyone else is doing, like SIV or XC. Because, you know, you only need to crash badly once before you will probably stop ever flying, so you need to learn to survive in an imperfect, unpredictable real world. Even 10 SIV courses are not enough.

Have you completed at least 500 full stalls before upgrading to a new wing or to a pod harness? It’s so simple, but difficult. If you do just that, you are probably safer than 99% of the pilots around you. Perhaps you are the rare kind of person who will avoid any serious injury that could end your flying career or suspend your progress. Do you want to be able to fly your whole life or talk about how you used to be a star in competitions before you stopped flying? Why not fly how you want and have more fun flying because you have awesome control, or you care more about how other people think of you? The weatherman is guaranteed to be wrong one day, but will you practice what it takes to survive?

Become Comfortable in Hell

Many people are confident and successful at work, because they have great people, money, and management skills. That kind of confidence cannot be transferred into flying.

From my perspective, most popular modern wings emphasize too much comfort, lulling pilots into a false sense of security. Most modern wings are so often deceptively easy to handle under normal conditions; But often the more stable and collapse resistant they are, the more violently they react when they do collapse.

Too often, comfort leads to passivity, and passivity leads to fatality. Instead, why not stay playful and keep on learning life-long? There is a level of optimal stress where you are having a lot of fun, where you are learning at a very good rate. Seriousness tends to get rigid, inflexible, dogmatic, but playfulness is fluid and fun, and never gets boring. Keep your play safe. That also means, don’t be doing big wingovers close to the hard ground!

Passive Safety vs Active Safety

Passive Safety: Wings designed for comfort can lull pilots into a false sense of security, fostering complacency and leaving them blind to potential dangers. They inspire confidence—until they suddenly fail. While passive safety is essential for beginners, these wings encourage passivity, lack playfulness, and do little to promote situational awareness. In critical moments, inexperienced pilots over-react instead of anticipating trouble and taking action, since the wing is “supposed” to sort everything by itself. Over time overly stable wings make pilots passive, oblivious about the air, lead to over-confidence, and stunt skill development. It is also harder to practice active piloting on stable wings. Passive flying is a mindset more suitable for paramotor pilots flying in turbulence free air.

Active Safety: Active safety is the only real safety in challenging conditions. One should never fly in thermic/turbulent conditions relying on passive safety. Advanced responsive wings require constant inputs to stay in control, forcing pilots' awareness of the air around them. A twitchy wing that scares you early may be safer than one that builds over-confidence and passivity. Pilots must learn to stay calm, and act swiftly precisely. An advanced wing has a greater top speed and incredible glide performance, giving the pilot greater range of options, and far more landing options. However, you need to gradually work up to this class of wing over years of focused practice. Being heavy handed can be deadly on advanced wings.

“Your confidence grows quicker than your skills. Most people will upgrade equipment, rather than their skills. Which give you the illusion of improved skills. You have to do the same maneuvers at least 500 times even before you start to understand. Technical maneuvers are subtle at first then you start to understand how to work with it. You start to see if it’s good for this or that situation. The danger is refusing to deal with what these maneuvers are showing you. ” - Yosh

Your Confidence will probably Betray You

As a beginner, you will start with a low EnB or an EnA wing because you do not have the experience to control a twitchy EnC or EnD wing in turbulence. Eventually, you will want to journey further and discover greater distances.

The unfortunate trend is that manufacturers produce most modern wings deceptively easy to handle under normal conditions, therefore instilling a sense of confidence in incompetent pilots before they’ve truly developed competence. Comfortable wings usually have a stronger self-pitch stable profile (reflex) and are easier to fly. For example, on some highly pitch-stable wings, a 10-20% applied brake changes the wing profile to what is outside the certification range, and some wings can violently shoot forward and even shoot below you, collapsing hugely with very little feedback. In other words, a wing that behaves docilely as an EnB can suddenly behave like an EnD when pushed beyond certification test situations which uses no brake pressure.

Less self-pitch stable wings require your active inputs constantly in turbulence, keeping you constantly on the alert, forcing you to be aware of the quality of the air around you. One can interpret this as playful, stressful, or terrifying. For my temperament and skill level, a wing that scares me ahead of danger is safer than a solid feeling wing that collapses without warning. Perhaps people stop growing, because they stop being playful. And most people believe stories, because they heard it so many times. Repeating a story that is not true x 1000 times does not make the story true. Always use your own judgement and do not accept everything face value, as reality is far more complex.

Why training way Beyond SIV/SIKU Matters for your safety

SIV can be an introduction for the majority of people to start to gain confidence to do collapses and stalls. But, it is unrealistic to respond in a real situation correctly unless you have muscle memory of difficult situations that are very close to the actual emergencies, as things going wrong escalate quickly. Even if you are extremely rich it’s probably impossible to reach 1000s of stalls with SIV courses.

You have to do at least 500 stalls even before you start to understand how to work with it. Controlling stalls is a life saving skill and the biggest danger is refusing to deal with what stalls are showing you. And when you reach this level of competence, you are safer than 99% of the pilots and safer than probably most world-class XC competition pilots when the air gets spicy.

Do not upgrade to high-performance XC wing before you had 100s of stall on your school wing. It would be to practice basic acro. I would have a minimum of a sit-up harness with a protector, 2 reserves (e.g., 1 steerable front, 1 inside the harness), and plenty of altitude over the surface, even for wingovers. Don’t get over-confident and challenge in small steps. In real emergencies, I can tell you from experience that the front reserve of the Rogallo style (Beamer3 Lite) is fast opening. I have also a square steerable (Target Cross Steerable ST) steerable which is fast-opening for the front reserve.

The disturbing fashion trend is that manufacturers sell harnesses that have reserves under the seat, and students don’t know that the front is much quicker to deploy. One second earlier deployment is the difference between uninjured and death. Most schools don’t recommend front reserves nor steerable reserves for their students. The steerable will open faster and go straight down like a normal reserve if you don’t grab the handles. If you find yourself landing on a sharp object, a steerable can save you.

Under-the-seat reserves result in more friction and slower deployment and more difficult deployment under strong G-forces. If you are in a spiral, the reserve becomes multiple times heavier and resists pulling even more with friction, and then you need to pull exactly in the narrow direction that the reserve can slide out from under the seat. Sometimes handles rip off as pilots panic and pull it in an incorrect way. If you are falling toward the ground, these details can make the difference between life or death, yet most reserves are under the seat, and manufacturers continue this trend as well. These trends do not prioritize real safety from my perspective.

In paragliding, you must think on your own about your competence level and strength when you take an expert’s advice. A site that is safe for one pilot can be deadly for another. Always do your own research! You are responsible for your own safety.

To fly safely XC over challenging terrain where the turbulence is unpredictable, possibly extreme, you need to know what to do precisely, quickly, without being overwhelmed. You need to have rehearsed it many, many times so you have muscle memory. Otherwise, you are just being lucky so far, doing XC in the Swiss Alps. Learning air self-defense is unavoidably risky, but my opinion is that it will be safer in the long run for pilots who fly a lot.

To survive in the air is not about your IQ but more wisdom, about knowing what you need to do to survive. Things happen too fast to use your intelligence. So you need to train for mental stability. To stay calm in strong turbulence, it’s essential to practice difficult scenarios through breath-work, icy cold showers, and basic acro training. If you don’t practice encounters with a good level of discomfort regularly, your tolerance to discomfort will gradually evaporate.

Push your own boundaries on your own terms, so you can learn to control your emotions when disturbed.

You may be talented. But you don’t get much further without a disciplined mind. Even once you’ve mastered a maneuver, while you are healthy and young, you should continue pushing your boundaries in small, manageable steps to build stress tolerance, skill, and confidence to conquer hellish situations. As you get weaker and older, your reactions will slow, and you should slowly downgrade your equipment to compensate, so if you are flying a CCC, you can go to D, then C over many golden years.

"You must be the teacher and the pupil; you have to learn from yourself, not from an authority that tells you what to do, what to think. There is no guide, no teacher, no authority. There is only you—your relationship with others and with the world—there is nothing else."
- Jiddu Krishnamurti

Be and Artist, Not a Bean-counter

This is what I’ve observed. Every martial art has a risk of becoming ineffective in real combat. When Japanese Jiujitsu joined to become an Olympic sport, it was castrated. It was rebranded as Judo, and the most dangerously efficient war skills were removed from the practice, and step by step, the art of self-defense became a sport of scoring points, rather than battle and survival skills in life-and-death situations. Fortunately, a Japanese grand master who immigrated to Brazil taught his Brazilian friends the original artform, and the Jiujitsu remained deadly but Brazillian informalness, dramatically improved the art. The evolved version returned to Japan as Brazilian Jiujitsu (BJJ). There are many moves in Jiujitsu which are not allowed for competition, but they are still taught for self-defense in BJJ, unlike in Judo.

Why am I saying this? Paragliding was invented by many pioneers who risked their lives for us, and it is good that over the decades, tech advancements made the wings safer, more performant, and lighter. But now we are entering into dangerous territory where real air safety is substituted by “feeling of safety” due to market forces. Today’s paraglider customers today are not the pioneers and mountaineers, who were more aware of the danger. Many new entries are increasingly less of the extreme sports people, who may mistake flying to be as safe. There are motorcycle riders that ride all their life and there are others who crash and never ride again. Once you decide to fly, you need to keep improving, unlike other sports which you can get away with staying incompetent. A passive flying style is inadvertently steering the manufacturers relentlessly toward feeling of comfort, sacrificing feedback and pilot survivability in the very dangerous situations.

Many of the competition-level pilots from around the world, if they had to fly alone over the unfamiliar rocky high Swiss Alps, without the race organizers, weather planning staff, and racing gaggle, probably can’t fly safely on their own. But there are many genius pilots who are regularly flying high in unforgiving terrain, in super difficult takeoff conditions, turbulent air, terrifying lee sides, experiencing plenty of inaccurate weather forecasts, unknown, and flying until a ripe old age, like the Sherpas in the Himalaya. There is a huge difference between Sports vs Arts. When money flows in, the trend pushes the herd toward a sports competition mentality, everyone believing and doing the same thing. From my perspective, this is a very dangerous trend because we are moving away from reality. We fly outdoors in nature, not in an Olympic stadium with a referee that shouts foul, and stops the bad weather.

There are many really good pilots out there, but partly because the new wings feel so stable and solid to fly, the majority of the new pilots are oblivious about the wing’s multiple personalities. Most are flying too difficult a wing that they cannot handle as soon as conditions change, and the glider goes out of the EN certified test range, the hidden personality shows. Certification collapses happen in non-turbulent air with no brake inputs with a precise certified collapse angle, which is never how real collapses happen. But this is the best we have today and for sure very useful. And I know from experience, some uncertified wings fly safer than certified wings. So you need to find out by yourself, know how to handle your specific wing, and know how and when the wing changes personality at the edge of chaos.

Take Control of Your Flying Future

Don’t let the flashy equipment and competition mentality blind you to see the reality. Make wise decisions. Build a mental model of your wing’s physics that’s grounded in your own experience, not rely solely on certifications. Watch many, many paraglider crash videos, analyze/visualize the mistakes, and train to avoid them.

Probably your most dangerous years are the first 4 years after you get your license, and the bad habits and beliefs learned in the first years tend to stay forever. The reality is most certified pilots stop flying regularly shortly after getting their license. Learn to focus 100% on preparation and flying. Keep out other thoughts about arguments you had with your partner, boss, etc. After years of not flying, it is also good to refresh your skills and start again with an easier wing and choose the right weather. Always have plenty of altitude and have double reserves whenever you train.

Key Focus areas:

• Meditate for 15 minutes every day. Just 15 minutes will start to change your mind.

• Work on your mental stability under stress/anxiety (strengthen your parasympathetic nervous system). Wim Hof suggests ice-cold baths/showers with breathing exercises.

• Upgrade your skills before upgrading your wings. Max out your training on an easy wing and sit-up harness before getting into a pod harness. I think the pod can be more dangerous than an upgrade to a higher performance wing. Even EN-A wings can shoot past the horizon and go underneath you when tested beyond EN certification maneuvers. A pod harness makes progression unnecessarily risky by increasing chances of riser twists.

• First, find out what you should NOT do. Identify and stop bad habits before they become dangerous.

• Secondly, find out what you should DO. One positive habit enhances another positive habit. They will accelerate your learning.

• When you upgrade to a faster wing, learn everything first on a sit-up harness.

• Know your own limits. Become competent first, before getting confident. Focus practice on what you are weak in.

• Know the glider’s limits. Know exactly how much max braking you can do before you stall at what airspeed, for example.

• Don’t party and rest properly the night before if you plan to fly. Even a slower reaction speed of even 0.1s can sometimes make a difference between life or death.

• Be grateful, maintain a non-judgement awareness, keep a generosity of mind. These are virtue that will save you from getting smashed!

• Immediately look at the wing if you sense an anomaly, ball up, respond quickly, precisely, and stop any riser twist with your body and hands.

• Develop 3D spatial awareness. Always know where other pilots are, their direction. Always be aware of your compass heading away from obstacles.

• Fly defensively, always yield to be safe, rather than to assert your right of way, when in potential danger.

• Not planning for Plan B is planning to crash. Keep an eye on safe emergency landing spots. Try to predict the vortex/rotor by looking at the terrain, sun, and wind.

• Practice until you will do the correct moves automatically, before it enters your consciousness. True confidence comes from knowing, not believing you can.

• Never repeat the same mistakes and fix them before you run out of luck.

• Learn to empty your mind of thoughts and be able to still your mind quickly when disturbed. This is the foundation of your freedom, which will extend to many other areas of life.

• The goal of paragliding is not winning, but to discover oneself and to become one with nature.

• Understanding lee-side can be everywhere in the Alps because of complex terrain.

Things to Practice

• Respond quickly so you don’t need to overreact. The earlier you respond the less corrective input you will need.

• Learn to relax rather than being dependent on the glider and weather to relax you. Relax so you can feel much more.

• Synchronize breath with movement.

• Work on your calmness and sensitivity so you can feel your wing and imagine what the air is doing.

• Wing Energy Management - Slow speed kills

• Full brakes until just before stall

• Stall point -> Stop before stall

• Spin point -> Stop before spin

• Spin -> Exit Spin (Be precise on the exit to avoid riser twists.)

• Wingovers -> Loop

• Very Big Ears

• Full stall > Flyback > Deep stall (Advanced) > Helicopter control (Very Advanced)

• Cravat clearing

• Pitch, Roll, Yaw control

• How to select: Harnesses, Brake handles, Steerable Front Reserves, Quick-out Carabiners, Hook knife, GPS Vario with airspace for XC, Compass, Smart Watch, GPS tracker, etc. Can you go from 0% to 100% brake range in less than 0.2s? For that, even the type of brake handle makes a big difference.

• Learn to inspect your equipment regularly. If you see tiny holes, tape them quickly before they get bigger. Order new lines if they start to fray.

• Avoiding Cascades, Preventing Horseshoe, and Riser-Twists, Nose-down spiral, etc. If you fall into the canopy, start swimming.

• Control in strong Turbulence, Precipitation, and Strong wind

• Aviate, Navigate, Escape, or Land

• Master Spin, 2-stage Stall, Stable Flyback, and Deep Stall, Clearing a cravat without using Stabilo most of the time

• Efficient use of Speed-bar and Back-risers

• Get extremely comfortable to use 100% brake range

• Avoiding losing your mind to the Group Think

• The bigger the group, the more likely they will be wrong

• Gain skills and confidence to decide for yourself

• Take off techniques.

• Read the Mountain Air.

• Interpret Sky. Read Wind, Terrain and Sun

• Understanding Weather Forecasts even better

• Use Weather Alerts on mobile phone. Link them to smartwatch or earbuds.

• Master Rapid Descent like your life depends on it

• Spiral with Big Ear

• B-Stall

• Big ears with speedbar

• Wingover

• Looping

• Become competent to fly in lee side turbulence and thermals.

• Reserve deployment and Emergency Landing Techniques

• Strategically down-plane to pick your landing spot

• How to Land in an Emergency

• Show respect and gratitude to Farmers

• Learn how to top land wherever you want. Keep an eye on wind and sun for relaunch slope before actually top landing

• Leave it better than you found it. Leave no trace and pick up other people’s trash if you can carry it.

• Learning from other people’s mistakes whenever possible. Youtube crash videos are often useful resources.

• Be open-minded, seek maximal truthfulness, even if the truth is unpleasant. See the problems from multiple perspectives, keep your ego in check, and follow your heart. Always remember that the road to hell is paved with good intentions!

• Become competent so the lee does not harm you.

• Superior paragliding pilots use their superior judgment to avoid situations where they will need to use their superior skills. If you really want to fly a lifetime, get serious about your self-defense skills first! Your big XC dreams can wait ;)

Contact me today to join the Self-Defense Masterclass if what I say makes sense!