“Will you Upgrade your Skills before Upgrading your Equipment … or will you become a statistic?”


What is Self-Defense Masterclass?
Imagine soaring through the skies, untethered and free, with the skill to handle pretty much whatever the inaccurate weather forecast throws at you. That’s what the Self-Defense Masterclass is all about—equipping you with the skills to help you survive and thrive in the unpredictable air. Life-long flying isn’t about chasing competition records or selecting fancy new gear. It’s about investing in Yourself—Your mind, Your body, and Your ability to stay effective in the air when you have to fight for your life! You train so you don’t panic, and execute the right moves quicker than you can think. Most pilots stay stuck in the intermediate skill, and do not progress beyond it. I hope you are the few who will.

Your Biggest Enemy is Passivity & Herd Mentality
Emotionally, fear and anger feels like the truth, but the real world is far more complex. As the saying goes, “Man plans, God laughs!”

Manufacturers today obsess over making wings feel “safe” to calm the nervous pilots which are in the majority, often sacrificing critical awareness by prioritizing comfort over the true safety that only comes from feeling the air and actively responding. It’s a very dangerous and unfortunate misstep driven by commercial pressures of the majority of the newer pilots, not the realities of flying. Pilots who prioritize feedback and agility today are a minority; most pilots today perceive feedback as fear and active piloting as too demanding. Safety always depends on the match between the pilot and the equipment and the elements. Comfortable wings give the pilot a false sense of security, even when the wing is too aggressive for the pilot’s skill level. Paragliding insurance rates rise up and up as this comfort dogma takes hold and as the more oblivious to risk, main stream people enter the sport because of the passive safety improvements of the glider design.

In Germany, a culture known for their heavy-handed bureaucracy, mental rigidity, banned paraglider acrobatics. The ban was quick fix, enacted out of fear and justified in the name of collective “safety”. In Switzerland acrobatics is permitted and the Swiss perspective is on the long-term is wiser and reflects their tradition of self-control and self-responsibility. Learning advanced maneuvers may be risky at first, so you will need some luck and discipline. However NOT practicing advanced maneuvers, the foundation for active safety, will be more risky over your life-time.

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

The best way to be stay safe is to have the deeper understanding of our wings and ourselves in extreme situations as the foundation to fly safer in the unpredictable real world of the Alps.

Basic acrobatics should form our foundation of how to better stay in control at the edge of chaos and return back to control. Perhaps, you don’t need to do infinity tumblings, but to stay in control in turbulence, wingovers, spins, and stall training are essential. Similar to learning basics in martial arts, so you can defend yourself and escape majority of attacks. Also, by learning martial arts, you can de-escalate situations and usually avoid getting into brutal fights in the first place.

I think the biggest risks are seeking herd validation behavior like winning competitions, buying new equipment to show off your status, combined with wishful thinking and passivity, hoping the inevitable bad unpredictable situations miraculously never happens to you. One bad crash can bury your paragliding dreams in seconds. But, with the right experience, you know you are prepared for almost all situations you will encounter in your life, with a little bit of luck of course!

Many modern wings buy you comfort and confidence because that’s what most customers want. I think manufacturers should produce those wings most effective to survive in strong conditions rather than comfort. EN certifications are made over water, with unrealistic non-turbulent conditions during recovery. EN testing tests spirals only up to 14m/s. Sometimes, due to design compromises made to the wing to pass EN, certifications, the wing can even be a greater risk of more dangerous collapses than some uncertified wings outside of certification parameters. So things are more complicated than learning A,B,C, ..

I believe confidence must be a by-product of having gone through scary experiences and actually knowing you have the ability to correctly deal with the situation. Confidence without actual ability is dangerous. DO NOT upgrade your wing or harness until you have full stall/flyback your wings at least 100 times. Over time, you will learn to stall the wing in a gentle way. If you haven’t done that, your confidence is an illusion. Instead of focusing on what other people think of you, just focus only on what you can control. Response to huge collapses must be faster than you are consciously aware. By the time you look up at the wing, you should have responded and the collapse should be already gone.

Basic acro, that is being comfortable doing stalls, wingover, and spins is probably the best investment you can make to survive in the long-term. You think practice basic acro is dangerous? Your regular alcohol drinking habit may be eating your nerves and slowing down your intelligence and reactions, exposing you to much more danger in the long run. This coaching isn’t about winning cross-country races or doing SIV courses. You can ask someone else for that. Here, it is about survival—learning to identify and handle hostile situations, and also 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)

Level 2 - SIV/SIKU (Recommended)

Level 3 - Self-Defense Masterclass <—This Course

Level 4 - XC Adventure Coaching (Ask Someone else; If you learned how to defend yourself, you will feel comfortable exploring new territory on your own)

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 100 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. Twitchy, responsive wings require constant inputs to stay in control, forcing pilots' awareness of the air around them. A responsive wing that scares you early may be safer than one that builds over-confidence and non-action. Pilots must learn to be patient, stay calm, and act swiftly. An advanced wing has a wider range of speed and performance, giving the pilot greater escape velocity in sink, higher energy retention, faster emergency descent rates, and greater landing site options. However, you need to gradually work up to this class of wing over years of focused practice.

“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”
- Soren Kierkegaard

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 brakes.

Less self-pitch stable wings require your active inputs constantly, 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, pilot load, or terrifying. For my temperament and skill level, a wing that scares me ahead of danger is safer than a solid feeling wing that gives collapses without warning. People stop growing, because they stop being playful. And most people believe stories, because they heard it so many times. Repeating what is not true x1000 times does not make the story true. Always use your own awareness and do not accept everything face value, as reality is complex.

Why training way Beyond SIV/SIKU Matters

SIV can be highly beneficial for the majority of people to start to gain confidence to do collapses and stalls. But it should never end there. It is unrealistic to respond in a real situation correctly unless you have muscle memory of situations that are as close as possible to the actual emergencies. Perhaps if you are very rich and can afford dozens of SIV courses, but even then, it’s hard to reach 1000s of stalls with SIV courses.

Like learning martial arts, paragliding also takes a decade of hardcore practice, with 1000s of stalls to learn how to control the wing in non-flying configurations. You need to rehearse worst-case scenarios until they are second nature. You need muscle memory, as things happen so quickly. And when you reach this level of competence, you are safer than 99% of the pilots and safer than many world-class XC competition pilots when the air gets spicy.

Fortunately, one can speed it up significantly by learning basic safety skills before stepping up to a high-performance XC 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 take baby 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 quicker to deploy. Yet, most schools don’t recommend front reserves nor steerable reserves for their students. I believe, at worst, the steerable will open faster and go straight down like a normal reserve. If you don’t grab the handles and the reserve risers to make it steer, it sinks like a regular reserve. 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 effective and 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 master who immigrated to Brazil taught his Brazilian friends this original artform, and the Jiujitsu remained not only deadly but further improved and returned to Japan as Brazilian Jiujitsu (BJJ). There are moves in Jiujitsu which are not allowed for competition, but they are still taught for self-defense in BJJ.

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 it is going into dangerous territory where real air safety is substituted by “feeling of safety”. From my perspective, today’s paraglider customers today are not adventurers and pioneers, who sensitively aware of danger. Many new entries are increasingly main stream people, steering the manufacturers relentlessly toward feeling of comfort, sacrificing feedback and survivability in the very dangerous situations.

Similarly, many of the competition-level pilots from around the world, if they had to fly alone over the unfamiliar rocky 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, facing 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 the nature of reality. We fly outdoors in nature, not in an Olympic stadium with a referee that stops the bad weather.

There are many really good pilots out there, but partly because the new wings feel so stable 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 not how real collapses happen. But this is the best we have today. 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 sport’s 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 experience, not just certifications. Watch many, many paraglider crash videos, analyze/visualize the mistakes, and train to avoid them.

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:

• 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 true flying freedom.

Things to Practice

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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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!

• 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!