Skydiving Currency Period: What To Do In The Off-Season

Key Takeaways
Skydiving currency refers to the time since a skydiver’s most recent jump. Currency requirements vary based on which USPA license a skydiver holds, but staying current is more important than just maintaining a license. Staying current is important to safety, and during the off-season, it’s important to take steps to stay involved with the sport.

What Is a Currency Period In Skydiving?

In skydiving, our “currency” isn’t the U.S. dollar (although those really help to pay for jumps!). Instead, skydiving currency refers to the amount of time that’s passed since your last jump. In order to maintain the ability to jump with self-supervision, you must meet the minimum currency requirements based on your license.

Currency Period Skydiving Rules

Who shouldn’t go skydiving? Someone who has surpassed the currency requirement for their current license. Once uncurrent, it’s imperative that you connect with a USPA-certified coach or instructor before making another skydive. You’ll have to get cleared for self-supervision again by making a jump with a coach.

Why Is Staying Current Important?

When you’re skydiving, there is a lot to remember. From proper body position in freefall to emergency procedures, staying current maintains essential skills and keeps reaction times sharp. Plus, it’ll keep you in the know with any updates in the gear or the community. Generally, the more current you are, the more safety habits you’ll have in your muscle memory.

Plus, there are lots of mental and physical benefits to skydiving. Is skydiving good for the body? It sure can be! Skydiving uses muscles that we don’t utilize in everyday life, or even during on-the-ground workouts. When people come back from a period of not jumping, their first jump back often results in soreness.

Moreover, the mental benefits of jumping are numerous. Even if skydiving at a winter dropzone isn’t an option for you, it’s a good idea to stay in touch with your skydiving fam in the off-season.

Tips To Stay Current In The Off-Season

Official skydiving currency is just related to the amount of time between jumps, but more casually, skydiving currency means how active you are in the sport. So, there are a few steps you can take aside from jumping every weekend to keep current in the off-season.

Don’t Lose Sight of Your EPs!

EPs, or “emergency procedures,” are something skydivers have committed to muscle memory, and it’s important to exercise this muscle in the off-season. Put your rig on and mock them up, or just do it without the rig.

After a long period away from skydiving, it’s easy to forget important lessons like the skydiving five-second rule. What is the five-second rule of skydiving? It means that you delay no more than five seconds before deciding to deploy your reserve parachute in case of a malfunction.

Talk With Other Jumpers

Bounce memories, ideas, and questions off of one another to maintain a sharp skydiving brain! Talking about skydiving is actually a great way to stay active in the sport when it’s too cold to jump.

You can also watch skydiving videos or read skydiving books, like The Parachute and Its Pilot. Keeping up with skydiving media keeps the sport fresh in your mind, even if you aren’t jumping.

Tunnel Time

Going to the indoor skydiving tunnel is a physical way to stay involved in the sport and keep practicing actual freefall skills. Plus, it’s really fun. It’s also cheaper to split tunnel time among friends, so get your DZ besties to come with you!

Travel to Winter Dropzones

Florida’s skydiving season starts in the wintertime! Get a few friends together, split the travel, and take a trip anywhere warm where people are still constantly jumping.

There are also some dropzones that offer winter skydiving, meaning they stay open on certain good-weather days even if it’s cold! This is more common where winters are milder, and usually these dropzones are only open on weekends.

What If I Get Uncurrent?

Don’t fret! Instructors and coaches are there to help people regain currency after falling out for a bit. It’s important to maintain an attitude of humility and learning all the time, but especially when uncurrent.

It’s also not a bad idea to upsize your parachute for a few jumps when coming back from time off in the sport. A larger canopy means a lower wingloading, which equals more margin for error.

What is the riskiest part of skydiving? Complacency! Skydiving is an extreme sport that carries inherent risks, but we mitigate many of those risks through training and a culture of safety. If skydivers become complacent, like if they don’t take staying current seriously, it can be easy to fall into practices that reflect complacent attitudes.

Get Current at Wisconsin Skydiving Center!

We can’t wait to show you the beautiful Wisconsin skies during our regular season, and you can always book your jump online! Come get current with us and get back into the fun of skydiving. Blue skies!