One’s physical health and mental fitness are important ingredients sports.  Skydiving is a rigorous sport.  Injuries are common.  It is not recommended for individuals with shoulder injuries as there is a certain amount of physical fitness required in order to simply arch, reach, pull.

The health of the skydiving community is relatively high, at least in Arizona.  Now that I am thinking about it, I do not think I have come across any unfit skydivers.  For the most part skydivers are pleasant people.  There is a certain air of calmness about them as they go about their day.  For some reason non-skydivers are under the impression that skydiving produces adrenalin rush that I think most of them fear.  It is my thought that this fear stems from brief encounters with adrenalin, which are typically associated with negative encounters and from the experience that once they feel the sensation of gravity via freefall that they have been conditioned to be afraid.  Adrenalin is natural and healthy, which has an incredible sedating effect on the body.  I have never felt as alive and healthy as when I have just finished skydiving.  It is too bad that for the most part most people’s experience with gravity is incredibly brief.  We tend to have had experiences with gravity that are viewed negatively.  It is not our fault.  Since we were children we have fallen, scrapped knees, hit heads, broken bones, etc. Right after we feel the fantastic sensation of gravity we have been punished by a hard surface.  For about as long as it takes to typically fall and injure oneself is about as long as the fear lasts the first time skydiving.  After that it is an incredible experience.  The phrase, “I never saw the need to jump out of a perfectly good airplane.” is a typical response from someone who is too scared to jump.  My counter to this is, “If you can get yourself to jump out of a perfectly good airplane, then there is really not much you cannot get yourself to do.”

In no means would I force a skydiving experience on anyone.  However, if you have ever thought about skydiving and always wanted to try, then I highly recommend it.  As a caveat to this statement I would like to say that for the first time jumper do a tandem jump rather than a static line jump.  Freefall is where the sensation is.  When doing a tandem jump the instructor is strapped to your back, which may seem problematic, however, they are not noticeable during freefall. A static line jump is one in which the canopy is opened after about ten feet outside the airplane.  The ride down can be fun but it is nowhere near that of actual freefall.