Why Do Skydivers Wear Jumpsuits?

Why Do Skydivers Wear Jumpsuits?

Skydiving jumpsuits are an important part of a skydiver's equipment. If you've ever seen people skydiving, or done it yourself, you'll know that skydiving jumpsuits can be quite plain, usually just one or two colours. Then, there are much more extravagant jumpsuits, that come in neon colours or wild designs. It's true that skydivers can look pretty outrageous in their jumpsuits!

The skydiving jumpsuit isn't just a fashion statement. It serves many purposes, as we'll explain here:

Jumpsuits for functionality

Skydiving is often referred to as 'falling with style'! It's true that we are falling and that, in many ways, we're controlled by gravity. The bottom line is that we're going down, whatever we do!

That said, we can change the way that we fall - which is how we are able to move around the sky and to do things like building formations with one another.

Jumpsuits can play a big part in this. When we skydive, we all fall at what we call 'terminal velocity'. This is our fastest falling speed, and it differs from person to person. Ideally, we all want to fall at similar speeds, so we can fly together.

Having a baggier jumpsuit makes us fall slower. Having a tighter, more streamlined jumpsuit makes us fall faster. So we tend to see bigger skydivers wearing baggier jumpsuits, and smaller skydivers wearing tighter jumpsuits. Makes sense, right?

Jumpsuits for different disciplines

Skydiving isn't just about 'falling'. On no! In skydiving, there's so much to do and so much to learn. There really is something for everyone!

The many disciplines of skydiving include things like formation skydiving (flying with other people to build shapes) and freeflying (flying in standing or seated positions).

In formation skydiving, we wear jumpsuits that have something called 'booties'. Booties are like sails between the knee and the foot. If you imagine standing up and then drawing a line from your knee to your toes, that's where the booty goes. Booties give added power to the lower leg, helping formation skydivers to turn faster.

In freeflying, we tend to be flying in a seated or upside down position. This means that our jumpsuits are tighter and tend to be in more streamlined materials, so we don't have any drag on any part of our body and we can move into the different positions more freely.

That means that jumpsuits differ depending on the discipline. Most skydivers will have more than one jumpsuit, so they can change disciplines. The ultimate dream of most skydivers is to have multiple jumpsuits for the different disciplines, all in the same colours and matching with our other equipment too - that's when we know we're skydiving rockstars!

Jumpsuits for safety

Jumpsuits also help with safety. When we jump, we want to be sure that we don't have anything that could snag on our equipment, so covering ourselves with a jumpsuit is useful.

One of the main reasons for this is that we have a number of handles on our skydiving equipment. These handles are used to deploy our parachutes and to detach our main parachute and deploy our reserve in the event that the main malfunctions. We don't want anything getting in the way of us operating our equipment, so we cover it all up with our jumpsuits!

Jumpsuits: because we all think we're superheroes...

The bottom line is that, even if the reasons above didn't exist or didn't matter, we'd probably still wear jumpsuits.

That's because we all think we're superheroes.

Well, that might not be strictly true, but we challenge you to find a skydiver who doesn't take great pleasure in their skydiving 'outfit'! We spend a lot of time working out what Our Colour will be. We invest in jumpsuits, parachutes, rigs, gloves, goggles, sunglasses, trainers, jackets... all in Our Colour(s).

It all comes down to personal preference. Jumpsuits are a great way for us to show off our personalities. And when we watch our skydiving videos (and believe us, there are always plenty of cameras on our jumps!), we can easily spot ourselves amongst our buddies thanks to our unique jumpsuits.

Fancy joining us for a tandem skydive? You'll get a jumpsuit to wear too! What are you waiting for? Book yours today.