#39 - Luke Rogers: wingsuit performance, training and mindset

Hello friends, you're listening to exit point, a podcast about the advancement of base jumping and an exploration of its culture. I'm Laurent frat producer and cohost. Please support this independent production by visiting our buy me a coffee link in the description and give us a review wherever you listen to podcasts. In this episode, I speak with Luke Rogers, a professional wingsuit pilot from Australia. He's won multiple national titles.

Podium that various world championships and was the first person in the world to flare a wingsuit over 100 meters. Luke is constantly training, competing, and coaching at wingsuit events. He's extremely generous with all his tips and tricks when it comes to flying wingsuits. Knowing Luke, this conversation will be packed with a ton of info about maximizing performance. And we'll have some laughs along the way. So with that, let's get Luke on the track.

How long were you a professional bodybuilder? Uh, so from, it was a very short career. It was like the lead up to it was 11 years of actually building my body and then competing for only 2012, 2013. And I'm not sure if I competed 2014. I think I was still building and then I got into skydiving and then it was all over and then I realized the way with many hobbies and sports once you find sky sports, yeah, it was like, holy shit, there's a, there's a planet outside of this gym and it's awesome.

Like sometimes I used to sleep in the chicken rice and broccoli, right? I used to have to, like, it got to a stage where my jaw was sore from chewing food. Like, I had jaw fatigue, so I had to just like, supplement a lot of supplement, like just protein shakes, just drink through a straw just to get through it sometimes. Just from chewing, man, like, it was hectic. Do you see any carry over from bodybuilding to wingsuit competition? Yeah, heaps.

So, uh, bodybuilding, uh, taught me basically it's a state of mind. It basically just cause you're breaking through all these barriers of, you know, you just mind over matter, you're just getting through that. And then competition, you just always pushing your body. To get to its max and then seeing how far beyond you can go. And then because your, your body's maxed out, um, you've got no water in your body pretty much, and you just. Your body's at its max exerted everything.

Um, fatigue, you're dehydrated and then you've got to put on a show as well. And so it's just basically just in this meditative state where there's so much going on that you just got to concentrate and just work on what you actually can control and then shut everything else out. And so that mindset sort of carried on to. To skydiving where it's a piece of cake, you have to fly up before you do your run.

And that's the perfect time to just visualize your runs, basically doing these perfect runs over and over and over and over in your head all the way up. And by the time you actually get out of the plane, you've already done five. You've done it five times already. So you just, you just going through it the sixth time and go, Oh yeah, it was probably better than my second or third visualization or whatever.

And so that just prepares you like the visualizations, um, are pretty intense with bodybuilding. Cause when, when you're contracting muscles, you're just trying to get that mind muscle connection and you're trying to feel, and you're trying to visualize how it's going to look or how you want it to look at, at the end of everything. And so, You just, you're doing your bicep curls and you're imagining how you want the finished product to look like.

And then you look at your own and you're like, oh, I need to work on, you know, the left outer or the, or the right sort of inner side of that. And then you go, alright, I'll get those, I'll get to those exercises and do that. What is your visualization like for Wingsuit competition? Ah, so Wingsuit competition visualizations, basically I just visualize the entire run. So from I exit the air, so I visualize from the start getting in the door. Picking my reference points.

So I imagine as the planes coming along, I'm looking, cause we've got to fly to, um, particular points. So we've got our own particular lines. And so this is saying we're not crisscrossing each other during speed runs, which could be super dangerous. So I'm visualizing my point.

And I'm visualizing looking down, um, basically on the ground as the plane's flying along and picking reference points so I can dive at one and peel out at another one and that will connect the dots to my actual visualization or the actual point I'm flying to. And then on top of that, I'm just visualizing myself actually going into the dive, thinking about my angle of attack, thinking about my body configuration, and then the timing of it.

So in my head, I've got a fly site that times down like 3, 2, 1, flare, entering. And I'll, I'll visualize... It literally speaks to you. Yeah, it literally speaks to me. And so... While I'm, I'm visualizing and hearing those cues and I'm visualizing me peeling out of a, of a dive like this, at those cues. And, uh, and then your hand gesturing like a planing out, yeah, planing out. So, and after that, it's just, I, I visualize the sounds.

Cause I've also got beeps, which tells me my forward speed. So high forward speed is like, and then a low forward speed goes, so that means you've cooked it. And it's all over, all over Red Rover.

Um, so yeah, I just listened to my, to the specific beep that I have and it's, it's around mid range and I just visualize hearing that beep and then locking my angle, locking my wingsuit configuration in and just adjusting my angle of attack compared to what, so I'm actually visualizing, feeling my wingsuit angle attack, just. It's just as if I'm actually doing it.

The only thing that's different from when I visualize it to when I do it is that my actual body is actually doing it in the physical world. Other than that, it's very hard for my mind to tell the difference. It sounds like you, sorry, it sounds like you go into really extensive detail in your visualization process. Like I just asked you, like, what do you visualize and you literally walked through the entire run. Of the entire process. Yeah. So that's, you have to be that specific.

Otherwise it's, you could screw it up. And then you, you act, you're reacting to the environment around you. You're not acting something out that you've already done a million times. Like to me, it has to be as real as possible because when I visualize things, I've got a very vivid. Vivid imagination, and I can hear, smell, I can see things in like a 3D CAD. So if I want to, as I dive out the aircraft, I can spin the camera around and see myself from different views as well, in my, in my head.

And so I can just visualize, oh, what, yep, that was a sweet exit, and then give my, give my whole body a scan and then go back to the POV. It's, man, my brain's weird, but that's how it works. Like, it's very visual. When did you get involved with, uh, performance flying? Uh, it was very early on. Um, so basically, when I was skydiving, I started in 2014. And then... When I was doing that, I saw one of my mates, Chris Burns, he was doing tracking suit jumps at the time.

And he was only like, uh, he was about a hundred jumps in front of me. So he was always one up. He was always one up. And so he was like, Hey dude, maybe you should get a tracking suit and just start tracking. And I was like, hell yeah, that sounds awesome. I want a wingsuit, blah, blah, blah. I did the old typical, Oh yeah, I saw grinding the crack. I want to do that. You know, yeah, so I did all that dumb stuff.

Um, And yeah, so basically I was just chasing Chris Burns and Was it really dumb though? I mean, cause remember, like I remember when I first put it, I was on the same path, you know, like I wasn't that inspired by grinding the crack, but it was like, uh, I remember putting on a track suit for the first time and going like I have unbelievable power now and just thinking like, this is amazing. And yeah, like, man, those were pretty impressive days. Yeah, definitely.

So sorry to interrupt there though. So you, you, uh, you met Burns and you guys were tracking. And, uh, so, so basically early on in your skydiving career, you're like, okay, I'm going to go on the wingsuit path. And, uh, and then performance flying came shortly thereafter. Yeah, cause Burns said, Hey, get this device called a FlySight and you can listen to your glide ratios and see which ones you can hold and see what, see what you're able to hold.

And so I was from a very early stage, I was doing performance flying in my tracking suit from the very start, he was teaching me performance flying. And then obviously, as soon as I got my wingsuit, I was already, I already knew how to use the FlySight. I could analyze my data. So from, yeah, I. I smoked my wingsuit instructor on my first flight because I thought you just went all out and I lost him. I just burnt him. I was like, hey man. You don't have to like go flat out everywhere.

You can like slow down like, because we were both in the original Swifts. And those things were beasts. I don't know if you remember those things, but they were, they were huge for a first flight suit. And yeah, we, I just smoked him. It was hilarious. And, uh, But yeah, like, Hey, aren't you supposed to be able to stay with me during this coaching session? Yeah, it was. I think he actually chopped too, cause he was jumping a JFX. So he had a chop on my first flight course and I just.

So I was just like scooting along. I was like, man, I didn't even see him. And I was like, who's Canopy's at? And then I just seen him like floating in the distance. I was like, man, he's not having a good day. Yeah. Um, that's funny. Do you, um, back to visualization a little bit. Do you visualize, um, Canopy malfunctions? Everything. Everything, even, um, even, even my, uh, emergency procedures, you know, just everything comes down to visualizations.

That's very important to me because that's the biggest thing I pulled away from bodybuilding was your visualizations. Like I could, when I was. Um, yeah, sorry to go a bit off track, but I could, when I was imagining things, I could imagine me walking on stage and me being a spectator watching actually me walk on stage and, and me thinking, holy fuck, that dude is jacked. He is ripped. Oh man. So I could, I could just imagine other people's, um, reactions to what my body looked like.

And that's the same with my wingsuit performance. Like when I, when I rock up to the first, like the first day, I will go straight to the podium. Have a look at that, uh, the podium and look at the first, and then I'll just visualize myself for the, for the remaining of the comp and me just standing up there already, just taking that metal. And so all I'm doing for the rest of the time is like, all right, I visualize this. It's already happened. I'm just coming there to collect it. That's it.

I'm just coming to collect whatever I've worked for already. And it's just up to me to put it together. There's a lot of talk about, um, positive visualization, right? Like. Visualizing success, but then when we're talking about emergency procedures and potentially having to chop and all the things that come with that, that's not necessarily positive, right?

Uh, are you able to, are you able to, or how does that fit into your thought process, visualization game plan as far as staying positive on, on winning? So when, when, I mean, I think it comes, comes down to, um, You know, the scariest thing in wing suiting is deploying in your big, big race suit. Um, I had some really sketchy sort of, uh, malfunctions early on because I just, clearly I just wasn't ready for those big suits, but I wanted to jump them.

Just like everyone says, like, Oh, the biggest suit won't give you all the performance that you're after. You need to work. Small and then work your way up and it's just like a hard realization if you do skip a suit size and get there that Yeah, you really need to you know work on that progression from the small suits up because yeah I just couldn't I couldn't bring the wingsuit to a Appropriate trim speed to deploy.

I was always deploying too fast Flaring too high, deploying too slow, and just throwing it into Burble. And then it's through those, um, times that I screwed up, that I knew exactly how to visualize alright. Well, I need to visualize the perfect deployment and the perfect trim speed because I know what that sound is now. But if things go to crap... I know how to visualize to use my appropriate emergency procedures in those crappy times to get out of it.

So it's not, it's not worrying me either way, if it goes bad or good. But, um, yeah, I, I can't emphasize enough chops are not to be taken lightly in a wingsuit. That's for sure. It's not just like, Oh yeah, I'm in a wingsuit. I just chopped. But if you understood, if you understood. The crazy crap that can happen with all that fabric, you'd, you'd be scared. Yeah, that's a difference.

There's, um, I think a lot of like misconceptions out there about, oh, well you have two good parachutes, you know, like don't be afraid to use it. And that may be the case for like slick jumping. Um, but yeah, uh, reserve deployments in a wingsuit are real emergencies that, yeah, that's right.

Um, and I mean, a perfect case is, you know, I think a lot of people are surprised when I say this, but, and I'm surprised at the amount of people that don't know this, but man, when I, I only unzip my tail and take my tail out, like basically get my legs out of the tail when I've got a perfectly operating. Canopy before I pop my toggles. So if I, and the reason being, let's go into that a little bit, because that's, that plays a big role in a fighting line twist. Right.

So yeah, please elaborate a little bit more why you think that's a good idea. Yeah, so basically I zip from my, from my chest, my chest zippers all the way down to my feet and then take my feet out. And essentially I'm free from my wingsuit and I've got this massive cape out the back when I'm under canopy. Um, but what I do is I unzip everything. I've got my cape per se in between my legs locked out and then I'll pop my toggles.

Right, you can either do that, or you can keep your feet in, inside the booties. But you have to have full control over that tail. It shouldn't be able to get out behind you, because in, say if you pop your toggle has a, a knot in it, and you can't control your canopy, and you've got to chop. If you chop and that towel comes over the back of your rig and you punch your reserve into that, it's not coming out.

It's going to get, you'll shoot your reserve straight in, straight into the tail of your wingsuit and there's actually been a fatality from it. So they shot the reserve into it and then that was it. See you later. All the way in. You know, I just couldn't get the canopy out. I wasn't even thinking about that case. I was thinking more along the lines of like creating this weather main sort of like, uh, you know, you know how like, uh, those things that like point to the wind, right?

The weather main. Yeah. Like as soon as you unzip your wingsuit, it's flying behind you. You're basically like, um, yeah, yeah. It's making it much more difficult to, uh, to manage any, you know, that. A line twist situation. That, that too. And this is, this is why it's such a big deal. Because there is so much that can go wrong. Like, you're thinking about one thing but not about the other.

You know, and this is, this is the thing, like a lot of people can still use their wings if the winds are strong enough to get out of their line twist. They just put one wing out and that'll get them out of the line twist. Um, how I get out of line twist, I reach above into my risers.

And I twist the line twist into my rises and then I can reach above and steer my canopy and then use You know untwist out of that, you know, I don't do too much I don't kick anymore because I can easily control that and the easiest way to stop that And body twists from the start really and it took me a while to learn This is when you deploy get control of your rises as soon as possible Because then you can stop those body twists because you're already holding onto your rises.

You might do a 360, they might cross over a little bit, but you're not going to go through three or four body twists before that happens. You know, you might get one line twist instead of body twisting. Yeah, that's a big thing for me.

I'm always, uh, even if I've got tight sleeves, I'm always reaching out just to catch something that's right up, right in my neck level, at least so that I can move with the parachute as I'm adjusting, you know, like the parachute will always open up into the wind and, you know, even like a quarter twist like that or something can be enough to start you spinning. If you're a little bit off weight.

And so, yeah, like I'm always just grabbing those and, and making sure I'm turning with the parachute rather than, you know, turning into line twist, but back to the, the fighting for line twist, because, uh, not only in skydiving, this in base jumping, this is even more imperative that, that that's something that gets managed quickly.

Yeah. Is there, I mean, is there any, I mean, I, I hear some and see some sort of snide remarks online that yeah, kicking still works, but like, is there any other, other I'm just, what I'm trying to say is like, that's really the only way people should train to fight line twists is, is the way that you've just mentioned. Yeah, definitely.

Um, and we, we've actually got dummy rigs, um, sort of most drop zones do where they've got them in a harness and they're just hanging up and you can put people into the line twists and if you put someone in a wingsuit. And you get them to practice twisting those rises and getting those line twists down out of the, out of the lines, into the rises.

People just realize, hey man, this is way less effort than screwing around with zippers, screwing around with tails, and possibly causing even more trouble. But I, I don't know. I've, I've done over, you know, my wingsuit Scott, I've, I've done so many of them now that I've perfected how to deploy that nothing really phases me anymore. Like, I just know when to grab the risers and then when I'm, when I'm grabbing the riser, I'm still flying my body while my hands are grabbing.

So I'm flying my body as soon as I'm deploying, I'm still flying my body until I'm flying a canopy, like I'm flying everything. I never just. Relax it all through the deployment. I'm always flying, and I think that is so important. That's one of the things that I learned, like, luckily early on that. Yeah, you get your trim speed, you get back to, you know, relative flat flight, deploy your pilot chute into clean air. And as soon as that comes back over, as soon as the risers start coming up.

Get riser control, fly, fly your wingsuit and your body still, even if your hands are up at your risers, just keep flying until you're flying a canopy and then fly that because sometimes you get twists and you do go for a bit of a bit of a 180 and a bit of a ride, but you're still flying with the risers and you got riser control at the same time. Like, yeah, you've got that balance.

Yeah. Wingsuit skydiving deployments are a little bit different than base jumping just because there's a little bit more drag and friction, uh, with the bag, which also adds a little bit more friction to the deployment sequence. So the timing's a little bit different, but I think that the basics, um, still apply and, uh, can you go over a little bit, like your thought process and, and what you're looking for in a good deployment?

Yeah, um, so basically what I'm looking for in a good deployment is, um, depending if I'm in a group or not, um, that's going to change exactly how I start my deployment process. If I'm in a group of big people, like a massive group, like anywhere between five or more, it's more of a shallow approach. Just so that we're all staying on the same level. If it's a two way, then I might just go for a bit of a fun dive and flare. Um, because no one else is going to be in my airspace.

Um, so let's just say we're going for a group of four. Um, I'll, I'll separate, uh, from everyone else. Um, I'll pick a point, basically, generally 45 degrees. Um, I don't tend to like going 90, because we're sort of covering a lot of distance anyway, generally. So, okay, so I'll just be flying along pretty, pretty quickly, and then one of my alarms will go off. That'll be for, hey dude, maybe you should think about, um, starting your deployment sequence right now.

So that'll generally be about, um, about four grand. And then, so I'll just, I'll slowly start flaring up. So I'm not going for the biggest flare on the planet. What I'm trying to achieve is a trim speed of my wingsuit and so it's a very smooth, slow flare. I may gain altitude, I may not. That's not what I'm after. I'm just after this wind speed effect and as soon as I hear that wind speed in my ear that says, Hey man, you're about the right trim speed to deploy.

I will actually flatten out and get out of my flare and, and just fly straight. So I get more, um, I get basically, it's just going to give me clear, clean air over my back again. And it's going to give me clean air for the pilot shoot to actually grab onto when I deploy that. So once I hear that trim speed, I flatten out, I'll go, I'm a one hand reacher. Um, I used to do two hands, but I don't know. Now I just tend to do one hand, but I recommend everyone starting off.

And keep on doing the two hand, two symmetrical arm reach back. It's probably a bit safer. So I'll reach back. I'll throw my, um, I'll throw my part as hard as possible out to my side. Um, and then as soon as, as soon as I feel that snatch force of the pilot shoe catching air. I'll start to bring my hands up, and then by the time my hands are coming up, the risers are already in my hands. And so I'll just grab onto those risers as hard as possible. Try to separate them a little bit.

Um, I'm not putting too much emphasis in that. I'm just holding on and then just seeing which way the risers want to twist my body, and I just go with it. I don't really fight it. If it wants, if it wants to turn me 90 degrees or, or whatever, I'm just going with that. I'm just flying with it. So again, the whole time, I'm flying the deployment, deploying the BOC, flying while my hands are coming up. As soon as I got rise in my hand, I'm still flying my body.

And then my canopy is doing whatever it's doing. I kind of give it a cheeky look up. Yep, sweet, everything looks good. And then my canopy comes out, and if I end up in a line twist, I'll deal with it. But generally speaking, I haven't had line twists in a, in a long, long time. Um, so my canopy will come down, I'll look up. And I'll go, yeah, sweet, canopy looks good, and then I'll, my first thing I do is just check around to see where everybody is, cause everyone's trying to kill ya.

Um, I've had some pretty sketchy moments where I've looked around and I've seen someone spiraling and about to chop above me. So that was pretty freaking scary. So I'll even look at when I'm checking my canopy. I'll just look to see where everyone is just in case, because you just don't know sometimes. Um, and then, yeah. So that, that's pretty much how I go through my deployment.

I mean, if you want to know what I do afterwards with the zipping and everything, you can, I can continue, but that's sort of how I process. You know, I, my knees. Play a big role in my deployment, uh, as far as like, uh, breaking and like slowing my speed, not breaking obviously, but like slowing down my wingsuit speed. But before we talk about that, can you, you said trim speed quite a few times there. Can you explain what that means?

Well, I don't know, that's just the language that I've used. It's basically, I'm just trimming down the speed from a higher, from a higher speed, just trimming it down to a speed that I know that my wingsuit has the best chance of deploying not too hard. Not too soft, but like that really in between. So it's basically just trimming the wingsuit to that speed. You're not trying to, you're not really trying to like a lot of people flare their wingsuit up.

Whereas I like to tell people go for a trim speed. Cause if you tell people, Hey, flare your wingsuit and then deploy, they're just going to go for the most monstrous flare they possibly can. And I mean, if that's what you do and you have a lot of success for that, go for it. I think trim speed means like, kind of like if you're flying an airplane and you just like, let go of the controls. Like what's the, what's the, what's it going to do? You just sort of like let it coast in a way.

Yeah, pretty much. And that's sort of what you're doing. You're like trimming back and then you're letting it coast again. And then, then you're deploying into that, you know? So it's, yeah, it's, it's a better way. That I, that I explained things because yeah, I've told people to flare before and they always just go for these massive, ridiculous flares and pitch at the top. And it's like, man, like you're pitching into dead air. That's the worst thing you can do.

Basically stalling and, uh, throwing, throwing all that fabric into just disgusting air. It's no good. Yeah. It's, it's totally unpredictable. Like you can come out, I've done it a fair few times. I've, I think I even did it in front of Matt at K Power, I was so embarrassed. I remember coming down and I was just like, Oh man, I'm going to cop crap from this. Cause I don't know. Every time I go there, I get flybys all the time. I think Mike loves it too. So you just got to get.

You know, I don't know. I got nervous. God, I had some of the most embarrassing wingsuit experiences in compulsion, you know, like everyone's just so good. And you're like trying to be cool like everyone else. And it just like it just never works. Yeah, like we were doing this Big like off airport landing formation flight and I crashed like right into the lead and it was just like Man I don't know about you.

There's a lot of pressure when you go there because I don't know Everyone just expects you to be good and then you're still nervous like everyone else Like it's just like a nervous fun feeling like yeah It's like, ah, man, this is going to be so sick. I hope I'm not the kook. Oh, fuck. I'm the kook. Oh shit. I'm the kook. That's the worst feeling ever. Especially when you're like, I don't know. Yeah. Especially in front of the big, big boys, like Matt and Mike and that. It just, I don't know.

I just kooked it in front of those guys a couple of times. Demoralizing it's like, man, I'm better than this. What are you doing, man? Yeah, I hear you. I've done the same. Um, let's, uh, you know, one little detail about you asked about after the deployment. And I'm curious because like, I see like you and, and Espen and Amber and some other racers, like, um, zipping from the neck down feet, as opposed to like zipping from your booties to your waist. Why do you guys do that?

Uh, well, I started because it looked gangster. And then I realized, when you're swooping, it's got the less drag out of everything. So, if you enjoy swooping in brackets, like, it kinda isn't swooping, you've still got, you know, wingsuit canopies. But if you enjoy swooping, basically, it just takes everything off and you can hardly tell. Um, if someone's looking at you head on that you've got a wingsuit on, it's all out the back and it's less drag. Um, and you just feel free.

Everything, everything's free. Um, it's almost like not wearing a wingsuit when you're under canopy and it just makes everything, yeah, I don't know. You just feel like something's grabbing you and holding onto you this whole time and then under canopy, you can just let it go and get it off ya. Um, Yeah, I mean, one other positive too is that, uh, you're a couple of steps closer to getting that thing off if you're underwater. Yeah, that's true.

I mean, you're probably not thinking about that so much in skydiving, but in base jumping, you know, but, um, yeah, I've, I tried that a couple of times just for that reason, just cause it looks gangster. Um, and, um, uh, I, I'm going to incorporate that a little bit more to, to, to juice up my, uh, my swoops a little bit more with my high performance seven star canopy.

Um, you know, one of the main reasons like I wanted to talk to you is because I'm going to go down to Spain and do some training and I thought that this would be a good opportunity just to like get you on the mic and while you walk me through some things that I can focus on, uh, when I'm down there to, to help train, uh, and be a better flyer in general. From a performance side aspect.

But before we do that, like, um, one of the things that, you know, when we were talking before we sat down, that really, uh, made you stand out from some of the other competitors was how open you are with your knowledge. And when, you know, you were crushing the competition in Australia and you got a little bit bored and you did some things to sort of like. Like, can you tell me a little bit about that?

Yeah. So in 2016, um, yeah, 2016 I went to America, so I quit my job, went to America and then got an unlimited jump pack at Spaceland Houston. And so I did about a thousand and 22 jumps that year and 10 hours tunnel.

Uh, vertical tunnel, and so, yeah, I just, basically, I went over there with 300 jumps, 100 wingsuit jumps, and I ditched the wingsuit, because everyone's like, you need to learn how to fly your body, blah, blah, blah, so I went to iFlyUtah, did 10 hours with, uh, with the guys there, they were super gangsta, um, they're really Unreal. Like I was flying head down in a few days. It was, it was out of control. Like Dusty and the guys, they know what you're doing. Like, it was awesome.

So I did that. And then I did 600 free fly jumps. And then for the rest of the package, I was, um, I was just, Hey, I'm going to put on the wingsuit and see if this makes a difference. Holy crap. Yeah, it, it converts. Um, so I could actually feel I'm nodding profusely there. It converts over.

I was, I was feeling things in the wingsuit that I had no idea were things like, um, the body, the bodily awareness of where your hands and arms and when they're locked into configuration, you can tell if they're not equal or not. You can. Tell straight away before I was just like, Oh, that kind of feels like it. And now it's just, it became, no, that's not it. That's what you think you're doing, but you're not actually doing that. You need to have feel a little bit and hederal to be flat.

Which is counterintuitive really, um, cause when you, when your hands, yeah. Yeah, sorry. I was just going to add that, uh, that's been my personal experience too. Like, uh, you know, spending time in the vertical tunnel was one of the biggest, uh, steps that I took to improve my wingsuiting and people are always kind of like scratching their heads. What do you mean?

Even if you can't do cool tricks and do all the rad carving and everything like that, you like develop this relationship with the air where you become more sensitive to it. And you can feel the way that you're, you know, moving through it, uh, which allows you to do things like what you just said is like. Find balance, find symmetry. Yeah. And realize like things that you thought you were doing before aren't actually true. Yeah. And uh, it's a, it's a massive game changer for sure.

It's, and I can't even imagine what the, uh, wingsuit tunnel's like, uh, haven't been to that yet. But yeah, going back to the story, it just, um, yeah, that just developed my feel for the air. Like you could just feel everything going on in the wing so you could flee, you could feel if I was getting enough air over the back onto my butt.

Like you can feel the air moving over your rig onto your butt and if it wasn't over your butt and there was just dead air back there, man, you're not being efficient at all. And then I felt that I wasn't de arching enough as well during my flight. So I was having creases in the back of my leg wing, which I thought my legs were straight, but they obviously weren't. And there's, this is a big secret. If you want, if you want a big secret to going fast, you lock your knees out first.

So you tense your quads, lock your knees out first. And then think about, um, pushing your toes down. Never the other way around ever. So that, that one secret alone will enhance your speeds. Um, just everything all over. It's going to reduce a lot of drag, but yeah, lock your quads first and then point your toes. Um, and when I say lucky quads out, just.

Basically, yeah, the knee is straight as possible, tension quad, and then that feeling there, that's how you should feel for the rest of the flight. Just locked in, baby. And then you can tension, uh, the suit from your shoulders to your feet, via, you know. Pressing down with your feet, but if you're like me you order your suits slightly too short So you don't have to press down too hard.

That is a secret, too Sorry, I'm just giving everything away But yeah, I order my shoots suits maybe a few centimeters too short for me and I'm a short dude I'm only 172 centimeters So you'll see photos of me on the podium next to these guys. If I'm in first, they're still taller than me on the second. Yeah, I was going to ask. Cause like, uh, I think in 2017 you won a FAI worlds in the greatest horizontal distance award. And I was like, man, like.

Horizontal distance and like, he's like, he's short, built like a bowling ball, like how the fuck technique, baby, you know, like, and if, if anything, I think it speaks to your, your skill because, uh, you know, there's some people that I fly with and, and they're tall and skinny and as far as horizontal distance goes, like they'll just destroy me every single time. I did it again this year at Worlds too. Oh, sorry, last year. I got, I got distance overall.

So, yeah, they were just flying too slow for the atmospheric pressure. Losers. No, it's, uh, the funny thing is, uh, in competition, once you do that first round, all your secrets are Uh, given up because I'll just look at your track and go, Oh, yeah, he was flying, um, faster than us. So we'll just increase our forward speed too because of the atmosphere and then boom, they were with me. So I, yeah, that's, I think we're delving into like some overly technical, um, information on that.

I mean that this lies specifically with competition flying. Let's talk a little bit more about like, you're the thoughts that you have about your body position because Barnes talked, you know, talked a lot about like the quads and locking out the knee and stuff like that. And that makes a big difference for me. Um, I mean, I knew that, but I think after we talked, I like started like really emphasizing that on my jumps, like, even to the fact that like, before I jump.

Uh, you know, cause I'm, I'm usually doing big hikes all like, um, flex my quads a bit to make sure that I'm not going to, you know, get any cramps and also make sure that, you know, like I'm properly hydrated and whatnot. That's kind of important.

Um, but then, um, you know, we don't have the luxury in base, um, to wear small suits because, you know, it limits your push, um, Cause like, you know, when you're standing on the edge and you want to, you know, a big monster push and like the more powerful your pushes, the better your start. Or at least it's a, it's a big ingredient in having a powerful start. Yeah. But can you, so can you elaborate a little bit more? We talked about the legs.

Um, what are some other things that you're thinking about as far as like flying fast with your body? Um, so with my arms. So we'll just go, I mean, I think you can find this stuff on TopGunBase, um, but, um. Yeah, but I want to hear from you. Yeah, so basically what you want is your arms. You want them strong. You want them, um, you want them strong and flat. So you want, you want to press up with your forearms. So, not with your hands really, you, you want, yeah. Forward. Forward and up.

So you want your arms strong and flat. So level with your body. Um, your midsection, your stomach. You want that slightly de arched to take any of those, um, creases out of your tail wing out. And it also promotes your body to actually be flatter, because a lot of people still have that banana bend. They're still, they're still arching naturally, so to enforce, like a, at least feeling like you're de arched, like, um, is pretty important.

Because that means you're either, um, de arched or you're flat, which is where you want to be. Uh, again, with your knees locked. Um, toes again, toes and shoulder tension. So At the end of it, you want your toes pointed.

Um, a lot of people point their toes, their toes out naturally, but I've been finding if I, um, don't push out diagonally, if I start to actually bring my heels towards the outer of the suit, it's, it's actually making, uh, the suit fly a tiny bit better, probably not noticeable by a lot of people. Um, but that's kind of just your high end, maybe 0. 01 percent kind of stuff, but you want that tension from your shoulders to your toes.

Um, And the hardest thing is, is you don't want to be pressing so hard that you're going to tear the suit. Don't think about tearing the super suit open. Just thinking about making sure that everything's in the right configuration and you're holding it. You don't want to be wasting energy pushing up as hard as you can. You just need the suit to be taut in all those. You know, in the right configuration taught and not overdoing it.

Um, because that's going to cause a little bit of instability and it's going to weigh out a lot quicker than it has to. Um, you still, you just need to be holding it in, in, in its. configuration. Um, a lot of people just get too wrapped up into stretching it out as hard as possible. On a speed run, possibly that can help a little bit. But if you're base jumping and doing distance runs and stuff like that, you don't really need to be stressing out too hard about that.

You just need it, you just need it locked out and firm. Because if, um, you know, If, if you get wind shear or anything like that, being loose and loose in your body, but taught is you're going to be able to absorb a lot more harsher, um, you know, changes in air. And that's sort of another thing that I picked up from free fly is, um, learning. Basically you can sort of feel what's happening as the air gets thicker. You can actually feel it getting more dense.

Um, and you can actually feel the wind shear and where the wind direction's coming from, because, um, you, you'll feel the tail kicking out one way, and you'll know, you'll automatically know just to counter, counter react that. Um, but yeah, that's sort of the, the configuration that I'm thinking about for speed, and for distance. Those configurations don't really change for me.

I might give a hot, a slightly bigger... D Arch in a distance flight, but realistically I'm trying to have as little drag as possible in a speedrun and as little drag as possible in a distance run. So just think, I remember Burns used to say you got to hide behind that leading edge and that's exactly what it is. You're just hiding behind that because that's cutting through like a knife. Just think about a knife.

You want to be nice, level, and flat, and you just want to be cutting through the air and presenting the most surface areas possible that you can convert to lift. Do you, uh, do you refine this position by looking at your video? Like I'm assuming that you have some backwards facing camera, like, or a 360 camera now where you can look back and say like, Oh, look, I'm sort of like, I see some creases in my suit here. I'm going to look and try to do another jump and iron that out a little bit.

Or what was, uh, what's the process? I mean, besides like all of the free fly experience and, and extensive, uh, sky diving, what are some other tips that you've used to, to refine that position? So yes, I mean, I do rely heavily on the free fly side, but if you're not doing that, obviously the 360 cameras are good, but they can distort things a lot too. So you've got to be very careful of that.

Um, but if you're facing it up and you can see creases in your tail, that just means you need to de arch more and get rid of that or, you know, that's if they're, you know, coming lengthwise and you just got to look at, it'd be good to look at where your feet are, how they're positioned, where your arm wings are at, um, but the best thing to do is get someone to fly outside camera for you and just go, all right, Um, if you've got communications, just go, all right, three, two, one, nail it, give

it everything and just try to stick with them as long and as far as possible. And then film from the back, what's happening with their suit. And if you can film from the side and get their side profile to see if they're dearched or they're still banana ing and still arched. Um, that's what I, me and Chris Burns used to do that for each other all the time. So we used to just go, Hey dude, do you mind filming one for me? And there's not a lot of people that could film us, you know, cause we were.

We're cooking, um, just . Yeah. Um, we figured a lot of stuff out, um, just from doing that with each other. And it's just, oh man, I thought I was darch. I bet. Yeah. Sounds amazing, man. I thought I was d arched. I'm not. And I've got creases in the back of my leg. I what? The, and really you just flying flat. You need to be slightly more darch. Um, that's so common. I mean, even from like intermediates to advance, that's just super common, right?

Like from my coaching experience, like I would fly. And we'd go over video and every single time, you know, you would tell somebody to do something and then they're like, Oh, look, I did it. You know, that's just another example. It's not that, you know, people are dumb or anything. It's just that shows that like what you think is going on and what's actually actually going on isn't always in line. Yeah, that's, that's exactly right. Um, and it, it goes with any sort of skydiving really.

Um, it's always the case, especially with free flying, free flying and wingsuiting. Yeah, because your, your body position and your, and your configurations are so important because you're just trying to manipulate the wind at the end of the day. And if you're not efficient, it's going to be harder. You want to make it as simple as possible. And that's sort of what I, what I try. If I'm locked out, all I have to do is adjust my angle of attack. And that's it. I just manage my angle of attack.

If I got my body position, if I know the position I need to be in, I locked that out and I just adjust my angle attack. And all I'm thinking about is arms. Yep. Legs. Yep. Toes. Yep. Sweet. The arch. Yep. Sweet. How my arms gone. It's getting towards the end of the run. Um, how are they doing? Yep. They're still locked in. Sweet. Oh, they're starting to creep up. I'll push them even forward. That's when you use that energy. Whereas before, if you were.

Putting too much stress, too much energy into pushing that, trying to burst your wing open, trying to hold that configuration. You won't have energy to manage that later on. But you could be conserving that energy to keep the run going as good as it was at the start. You know, so it's a lot about conserving. So what I'm, what I'm hearing is like, you're cycling through all of the, the factors that you're considering, right? You're cycling through your arms, hips, legs.

Toes, shoulders, just keep it and then just repeat. It's on repeat, right? You're just continuing over and over and over again. That's exactly right. And so you said when you know, you've got the angle, right? Yeah. How do you know that you have the angle, right? So, so this, this is, uh, basically I'm trying to find, uh, my forward speed that I know That I can get max glide out of and out of, in a no wind situation, that's about, that's about 175 kilometers an hour.

Um, and so if I lock into that and just adjust my angle of attack and just play with, um, staying at that speed and then converting some of that into some sneaky lift, like just going to a little bit into sneaky lift, then going back to it, then going to like. Basically putting on a higher angle attack, showing more of my wingsuit to the relative air, giving me more lift and then sneaking back there. So it's more like I'm just going up and down, up and down, up and down.

I'm not kind of trying to lock into it the whole time. Um, to me that works for me. You're like a little dolphin, little dolphin doing dolphin kicks, baby. Um, a lot of people just lock into that. You'll look at my speeds, they look locked, but if you look at my glide ratio, everyone's saying, you glide ratios are always so messy. It's like. Yeah, but I'm still flying further, like, maybe it's not ideal, but it's, it's working for me.

And I keep, keep beating people in distance doing it this way, um, because I just feel like I can just play with that, like, Oh no, that's too much glide. And if you can just finally just pick a little bit of glide and chip it away here and there, here and there, here and there. And then by the end of the run, you've used.

a fair chunk of it and then you can just have the rest for Your flare and your deployment at the end or you know, it's it's all about conserving energy All we've got is gravity to work with right? All we can do is control our configuration and angle of attack. That's it We've got no propulsion um for base jumpers, it's a little harder because you've got Less, uh, less room to use skydiving. We've got generally 14, 000 feet to screw around with.

So you guys are limited with how much energy you can produce. So he's got to be more, more efficient. Then a skydiver, generally speaking, but you guys don't reach the speeds that we do because of this. Cause you don't have unlimited sky is it just got, Hey man, there's a bit of ground there, a couple of trees. I can't go down there. So, yeah, right. I mean, like before I always just thought like the best start was the fastest start. And now.

I mean, it's been years now, but like the best start will give me the best, the most speed that I can use to do whatever it is I do, right? Like, so sometimes using the, all of the air possible to generate the most amount of speed so that when I can slingshot out of the bottom, uh, with the most amount of speed that will carry me through the rest of the flight is the best start. Right, so I will have expended the most meters possible that the terrain will allow.

Yeah, well you're just, you're just getting your energy bar. That's all it is. You're starting with your energy bar and then, alright, this is my energy bar. This is what I've got to use for the rest of the jump. And how you manage your speed and angle of attack is going to be increasing that energy bar. Or depleting it. That's it. It's that simple. Yeah, and like, turns? Those are a big energy bar suck. Well, yeah. Yeah, because you're basically, you're airbraking, bro. You're turning.

Uh, yeah, a lot of people, you know, don't realize how, how much drift and how much energy you burn out in those turns. You know, I, I nerd out on fly side data. I know how much I burn. Hey, before we get too sidetracked on the fly side stuff, I cut your story off. Um, tell me about when you were traveling to the U S for competing. Yeah. So yeah, after I did those, all those jumps in America, I competed and I did pretty well in my first comp.

So yeah, I went to the UK, competed there, got sixth in my first comp, and then America was doing these wide open wingsuit series. Joe Riddler contacted me and said, hey dude, saw you at the UK, why don't you come do a few of these? And yeah, I just went to a few of those. I podiumed at the ones I went to, which is awesome. And I remember the first distance comp that I did, um, I jumped out of the plane and anyway, mid race, I thought, I thought, ah, yeah, sick. I've won this. It's all good.

I finished it. And then I started doing up and overs around the guys that were actually, I was competing against and flying with, I was doing up and overs and they were just like giving me, giving me these weird looks like, what the f. What, what are you doing, bro? And so I was like, Oh, whatever. So I just flew over to the next dude. And then I was just like next to him going, yeah, let's do a two way. And he's like, looking at me really weird. And I was like, what is going on?

So I went up and over him and went underneath and I'm like, come on, let's go. Let's go. Let's go. And he was just flying. And then I heard my alarm like, like the race was over. And I was like, whoa, I just lost this race because I already thought it was over. I was just like playing with these dudes and it was like, oh man, are you serious? What the hell? And I was just flipping out and I was just like, oh man, I was such an idiot. Like what the, and then like Matt Gerties was there and um.

Oh, Keith Forsythe. Forsythe. I'm not sure if you know that chap. He's an absolute legend. He was, yeah, he was the rabbit for that race and he was like, Luke, what were you doing? He saw, he saw the whole thing and he was like, what the hell were you doing? Why did you dive down to all the rest of them? And I thought the race was over. So I set the wrong alarms in my fly site.

And then, yeah, I just cooked it and then anyway, Matt invited me over to Kapowsin where they had another one and ended up winning the distance. Thank God. Oh, it's like redemption, baby. Um, and then, yes, I did well there. And then I went to compete for Australia the next the following year. So I've finished the package. I've done pretty well in some competitions and then got back to Australia and Chris Burns was, you know, he was leading. Everything that was happening over in Australia.

Um, he actually got the APF to start recognizing wingsuit as a sport over there. Um, so Chris, Chris was just like, Hey, let's try this out. And then Chris and I basically just built it up from, from nothing pretty much. From that year and it was awesome. Um, but yeah, I competed at that competition and just Smoked the competition that first year. Um, just came out of nowhere and just and just won it out, right?

I think uh, Yeah, I ended up flying a kilometer more than everyone else And that was, and I landed off, I was the only one that landed off. And I was like, what the hell, where is everybody? How come I'm the only idiot that landed off? Did I get shitty wind or I didn't understand it. And yeah, it just turned out I went a little bit further than everyone else. And so that was cool. I was like, Oh man, this is awesome. And then the next year. Um, again, I took it, so it was 2017, 2018.

I think Chris Gaylor came over for that one and he won it outright. Um, and I came second, but in Australia I came first, but let's be honest, Chris won it. He's numero uno, but yeah, I gave him a fair bit of a challenge on that one. But, um, yeah, his competition, he's like a robot, man. And I was just like starting out, so it was. Pretty stiff competition, but I still beat the Australians. And, um, so that was in 2018 and then 2019, I was like, man, what's going on here?

I'm, I'm still beating these Aussies by a fair margin. And then Chris Burns was cause performance flying was all he was doing. And he was starting to get a bit bummed that he wasn't winning anymore. And he was, he was, I don't know, like a lot of people don't know that he suffered from depression a lot. I was one of his closest friends. So, um.

Yeah, we started out together pretty much and I was with him the whole way and he used to confide in me and I'd get random calls at weird hours of the night. So he was in a pretty bad place and I was like, Hey dude, how about like I start coaching you? I'll show you what I've learned and um, you can pass it on to whoever you want as well. And then, that next year he, so he got sponsored by Squirrel. Um, I let the guys, I was like, hey dude, this guy's pretty good.

But he was actually swapping manufacturers a lot, which is kind of scary for a new manufacturer to take someone on like that. Because you just don't know. Um, so he'd already competed with, um, Tony, Phoenix, and he was onboarding with Squirrel at the time. I was like, nah. Man, if you come over to these guys, um, just trust the process, like just trust the suits. They're all good. Um, and flying them and winning for years already, like just trust it.

And, um, so yeah, I just instilled my knowledge on how to, how to fly and use the fly site to basically. It's, it's almost cheating. It's basically just telling you the exact speed you need to fly, and you're adjusting it to the winds, and off you go. And so I taught him all that fly site stuff, and that's, I couldn't catch him after that. He was gone. Like he had the right body type. I didn't and he knew my information.

So I was just like, oh, well, so be it Um, and that was awesome Because he just kept pushing me after that. I was getting better and better and better and so was he so it was awesome Um, and so after that I was like, you know what? Let's see what we can do with australia Let's let's start like feeding it back into the community and another guy that i've poured a lot of time into his atomic And he'll be someone to watch out. He'll be beating me probably next year.

I think maybe the year after Um, he's got a bit of a better body type Um, but he's just as ruthless and dedicated as I am. So yeah, he's gonna be my main challenge But it's good, you know, like he he might pick things up that I don't know about and he'll share that onto me And then I'll get better too. And that's sort of what we're trying to do when, when the Australian team goes over to these international world competitions, we're all, uh, so we're all training together, usually a week before.

And it's no, no holding back. The guys go, hey, what can I do here? And I'm telling them, hey, you need to fly like this, this, this. This is what you need to adjust in your fly site. This is how you're just flying a bit slow. You just need to fly maybe 10, 10Ks faster, 5Ks faster, whatever. Try this. And then, and then if someone's having trouble with time or something like that, it could be a configuration error.

They could be flying, um, you know, wrong configuration, so I'll go, Hey, I'll do, I'll do a two way with ya, see what the hell's going on. And then I'll go, Hey, this is what you need to do with your body. Fix this, let's go. And so we just openly share all of our information with each other, even though we're competition. It's, just have a look at the last worlds where all the Australians end up. That's, that's the result, I think. Man, we smothered the top 10, at least.

You know, and some of these guys, like Tomic, it was his first world comp, and I think he got 8th, and he was devastated, cause he was nowhere near... Um, punching the results that he had been in the week previously. He just had a unfortunately, um, he had some fly side issues Um, in the comp, and uh, caused him to score badly.

At no fault of his own, just because we run a competition fly site for the judges, and won in our helmet, and sometimes, when you hit the entry gates in your, in your fly site, that may not be the same reading as the other fly sites. So it could be 10 meters higher, 20 meters higher. Or there's some variation there and his was just all over the place, so he couldn't predict it. So he ended up just having to dive further down the window, but he's, he, he'll be on the podium. Um, for sure, Tommy.

So just watch out for him. The margins on these races are tiny. Yeah. And look at our, look at our Australian nationals, top three guys. Like it, man, it was tough. For an Australian Nationals, it's almost like a world class event these days, with the top three, um, going off just what was going on. Like, we were doing 100 second time runs with standard suits, um, stock standard factory suits, and that's unheard of back, you know.

Two years ago, doing a hundred second time run was just, Oh my God. This is, this is revolutionary. You know, this is unbelievable. And now it's like, you got to get 98 to a hundreds to stay in the competition these days and your speeds. They're always increasing and your distances. It's like, we're getting about, on average, a 4, 4. 0 glide ratio, is pretty standard these days. Wind corrected.

So, basically you just take the wind out of the equation, say you do a 5 km run, but if you correct, take the winds out, it's a 4. 0. Run and it used to be around 3. 8 to 3. 9 K's was awesome. But now it's like 4k's if you're not sitting at 4k's That's it. You're pretty much creeping out of the podium spot. So it's basically if you don't calculate the wins properly and If you fatigue out or if you make one minor error in your dive and setup or a navigation error, you're out. That's it.

You're not on a podium anymore and it's becoming a game of consistency. And I guess it always has been, and you can only be consistent through repetition, right? That's exactly right. And that's why, that's why my visualizations are so important. And I also run self hypnosis every night. Um, so there's self hypnosis. It's interesting you say that. We just had a, um, an interview with a hypnotherapist. Yeah. Yeah. So I run hypnotherapy.

Um, basically I turn it on and I've got a few tracks that I run and they run. All night, for the en all night, uh, on repeat. So I've got three or four tracks that just run for the entire night. That's it, every night. So it's just ingrained into my body. Uh, I've done that for, since bodybuilding days.

And that's where these visualization and everything's just so important because you can get so much done visualizing before you actually get there, that you might as it feels like you've actually been there and you've actually been training it. And this is why a little bit more about this stuff. Sorry, tell me a little bit. This is the problem with remote. Uh, recording is like we talk over each other, but so apologies, man.

Um, tell me a little bit more about, um, what, what is, what is it saying in these tracks that are playing over and over again, man, this is like, this is just personal shit right here. Pretty personal stuff right here. I'm all about sharing information. So basically it's telling me, um, that, yeah. In the competition, I'm always going to remain calm. I know, like I know my capabilities. I'm going to always get it. I'm just visualizing the perfect runs all the time.

And it's just taking me through that. Um, and it's basically just setting the proper mindset. It's saying, Hey man, when competition gets tough, um, things aren't looking good. That's okay. Like you just don't worry about that. Just move on to the next one. Let's go again. Reset. Good to go.

Um, lots of other things too, like man, I do listen to some weird spiritual, nerdy ones too, but they're more so just to keep me, um, you know, just focused on the now as well so that I'm not thinking about, oh, when I'm in this run, what if this happens? It's just like, no, you're just dealing in that exact present moment. Um, but you're hypersensitive and hyper-focused.

That, you know, the visualizations that you've been having in the plane on the way up, you're just replaying that, and it feels like you're replaying it, it doesn't feel like you're actually doing it again. It just feels like you're on replay. Uh, it's, it's hard. Yeah, but this is how I, this is how I operate. No, I get it. I haven't, uh, competed since my, uh, well, that's not true exactly, but I was thinking back to the time I was most competitive was when in Brazilian jujitsu.

And it was like, uh, there's a lot of anxiety that comes with competition and like, even before you're on the mat, like just Having that sense of calm and, uh, thinking and about all the preparation that you've done and, uh, everything that's riding on there can be a little bit overwhelming. Yeah. And then when you put a sense of personal danger on the line as well, like it can, you know, push you over the edge a little bit and, and affect your, your performance.

And, uh, so that's interesting to hear that that's one of the strategies that you've implemented. Yeah. It just. Peace of mind. You gotta be cool as a cucumber at all times. Like, uh, I don't know if you've ever been to a wingsuit competition, there's always spanners in the works, there's always drama going on. And, I mean, it's fun to create some and just let that build and everyone gets psyched out. That's kind of hilarious. Uh, start rumors and just let it go.

Like, haha, like there's kind of some shady shit you can do if you wanted to. Um, but mostly it's trying to help my teammates stay as calm as I am sometimes, because stuff can go wrong. Um, but yeah, I'm just working on basically being as... Calm and collective, and in the moment, in present time as possible. Um, and the only time I'm not is when I'm in the plane, but I'm all, I'm visualizing what's going to happen anyway. It's, it's focused on positive.

You know, everything's, everything's about positivity and it's about just being neutral, not letting the outside world affect you and just concentration. That's all the hypno is for. That's great stuff. Uh, so let's get to, um, coaching me a little bit. Yeah. So, uh, I'm, you know, like I'm going down to Spain and, uh, I'm going to bring my fly site and bring some headphones.

Tell me a little bit about like what I should do to prepare for this season of base jumping, uh, to be, uh, you know, improve my glide and improve my speed. Yeah. Um, so improving in your speed, it's more about, um, staying the least drag as possible. So again, it's a configuration thing. We went through that. Um, Basically just staying as knife edge as possible. And when you're building speed.

So for me in competition, I'm building speed at 0. 8 of a glide, glide ratio to about, um, 1. 0 to 1. 1. And then anything after that is just converting into forward speed. So anything before that's just building and adding to your power bar and the rest is just. Building forward speed. So what I would do is I would say that again, sorry. So 0. 8 is almost vertical, right? Yeah, it's pretty, it's pretty steep. Um, so yeah. Yeah. And then, so, so from 0. 8 to what exactly?

Yeah. I just try to stay 0. 8 to 1. 0. So you get a one to one glide ratio. That's sort of where you're not converting. really too much into four wheel drive just yet, but I think it's important to go faster than you would in base jumping, so you're more comfortable in faster speeds, so that when you do Get fast or fast in the base environment. It's nothing compared to what you've been before. So you're more comfortable.

So I would go at those steep angles 0. 8 and then just slowly bring it out in a competition run to 1. 0 to say 0. 8 enter the window and then go out to about, you know, 1. 5 glide ratio. And that's sort of. You know, where you want to stop because it's not, you're converting too much into forward driving and you're going to be more glidy than quick, per se. So, I do those kind of drills.

Um. And also when you're going steep, just add turns and stuff, um, doing fast turns and a little bit uncontrolled, anything that you could think about mimicking in the base environment. Um, so this is where I get the disconnect. Um, I'm mainly focused on performance flying rather than. Base jumping. So, you know, what happens in the base environment.

Um, I would just suggest being comfortable at higher speeds and finding out where you're so in base jumping, what is your typical glide ratio when you're flying terrain or flying. Your ideal lines is that it, it's got to vary, right? But is there a zone you like to stay in? Yeah, I mean, it varies. It varies a lot. Um, yeah, like, um, I think that like staying connected to terrain is like at 2. 5 and below. Yep. Um, is, is really like a comfortable angle that I like.

And generally, because that will allow with the right speed to always have the capacity to flare and disconnect to deployment. Yeah, you're going to have a heap of energy staying that low. Anything else that will just be like sort of temporarily temporary, you know, and also whether it was a factor as well. Right.

So like if you, um, you know, are flying on terrain that's higher than 2. 5 and, you know, you encounter some weather phenomenon that you weren't expecting that can have a massive effect on your, your glide and speed performance. So, um, You know, like when you're going at 2. 5 and below, you're, you're just punching through stuff.

Yeah. So it's like, uh, um, so there's, there's that a little bit, can we talk a little bit about, uh, control in steep dives, because I think that there's a lot of misconceptions there, you know, like, uh, people will say one thing or another, and, uh, I think that like. The fact is, is that a lot of wingsuit base jumpers are comfortable balancing on limited control surfaces. Can you give us a little bit of your thoughts on this?

Yeah. So I see a lot of, um, base videos with people having dihedral when they're diving and stuff like that. I think that's more of a stability thing. Um, or some people think that that's the fastest way. You can dive, um, but level arm flight when you're diving and when you're flying is faster because you got to think about, um, you got to think, think about the drag. There's less drag, so you're going to gather more speed. Like you're showing less of that knife edge.

You're showing that night. You just think about cutting through the cake with a knife. You don't want the knife a bit sideways. You want it straight up and down. Right. So just think about, you don't want too much dihedral, um, unless no, but I mean, like when you're tipping it over, right. And we've all established like what the, the fast configuration is of a, of a wingsuit, but like, as we tip it over, right.

And we're going, uh, pitch head low, uh, things become more and more difficult to control, right. That's right. The, the balance points become much more sensitive. Yeah, that's correct. And that's, and no continue. So besides like practice, what are some of the things that people should think about or consider when they're flying in a 0. 8 angle? So the biggest thing is not to be too stiff.

You still want to have a little bit of, you know, if you're stiff and you hit a bump or the wind, something happens weather wise and it gets bumpy for some reason, you're going to be flinged all over the place because you're so stiff. Um, you just want to sort of be relaxed inside the suit. Whilst holding the configuration. Um, that way you can absorb bumps and anything coming at you.

Um, yeah, just don't press too hard into your wingsuit because that creates instability, um, with, with weather, with, um, around clouds, anything, anything like that, you'll notice that around clouds a lot, um, but yeah, just being stern, but not over, over pressing into the wingsuit, I guess would be one of the biggest helps. And this is why I'm saying, try focus.

Sorry, you try what this is what I was saying try going faster than you would in the base environment This is going to teach you that You know when you get in those higher speeds in the base environment, it's gonna be nothing to you It's like man, I've gone way faster. This is nothing so you want to you want to get your body used to more stress than you're actually going to And you're actually going to encounter, sort of what I was saying, that you should be training in the Skydive environment.

Um, but yeah, it's, it's pretty hard because I haven't base jumped before, and this is where I'm going to struggle a little bit. Because if I had base experience, um, I could be able to tell you exactly, hey, this is what I really would focus on. Yeah, that's all right. Um, you know, base is a little bit like mixed martial arts, right?

You know, and, uh, you would, the ultimate fighter is going to draw, uh, strengths from all sorts of different disciplines and, you know, you're a purist and we have a lot to learn from you. So, so in the In the training, uh, we're talking about, um, using the fly site, so can you give me some tips a little bit about what I should be looking for in my data? Yeah, definitely. Um, so in your data, what you're looking for, um, for speed, there's a, um, you've got lift and drag coefficients.

This is going a bit, you know, down that rabbit hole, but you can have a look at your lift and drag and you can see how much drag you've got.

Um. And then you can do your speedrun, so I can give you a PPC speedrun to practice, and you can do that maybe 10 times or something, just get the feel of going, you know, holy crap fast, and then looking at your drag coefficients and seeing if they're getting lower, and then trying different, um, trying different configurations and going back and having a look at that drag coefficient again, and you can tell if you're getting less drag or not, and you can see it in your

speeds as well, they'll start picking up. Um, and so, with the speeds I would focus, I focus a lot on glide ratio, and not on the speed figures. Because the glide ratio is going to give you those speed figures. Um, and that's kind of a bit of a secret in the PPC world as well. We don't really listen to forward speed when we're doing speed. We're listening to glide ratio. And we're trying to, um, we're trying to basically release...

Our energy bar as smooth as possible into, um, into forward horizontal speed without using too much to put it into glide. So in the base environment that would convert over to, like you're saying, you want to build up your energy bar at the start and not just go full glide and the best, quickest start. You want to start using some of that energy, um, safely together to get your energy bar up, up as safely as possible. And then using that energy holding onto it, or just using it when you need it.

Um, and this is where the, this is where your speed's gonna come in. This is where your configuration... Is going to sort of give you those best speeds and I think that's a big thing is your configuration when you're gaining speeds Um in that initial push how how you push off can affect it. Um Again, i'm not a base jumper, but I would think about bringing your body down And then springboarding almost into a, into a flight. That's sort of, that's sort of how I would think about it.

And then just gathering as much potential energy as possible. You're doing a bunch of hand gestures right now. Everyone's going to be listening to this. So what you mean is like going from a, uh, what do you mean? Like just in a, from, uh, so it's like an audio, an audio perspective. I'm thinking about, um, low, like crouching with your knees. I would, this is speculative, don't do it. I'm not a base jumper, but this is how I would think about approaching it is I would, um, bend my knees.

And then slowly arch over. And so as you're, as you're falling over your, your body, like your chest is coming down and down and down. As soon as I'm starting to reach the angle of attack that I would want to start my, um, dives and base jump at, I would then spring out with as much force as possible. springing out and almost going directly just slightly higher than the angle of attack that I would want so that my body would fall into that angle of attack as soon as possible.

So I wouldn't want to launch head high, I wouldn't want to launch tail down, I would want to try to launch just a bit higher than my And my desired angle attack, um, speculative, do you guys do pretty accurate, do you guys do box jumping in your training? Yeah, like, yeah, like I do cleans and, and box jumps and, uh, other, you know, snatches and stuff like that for explosive power. Um, definitely helps. I would definitely do single. Single leg box jumps.

That's going to increase the power in both. So you're not relying on that dominant leg. It'll be quite apparent. It'll be quite apparent. Some people, yeah, one, sorry, one, one good. It's like when you're set in a chair.

And then you stand up and to jump onto a box, that's a, that's a really good one because you're sort of like in the static position and you're, instead of using the, the, the reflex, uh, power of you have like that strex reflex, you, you can like from a sitting position, step up into a jump, that's a really good one. Yeah. I also have, I usually, I usually jump with one foot too.

Like I have one foot forward, one foot back and like, while there's a little bit of power coming out from that back leg, it's mostly a, a one foot sort of jump, I swam when I was younger and that was just sort of like got ingrained to me, you know, that that's like the fastest way to jump off the blocks. I was, uh, yeah, I was a very competitive swinger, swinger. Swimmer, very competitive swimmer back in the day. The personal stuff just, uh, just came on out.

That's right, ladies, single line, please. No, it's, uh, no, I was very competitive in school. I used to win, uh, swimming competitions, uh, in board shorts while everyone was in DTs. It was hilarious because I didn't want to not look cool. I remember going to, yeah, I remember going to a nationals. Uh, in this big sporting complex and I took out the breaststroke and board shorts and everyone was wearing speedos and they were just tripping out. Yeah, wow.

But there's a lot to, a lot to learn from swimming, I think from, um, for the start. Yeah, definitely. There's a lot, there's a lot of it. That's sort of where I'm bringing the experience of that spring step. That's where I'm bringing it from because that's what I used to think about when I was diving in the pool. It's the same thing. I was thinking about leading my body over to just about where I wanted to be and just giving it everything I had.

So I entered the water at the right angle so that I could coast through. You know, like, um, I don't know if this comes necessarily from a safety perspective though, but like going back to what you're saying, as far as like leaning over, I definitely lean over and push. I'm leaning over and pushing with slightly a little bit head higher than when I would just fall into my, uh, Uh, appropriate angle.

But as I push off, I'm thinking about like rolling over and, and finding like pushing my head towards that angle that I want to go in the body just sort of follows. And again, that's sort of like what you were talking about as far as being relaxed, like the start, if you just got to be relaxed, cause if you're not, it's just going to end up, there's going to be a potato chipping, there's going to be potato chipping, there's going to be like some.

Um, a big loss of, of performance as you like press too hard into any of the relative when you got there and like, you know, like in the glide portion or, or even in the, the time, um, element of your competition is like any unnecessary movement just immediately kills your lift. That's exactly right. You're planking to save your life. And just to, I think it's important that people to realize you are saying that. You point your head in the right direction and then your body follows.

90 percent of my wingsuit flight and the control of my wingsuit is done in my chest area and my head. Everything else just like is locked in and just follows those, those things. So it's like I'm flying mostly with my chest area. So it's um, like when I'm adjusting my angle of attack, I'm just thinking about leaning forward with that lean back. I'm not like arching or anything like this. I'm just, Pushing that chest down, releasing the chest back up.

And I'm doing that with small head movements a little bit, you know, leading with that head, but I'm flying that chest. I'm flying that chest area. A lot of people fly with their arms. That's a big, big, no, no. Like if you're using your arms to turn, like not only is it inefficient, um, but it can cause instability. Whereas if you're turning with your chest and letting everything follow, it's just natural and your suit flies cleaner. It flies better. You're going to.

maintain a lot more energy, you know, um, I think that's kind of important too. That's a great tip. Can we talk about, uh, flaring because that's a big aspect of performance and, uh, base jumping. Uh, I think you were one of the first guys to flare over a hundred meters. Is that right? Yeah, that's true. It can't, it's so funny. Uh, Matt was just like, I'll give someone a hundred bucks if they, who can flare the highest or whatever. And then I ended up flaring like.

90 meters or something and then like, Oh, okay. Well, if anyone could beat a hundred, a hundred meters, I'll give him a hundred bucks. And then I was like, hell yeah. Cause I was in, I was overseas at the time in America. I was like, man, I could do with some cash or I'll smash another one out. And so I smoked it. I got a hundred meters. I was like, Oh man, I could have done way better than that.

And then it got to the point where they're like, you spent something like 200 bucks in the jump tickets to get that a hundred bucks. It's totally worth. No, the funny thing is.

I, I did them just randomly, it, I wasn't even practicing or anything, it was just because of my PPC training, my competition training, that whenever he put it up, I did it in one jump, that, that was all, all it took and I just learned from that first flare and then he put up the challenge, uh, uh, 100 meters and then after that they were like, Oh, Pay someone a hundred dollars to beat Luke. It stopped getting to heights.

And then I did 110 meters and then my highest was 124 and it hasn't been beaten yet through a natural flare. Like it's been beaten out of, uh, people just jumping out of sky vans and flaring up. Um, but yeah, I still hold the record for just, uh, the 124 meters. Okay. So walkers, wow. Impressive. Walk us through, um, what you're thinking about, uh, as far as maximizing your flair. Yeah. So basically at the start, I'm just trying to generate as much speed as possible.

So get my energy bar as high as possible. So what I do is I just dive head down out of the plane, just fly his head down straight at the ground as possible until I just couldn't feel like I was going any faster. And then I would just slowly in a consistent, um, manner, just slowly start peeling that out. And I wouldn't. I wouldn't even change the angle, um, to go a little bit, a little bit quicker, like peel out quicker. I just keep it at that same peeled that same rate of peeling out.

And it would, it would end out that I'd be going horizontal for a little bit before I actually started, started going back up. So you need to think about when you're doing a flare and not flaring too fast, because you'll actually use your wingsuit as an air brake and you'll kill all your energy and you won't go up as far. You need to hit that horizontal. Speed as fast as possible.

And then what you want to do is you want to convert that horizontal speed into the highest vertical speed possible, because you don't have a lot of time to do it. You want that highest vertical speed. That's going to push you through the air as fast as possible up. So what I did is I was able to get my suit going a hundred kilometers an hour up, and that's how I did it. It was just.

It was just basically when you start to flare out you go flat and then when when that natural curve is coming up when you start to get a bit vertical that's when you just snap and just and just snap back as hard as you can and then push that wingsuit back while being slightly anhedral like grabbing that wind being slightly anhedral and almost putting your wingsuit on rails leaning into it and leaning back, but not, not cracking that D arched configuration and just snapping that back up.

And you just, man, the push you get out of that, it's hard to describe. Like it feels like someone just punches you in the chest and then you're just feeling this, this vertical speed going up. Um, and it's crazy. It just keeps going up and up and up and up and up. And then you just finally start to stall out and you just feel like you're going straight up, but you're not. You're still going about 30, 40 K's an hour forward at the same time. So it's dis disorientating a bit distorting.

So what I'm hearing from you is that you jump out of the airplane and you go head down, which is probably more like 0. 8, right? Cause you're not, you're not going just like straight down. No, I'm going straight down. Sometimes backwards the other way. Oh, okay.

And so then, um, When you feel like you've got as much speed as you possibly can, you have this recovery arc that's gradual is, and the length of that recovery arc, is that something that's all based on feel or are you using the help of your, your, uh, your fly site, or I've got a little bit about, I've got a, I've got a flare track on my fly site that tells me how to do it. So. So what I've got is I've, um, I learned that it's basically the same as my PPC entrance.

So at 400 meters it goes 4, at 300 meters it goes 3, at 200 meters it goes 2, 100, 1. And then it's got, um, flare. And then basically it's, I just keep it as entering, but that's when you're flat. So basically as soon as I hear 4, I start peeling out. And then by the time I reach, um, flare, I want to be flat. So it's like four, three, two, one flare. And you're just keeping everything the same. You're not really changing, but you're just trying to use those. Is that the actual pace? Sorry.

I keep cutting you off the actual pace. Yeah. It's like four, three, two, one flare. And then I'm just using that to time. My peel out. So if I go four, three, two, I just time that peel out. But if I'm, if I start missing, like once I've started that peel out, I don't stop that right. Even I just ignore the numbers after that almost and just keep that right. Keep that right. No matter what. And if I nail the four, three, two, one flare, yeah, rad. That's cool.

But once I start that right, that's the right I'm locked in until I, until I start going up and I'm really starting to go up, then I just punch back. And just basically punch back and just try to boost the rest of that out. So it's almost like a donkey kick halfway, halfway up, just donkey kick the crap out of it and just see how much you can punch out because you're already going up. Right?

You just want to punch that last bit out because if you kept on that angle, it wouldn't be efficient enough to go higher. You just end up dragging too much out and breaking on the way up. So that's the only time that I break that arc is halfway up. Then I just snap it up and get pretty aggressive. Um, I don't usually tell people that. Now it's out in the world. Come beat me. Bring it. Yeah, bring it. But yeah, I've never done a good flare.

I've, I've never done a good flare that I've actually been happy with. I've never nailed it, not yet, not once. So there's... Something to work towards. Yeah, I might even, well, I'm going to Spaceland next year, well sorry, this year, so I might even start working on that again, because I think 130 metres naturals is achievable. What about, um, I mean some of the... Some of the common mistakes that I see is that people like look up and their shoulders fall back and they begin to D arch.

Uh, what are some, some common mistakes that you see that you could help people? Like, um, Yeah, so I can tell you the configuration if you want it. So basically I'm slightly anhedral the entire time. Um, sorry, I'm, I'm flat. I'm in the speed, I'm in the speed position when I'm head down. As soon as I start peeling out, I've got anhedral arms. I start applying anhedral arms very slightly, not over exaggerated.

And then I'm just locking in de arched, and all I'm doing is, um, slightly de arched, slightly anhedral arms. And I'm just keeping that de arched throughout the entire way. And the way I'm peeling up is almost like looking up. Everything else is just locked. Don't, don't peel, don't lean your head back too much. Otherwise, you're going to start banana ing and peeling, uh, peeling out of that D Arch.

Um, and you'll start using your belly and you'll start getting that belly position where you're arched and the air's just spilling off you. You want to keep that D Arch and your anhedral as a Basically that's holding a track of air.

And you're using that as a rail almost, you know, you're like, you're flying on this rail where your arms are holding like this, and you're going, if that makes sense, using, using the anhedral as a rail to hold on the entire time until the end when you just punch it. And then you can go back into, um, speed flight, which is flat straight arms. Um, that's the way I go about it. It seems to work. Good stuff. Um, um, before we, we're starting to run out of time.

So, uh, or at least I've, I've got to get going pretty soon, but there's a couple of more things that, um, I want to ask you about and this year's competition. World. Yeah. There were some, um, wingtips that sort of like captured everybody's imaginations from the sideline. And I think that there was quite a bit of, uh, Mm, drama or controversy surrounding it as well. So tell us a little bit about that story and, and, and, um, Yeah. What we can anticipate in the future.

Yeah. So basically one of the competitors, um, awesome, uh, I think there are about four inch longer. Um, so generally your wingsuit finishes at your hands and you've got that, got those little sticks at the side, um, your grippers and basically what a competitor did and it was within the rules, um, because there wasn't a clear definition of what a wingsuit was. And the grippers, et cetera. So basically just testing the rules. Why not?

Uh, nationals basically had four more inches of wing than everyone else. So they were extending the wings and making it wider, which again produces more lift, um, slight reduction in overall speed, but the lift that it generated was great for time and great for distance. So he ran that at nationals. Um, and then everyone was trying to get them banned after that. Just so that by the time worlds came around. They weren't a thing. They could get banned before worlds actually happened.

Um, and as it worked out, that they were within the rules. So, I was already over in Arizona training, and I got a message from Chris Gaylor, and he just said, hey dude, um, I don't know if you're aware of what's going on.

Um, this is what's happening, um, I'm giving you access, I'm going to 3D print some things, if you want to swing me some money, we're just trying to make this competition fair, and he offered it to, man, I think about six other people, six other competitors, but only three of us ended up using them. Um, and I was able to gain maybe four or five seconds more in my time run and about three to 400 meters more in my distance runs, but I lost about 10 kilometers in my speed time and distance.

It, it made such a difference that, you know, it was, it was pretty hard to compete with. Um, but the controversy is, and I felt like a bit of a douche was it made the competition unfair. All these people had trained all year, they'd spent all this money to get to worlds.

You know, and for some people to be running these modified things that they'd never even seen before or heard about and you were just in competition running them, and there were, there were protests throughout the entire competition, the whole way from jump one all the way to the end, um, and rightly so, uh, I don't want to see them in competition, I just use them because, you know, I got offered and it was a chance to, you know, sort of stay at the top still.

Um, and it wasn't breaking the rules. So I was like, Oh, well it's not breaking the rules. Technically. Um, I'll give it a crack and thing is, yeah, that they're just. They are a little bit dangerous. There's a few people like on my third jump, I tore a muscle in my forearm in competition and I was rehabbing the entire time and icing my arm after every jump before every jump, just to, just so my arm could function and I could still hold onto it and use my, use my gripper.

But yeah, I, third jump in comp, man, I just tore my forearm to pieces. And so I was just rehab, I didn't even That much. Yeah, there's just, you're feeling that much pressure on those tips. Yeah, well, cause I, I'd only done a handful of jumps before the actual competition with them. Like we, we only got them like not even a week before comp, you know? So I put about maybe five jumps on them before I went to worlds with them.

And I think I was just gripping them and holding for dear life way too hard. That's all it was. And, um, there's just so much stress on me. If I relaxed, I probably would have been fine. Uh, another guy used them once.

And he had arm pump for three days afterwards and he didn't decide to use them in comp because he was like he's done thousands of wingsuit jumps you know and for him to just go nah I can't handle these and then other people are in the competition like oh you only did that because you had the because you had the wingtip extensions blah blah but I mean look at Joe Riddler I know he was coming back from injury but if if these were the magic pill he would have been you know right up there doing

the same times the same distances the same everything man it just If you're a skillful person, you can use that extra 3 percent that nobody's able to access. And I think that's what was happening. I think a lot of people with these, with the extensions do better, but I think, you know, it's not the way forward that I would like to see anyway. I just like to see a fair competition where it's about the wingsuit.

And I know a lot of people wanted to see, Hey man, this could be good for the evolution of the sport. But maybe if you want to do that, maybe create another category, perhaps unlimited or something. I don't know. I don't know the solution. I don't want to hold the sport back. But at the same time, we've got to think about safety and, and our pilots.

And I think right now with the skill of everyone at Worlds, I don't think it would be appropriate for all these people just to be designing all these weird and wacky extensions, like how far will they take it? You know? So after Worlds happened, um, the rules have actually been changed. So you cannot run these extensions anymore. The suit has to finish at your first knuckle, wingspan wise, so they can't go any further. Um, how people are going to manipulate that is up to them now.

Um, how manufacturers are going to manufacture their suits for those last ribs up to them. Um, parents are going to start putting rings around their children's arms to stretch them out. Like, uh, African women, I'm the most, see, the thing is, I'm the most, I'm going to get disadvantaged out of this cause I got T Rex arms. You know, my arms are short, they're not long. I'm not an orangutan. Um, so I, man, I'm going to give too much away. I order my wingsuits longer than my hands.

Longer than they should normally fit and I modify the end so that I'm able to grab where the grippers are So essentially i've been running technically a little bit of extensions the whole time But now that's going to have to change. I'm, not sure exactly how they're going to regulate it because how does a manufacturer know? Where everyone's knuckles going to be? Everyone's, everyone's hands are different back to jujitsu. They would, they would measure stuff like that.

Like they'd measure your key. Yeah. Like you put it on and then they measure that. If there's a question, you know, like someone would call into question the, your, the fit of your key and then the referee would come over and measure it. So I could imagine that being a similar in this case. What kind of fall speeds were you guys getting with those wingtips?

So before the wingtips I could get around sustainably, I could get around, um, you know, 37 to 40 kilometers an hour and then with the wingtips I was getting like low 30s low 30 kilometers an hour and anything out of that I was like, oh man, I'm doing crap going 40 kilometers an hour down that's crap for these things and I remember just being so mind blown and we were getting It was that much of a difference.

We were getting further distances than we were before in our time runs, doing time runs, you know, like we do a distance run, but without the extensions, but in your time runs, you were doing far further distances than those. That's because your fall rate was just so slow that you're able to carry it more. Wow. Yeah, it was insane. So there's, put it this way. There's something to explore there. I mean, 30 miles per hour, that's a survivable impact speed, right? That's Kilometers. Even lower.

That's, that's, you can do an impact roll. You would just have to need to train a little bit of a parkour and you can just roll right out of that. Just cartwheel right out. I think, um, like the biggest thing, um, like my distances, I was saying earlier that 4. 0 is manageable. With this, I got a 4. 6 wind corrected run, like that's unheard of. 4. 6 kilometers going from 4. 0s to 4. 6 with just one modification. Like that's, that's amazing.

I mean, but this is also really what we're stepping into with this is like, uh, close to Ridge soaring capabilities, like being able to like step out into a strong wind and, and Ridge soar your, a wingsuit. Yeah, it's, it's absolutely insane. And, you know, I, I've still got them. I, I didn't want to let them go. So I've still got them so I can play with them on, um, my other suits. I'm not going to do the flare challenge in them.

I, I'm very tempted to, because the flare power on those things was absolutely insane. Uh, I might do one, but I won't post it on the SkyDerby because I don't think that's fair either. Well, sounds like they need to make another class. Hey man, this has been amazing conversation. Um, I think we could take this for hours and hours again. Let's do it again, because there's a lot of other stuff I'd love to chat with you about as far as like technical wingsuit flying stuff.

Um, thanks so much for your time, man. And um, yeah, I look forward to chatting with you again soon. Yeah, no worries. You're free to pick my brain whenever you want, mate. Just give me a buzz. And uh, do you do online coaching or is there anything, how can people get in touch with you? Yeah, just my, The easiest way to get in touch with me would be either Instagram or lukerogers. ws at gmail. com. That's my email address. Um, the fastest way is always Instagram. Just message me on Instagram.

It's the fastest way. Always check that. Um, all right. Yeah. Thanks again, Luke. No worries. We hope you enjoyed this episode. If you have any thoughts about what you've just heard, please don't hesitate to hit us up. A big shout out to Mark Stockwell, our sound mixer and co producer. We love you, man. If you'd like to learn more about the podcast, please visit exitpointpodcast. com. See you on the next one.