Relative Work (RW): Teamwork in Freefall

There is a precise moment when you stop being just a skydiver and become part of something bigger. It's not when you exit the aircraft. It's not when you open your canopy. It's when, at 4,000 meters, you reach out your hand and someone else grabs it — and together you build something that didn't exist a second before. Welcome to Relative Work.

If you have 50–200 jumps under your belt, you've probably already heard of RW, FS, formations, 4-way. Maybe you've already done a few 2-way jumps with a coach or an experienced friend. Maybe not. Either way, this is the discipline that structures the technical progression of most skydivers — and it's worth understanding thoroughly before diving in headfirst.

What Relative Work Is — and Why It's Called That

The term Relative Work — abbreviated RW — was coined in the 1970s to describe a precise physical concept: controlling your position relative to other bodies in freefall. You are not moving relative to the ground. You are moving relative to the others. It's a subtle but fundamental distinction, and those who don't internalize it stay stuck for hundreds of jumps.

Today the discipline is officially called Formation Skydiving (FS) by the FAI and the IPC (International Parachuting Commission), but at Italian dropzones you'll still hear RW, relativa, or simply "FS." They all mean the same thing. The goal is to build formations — geometric figures defined by an international code — as quickly as possible, in sequence, before break-off forces separation and deployment.

The Mechanics of Relative Flight: What's Really Happening in the Air

In the standard position — known as the boxman, belly-to-earth, arms and legs spread — you fall at roughly 190–200 km/h. Every body in that position falls at the same terminal velocity. This is the principle that makes Relative Work possible: if two people have the same vertical speed, they can move toward each other using only small adjustments in body angle.

Moving forward means reducing aerodynamic drag: you bring your arms in slightly and push your hips forward. Moving backward means increasing it: you spread your arms and legs wider and pull your hips back. Rising or falling relative to others is managed through body angle. It sounds simple on paper. In the air, with wind at 200 km/h and three other bodies moving around you, it's a precision game that takes hundreds of hours of work.

The critical point every newcomer must understand: you don't "fly toward" someone — you manage your relative speed. Someone who arrives too fast breaks the formation, costs the team points, and — in the worst cases — creates situations of uncontrolled contact. RW teaches body control before any other discipline. It's no coincidence that it's considered the foundation.

From 2-Way to 8-Way: Competition Formats and Progression

Progression in RW naturally follows the number of people involved. It's not just a matter of increasing difficulty: each format has a different organizational logic, demands specific skills, and shapes a different kind of skydiver.

2-Way

Two people, a sequence of formations, the clock running. 2-way is the entry point into competitive RW and also the ultimate technical laboratory. With only one other person in the air, there's nowhere to hide: every positioning error, every delay, every bad approach is immediately visible — to your partner, to the video judge, and to yourself in the debrief. I've seen skydivers with 800 jumps showing massive technical gaps in 2-way, simply because they had never worked in this format in a structured way.

4-Way

4-way is the heart of RW. Four people, typically 35 seconds of freefall under current FAI rules, a catalog of FAI-coded formations that must be completed in sequence. Scoring is counted in points: each correctly completed formation is worth one point. The best elite teams in the world reach 20–25 points per round, while top Italian teams score lower. An intermediate team scoring 10–12 points is already doing solid work. 4-way demands communication, role assignment (inside center, outside center, point, tail), and a synchrony that cannot be improvised.

This is where the sporting metaphor becomes concrete: 4-way is like a relay race where everyone runs at the same time. If one of the four is half a second late on every transition, you lose two or three points over 35 seconds. The math is brutal. That's why serious teams train on the ground — on creepers, on mats, in the wind tunnel — before they ever get on the plane.

8-Way

Eight people. The same principle as 4-way, but the organizational complexity is exponentially higher. 8-way demands a level of group coordination that goes well beyond individual technique: slot assignment, dive pool, formation calls, managing break-off with eight bodies that must separate safely. In Italy, very few teams compete regularly in 8-way at the national level. It's a discipline for those who already have a solid 4-way foundation and want to raise the bar even further.

How You Really Progress: The Long Road Worth Taking

I want to be direct, because I've seen too many newcomers burn through their expectations. With 50 jumps you're not ready for competitive 4-way. With 100 jumps you're probably still working on your base position. With 200 jumps you can start doing structured 2-way with a coach and begin to understand what working in relative really means. This isn't discouraging — it's the map.

The concrete progression that works looks like this:

Solidify your base position. Before thinking about formations, you need to be stable in the boxman without having to concentrate on it. It has to become automatic.

Work with a coach in 2-way. Not with a friend who has 300 more jumps than you. With someone who knows what to look for and how to correct you. Many ENAC-certified skydiving schools offer structured coaching even after you're licensed.

Use the wind tunnel. In the language of skydiving schools, a tunnel session is often compared to many jumps in terms of actual freefall time. It's not optional — it's the most efficient way to correct positioning errors. I did my first tunnel sessions at Empuriabrava, and the difference in the air was noticeable from the very next jump.

Watch your videos. Video debriefing is the most powerful tool you have. Every 4-way jump should be filmed by a camera flyer or a fixed point on the aircraft. What you think you're doing in the air and what you're actually doing are often two very different things.

Be patient with the numbers. From 200 to 500 jumps, if you work in a structured way, you become a solid RW skydiver. From 500 onward you start to understand what it means to anticipate rather than react.

Those who have walked this path often describe a similar progression: the first structured RW jumps at their home drop zone, then a genuine understanding of relative work in more demanding settings — camps with American instructors who completely dismantle your position and rebuild it from scratch, tunnel sessions abroad, European camps at dedicated locations. These experiences aren't mentioned to show off: they're mentioned because serious progression requires exposure to different environments, different coaches, different levels of competition. Your home DZ is the starting point, not the finish line.

FAI Competitions: How the Competitive System Works

RW is a discipline that has seen Olympic candidacies, but it has a solid international competitive structure. At the Italian level, competitions are organized under the Aero Club d'Italia (AeCI), which manages sport parachuting activity and represents Italy to the FAI (Fédération Aéronautique Internationale) and its parachuting commission, the IPC.

To participate in national competitions you must be a member of an AeCI-affiliated aero club. This membership is separate from your ENAC skydiving license, which is the document that operationally authorizes you to jump: the license is ENAC, the sports membership for competitions is AeCI. Keep this in mind, because it's a distinction that confuses many newcomers.

FAI competitive categories in FS typically include:

4-way Open and 4-way Intermediate: the most popular categories at the national level

4-way Vertical (VFS — Vertical Formation Skydiving): a freefly variant, with formations built in a vertical body position

8-way: for more established teams

2-way: in some competitions as a separate category

Each competition round involves a fixed number of jumps (typically 8–10 rounds, depending on the format and level of the competition). The final score is the sum of points across all rounds. The top Italian teams then go on to compete at FAI European and World Championships.

The Wind Tunnel: The Progression Accelerator You Can't Ignore

I've already mentioned it, but it deserves its own section. The wind tunnel — indoor skydiving — is a vertical column of air that replicates freefall conditions on the ground. For RW it's a transformative tool: you can log 15 minutes of flight in a single session, equivalent to many jumps in terms of actual freefall time, with the ability to stop, correct yourself, and try again immediately.

In Italy the number of available tunnels is still limited compared to northern Europe, but the network is growing. Many Italian skydivers travel to European tunnels — Empuriabrava, Madrid, Paris, Amsterdam — for intensive coaching sessions. If you're working on a specific positioning problem or a transition you can't seem to nail, three hours in the tunnel with an FS coach is worth more than 50 unstructured jumps.

In Summary: Why RW Is the Discipline to Build Everything On

Relative Work is not just one discipline among many. It is the grammar of skydiving. You learn to control your body in relation to others, you learn to read space in freefall, you learn what it means to be accountable to a team. These skills transfer everywhere: into freefly, angle flying, canopy piloting. Those who fly well in RW fly well in everything.

If you have 50–200 jumps and want to structure your progression, the path is this: solidify your position, find a coach, work in 2-way, use the tunnel, build a team. Don't rush the stages. The road from 50 to 500 jumps feels long when you're at the beginning. Looking back on it with a few thousand jumps behind you, I can assure you it's the best part of the journey.