Freefly from Scratch: What It Is, How to Start, and How Many Jumps You Really Need

I remember the exact moment. I was at Pistoia, with just over 150 jumps in my logbook, feeling — like everyone at that stage — pretty comfortable in boxman. Then I watched a group of freeflyers land. One of them had been sitting upright through the entire freefall, orbiting the others as if the sky were his living room. I stood there, helmet in hand, and thought: I want to do that. It took me another 200 jumps before I truly understood what I'd been watching, and another 200 on top of that before I could do it with any semblance of control. If you're reading this with 50, 100, or 150 jumps and that same fire in your eyes, this article is for you. But I'll tell you one thing straight away: the road is long, and every step of it is worth it.

What Freefly Is and Why It's Different from RW

Formation Skydiving (FS) — what we often call relativa or RW in Italy — is the classic discipline: horizontal body, belly to earth, fall rate around 190–200 km/h. It's the foundation of everything, the mother tongue of sport skydiving. Freefly breaks that mold. You fly in positions other than horizontal: seated (sit-fly), head-down, on your back (back-fly). The speeds change dramatically — in head-down you can easily reach 280–320 km/h — and with them, the entire physics of flight changes, along with canopy deployment management, spatial awareness, and group separation before the pull.

It's not just an aesthetic difference. Flying vertically means every small imbalance is amplified: one hip out of place in head-down can send you into an uncontrolled spin at twice the speed you'd experience in RW. That's why freefly is not a discipline for people in a hurry. It's a discipline for people who have respect — for the sky, for others in the formation, and for the learning process.

The Prerequisite Nobody Wants to Hear: Jump Numbers Matter

Let's address the elephant in the room. How many jumps do you need before starting freefly? The honest answer is: it depends, but rarely fewer than 200, and often more. And not just any jumps — quality jumps, with genuine awareness of your body position in the air, solid altimeter reading, accurate landings, and the ability to handle basic situations on your own.

Why that threshold? Because in freefly, before you even begin learning to fly in sit, you need to have fully automated everything you still do consciously in boxman: altimeter checks, pull altitude, separation, emergency procedures. In head-down at 280–320 km/h you don't have the cognitive bandwidth to think about where your hands are and simultaneously manage an off-heading opening. Those things need to be reflexes, not thoughts. And reflexes are built through jumps, not YouTube videos.

I've seen people with 80 jumps show up to a freefly coach convinced they were ready. The coach sent them back to do RW. Not out of cruelty, but because taking someone into the air who isn't ready isn't teaching them freefly — it's putting them, the coach, and everyone else in that piece of sky at risk. Skydiving does not forgive skipped steps.

The Progression: Back-Fly, Sit-Fly, Head-Down — In That Order

The freefly progression follows a precise internal logic. You don't start with head-down just because it's the most spectacular position. You start with back-fly — flying on your back — because it teaches you to control your longitudinal axis with the sky above your head, meaning with your visual reference inverted. It's disorienting, it's slow to learn, and it's essential.

Then comes sit-fly: seated position, legs at 90 degrees, torso vertical, arms acting as stabilizers. It's the most intuitive freefly position and the one most people spend the most time on at the beginning. It seems simple — we're used to sitting down — but in the air every micro-movement translates into a translation across the sky. Learning to stay still in sit is weeks of work and dozens of jumps.

Head-down comes after, once sit is solid. Not before. In head-down, speed increases significantly and deployment management requires effective separation and a more conservative pull altitude until you have experience. Many coaches advise against approaching head-down before having roughly 50–100 freefly jumps already in the logbook — depending on the coach and individual progression — with a stable sit and controlled back-fly.

The Freefly Course: FF1, FF2, and the Role of the Coach

In Italy, ENAC-certified skydiving schools that offer structured freefly programs typically organize the curriculum into progressive modules, often called FF1 and FF2 (the naming varies between schools, but the logic is similar). FF1 covers back-fly and basic sit-fly: stable exit, position control, fall rate awareness, pre-pull separation. FF2 introduces sit-fly in formation, docking with another freeflyer, and the first foundations of head-down.

A freefly coach is not simply someone who can fly head-down. They're someone who knows how to teach in freefall — who can read your body position while you're both moving at 250 km/h, give you visual feedback in the air and verbal feedback on the ground, and build a progression tailored to your level. Look for a coach with documented teaching experience, not just personal jump numbers. Ask for references; ask how many students they've taken from sit to head-down. A good coach is honest about your progression even when it's not what you want to hear.

Video debriefs are an integral part of the process. Every jump with your coach should be filmed — with a camera on the coach's helmet or yours — and reviewed on the ground before the next jump. In freefly you can't feel what you're doing while you fly: sensory feedback is deceptive, especially at the start. Video is the mirror that doesn't lie.

The Suit: What to Wear (and What Not to Buy Yet)

The first question every freefly newcomer asks is: do I need a special suit? The answer is yes, but not right away, and not the one you've been eyeing on Instagram. In the early stages of sit-fly you can use a standard RW suit or even a fitted base layer. What matters is that it has no loose, flapping sections that create asymmetric drag and send you into an unintended spin. No bell-bottom legs, no baggy sleeves.

Dedicated freefly suits — form-fitting, with grips on the thighs and arms, often made from lycra or similar materials — come into play when you start flying in formation and need surfaces the coach (or jump partner) can use to guide or dock on you. Before buying one, try on someone else's at your drop zone. Sizing and fit vary enormously between brands, and a suit that doesn't fit you properly is worse than no suit at all.

A note on audible altimeters: in freefly they're essentially mandatory, not optional. When you're head-down at 300 km/h with your head pointed at the ground, reading a wrist altimeter requires a body rotation that — in the early stages — will cost you your position. An audible alerts you at your preset altitudes without requiring any action on your part. It's a safety tool, not a gadget.

Where to Learn: Your Home DZ, Travel, and the Numbers Game

Your home drop zone is the right place to build your foundations. But freefly grows with exposure: different coaches, different flying styles, more air time. I did my first sit jumps at Pistoia, refined my head-down at Empuriabrava — the drop zone on the Catalan coast that is effectively Europe's training ground for anyone wanting to build volume — and truly understood what flying in formation means during a tunnel camp in California at Perris Valley. Dubai taught me how to manage warm thermals and unfamiliar landing conditions. Every drop zone adds a layer.

But — and this is important — you can't show up at Empuriabrava with 80 jumps and expect to come home a freeflyer. You go there when you already have a solid foundation, because that's where you can do 5–6 jumps a day with internationally-level coaches and compress months of progression into a single week. Go too early and you waste your money — and worse, you risk cementing bad habits that will take twice the effort to unlearn.

The wind tunnel is an extraordinary tool for accelerating your sit and back-fly learning. One hour in the tunnel is worth — in terms of time spent in position — roughly 60 minutes of freefall, compared to the approximately 60 seconds each individual skydive gives you. It doesn't replace the sky, but it compresses the learning curve significantly. If you have access to a tunnel near you, use it before starting your freefly course: you'll arrive at your first jump with the coach already holding a basic position, saving jumps — and money.

The Freefly CS: The Regulatory Framework

In Italy, freefly falls under the Special Techniques (CS) category regulated by ENAC. The ENAC regulations set out specific requirements for practicing these disciplines independently — experience requirements (number of recent jumps), training with a qualified instructor, and in some cases a practical assessment. The exact details vary and are updated periodically: for the precise CS freefly requirements, I encourage you to check the current version of the ENAC Parachuting Licence Regulations on enac.gov.it and to speak with your ENAC-certified school.

This isn't bureaucracy for its own sake. The CS exists because freefly — especially head-down in formation — introduces specific risks that require awareness, training, and a verifiable progression pathway. Following the regulatory framework isn't an obstacle to your progress: it's the structure that allows you to progress safely, and to do so within a community that shares common standards.

In Summary: A Roadmap for Starting from Zero

If I had to summarize the freefly journey for someone with 50–200 jumps in their logbook, the roadmap looks like this:

Build your RW foundation — most coaches recommend at least 200 jumps with solid air awareness, accurate landings, and the ability to handle basic situations independently (this is not an ENAC regulatory requirement, but a practical threshold widely shared within the community).

Use the wind tunnel — even just 30–60 minutes to get a feel for back-fly and sit before taking them into the sky.

Find a freefly coach at your ENAC-certified drop zone — someone with teaching experience, not just personal jump numbers.

Start with FF1: basic back-fly and sit-fly, with video debriefs after every jump.

Don't rush toward head-down — your sit needs to be solid before you go vertical.

Invest in an audible altimeter before you buy a dedicated freefly suit.

Plan a trip to Empuriabrava or another high-volume drop zone once you already have 30–50 freefly jumps in your logbook — not before.

Verify the ENAC requirements for the freefly CS with your school and build your progression through the proper channels.

Freefly is the discipline that changed the way I look at the sky. But the sky isn't given to you — it's earned, jump by jump, with patience and the right guidance. Four hundred and fifty jumps ago, I didn't know that yet. Now I do.