Paragliding Physiology & Safety Protocols | Dr Matt Wilkes Explains: Biophysics in the Art of Flight

What we found was that first of all, pilots look for their reserve handle along their skeleton. So if they're rotating forwards, their hand naturally goes to their hip bone. If they're rotating backwards as they would in the SAT on auto rotation, they go a bit further down their thigh. We also found that one of the best pieces of advice I was given by a senior doctor was don't just do something man, stand there. So the opposite of the don't just stand there, do something. It's the idea of take some time, soak in what's happened, think about your options and make the right decision psychologically. It's also been shown that if you're able to integrate the

experience and understand why something happened, then you're less likely to find it traumatising. Doc, I have heard your name time and again at various places and you know, one thing that has come to my mind a lot of times is that Physiology of the art of light is kind of very different from the Physiology of usual sports. So what I'm wondering is that how important is the the physical aspect in paragliding, even though it is not a very physically demanding sport as we look at it? I think it's a really interesting question because a lot of us come from a sports background and so when we think

about training for anything, we think, right, I've got to go for a run, I've got to lift some weights, I've got to do all this stuff. And when we're in the air, we're still subjected to demanding conditions. You know, often it's cold or it might be a high altitude or there might be G forces. We might have to run hard for take off, but the kind of loading on the body is different. You know, it's kind of light on the legs but very heavy on the brain. And so the way I think about it is that Physiology is important because it sets us up to make the right decisions and do the

right things. And optimizing Physiology kind of makes sense because if you want to fly well, you want to get your brain in the best possible state. But it's not kind of like it would be if I'm going to run a marathon where I need to just be actively training my my heart and my legs. OK. I just want to look at it from a business perspective because this is something that I experienced myself very intimately. And the thing was when I started seeing the world from above, which is a completely different perspective, which you're not used to because obviously commercial flights does give you that maybe a little bit while

take off and landing, but you're just a spectator. You're not controlling the aircraft. There's no decision making. But the moment you start doing that in your first few high altitude flights, it's a lot of processing that your brain has to do. So the the cognitive function of the brain is, is there a certain period of a paraglider's flight or, or like the learning where the cognitive brain is adapting to this brand new sensory input that the eyes are giving it and that's why it's using more than the usual energy that it would once you kind of settle down and this becomes like once you don't get goosebumps every time you

get in the air basically. I think that's such a good question and there's so much you can pick apart. So I guess I think about this quite broadly initially. It's like, what's the context in which we're flying? Because I'm always thinking about how can we do it better or safer or, or more enjoyably, You know, it's all our hobbies. So most importantly is that we're, we're having a good time. And so when we think about going flying, you know, if we're going flying for one day, then that's going to be a different set of demands to if we're going flying day after day after day in a

comp. And you kind of feel that in the cognitive loading, don't you? Like you feel the fatigue over the course of days. Sometimes somebody's think, oh, I actually need a day off to, to clear my mind. The other thing, as you point out, is the kind of the idea of bandwidth. You know that when you, as you say, when you first fly, you get goosebumps and you can't really think about anything else. But as we start to automate our actions, as we get, you know, the flying part, you know, when you're a beginner, you're just consumed by which string do I pull and how do I land where I need to land.

When that becomes less consuming, then you start to think more about the world around you, about thermals, thinking forwards in terms of what needs to happen next, and also thinking back in terms of how you can draw on your experience. So to my mind, it's almost like the, you know, I can't necessarily say that we like we grow a paragliding cortex, but what I think we do is we shift the act of paragliding to different parts of the brain as we progress. So the sort of actions, the physical actions, you know, get shifted to more of a subconscious part of the brain. You know, the, the kind of

movement patterns will get embedded in, I suppose, less kind of cognitively demanding parts, opening that up to some of the, the bigger questions. The other kind of interesting thing that you said there though, is, is that the brain needs more energy. And this is kind of a, it's kind of an interesting fallacy, which is the brain uses 20% of our energy. That's kind of a fact that we know. But thinking hard doesn't actually use that much more like the energy that the brain is using is is really just trying to kind of maintain it in this constant state where all the nerves are just busy shifting

around potassium, sodium and doing all the things that they do. But we all know that if you've got to think hard to do something cognitively demanding, then if you don't eat that day, you're going to do worse. And we also know that if you work really hard at something all day, you get fatigued and tired. And So what that's really about is avoiding big spikes in blood glucose. So if you're eating regularly, you're keeping yourself hydrated. It's not that the brain needs extra energy and you're giving it that extra energy. It's you're keeping a really nice constant energy environment for it to draw on. And I think that's important because when people are flying,

sometimes it's tempting to like not eat for a while or to wait until you're tired or wait until you you feel like you need to eat. But actually by just eating regularly and often, even if you're not thinking that hard at the beginning of the flight, for example, you're just kind of chilling and cruising waiting for the comp to start, what you're doing is maintaining that really nice constant energy environment. So there's always a nice even supply of glucose in your blood. There aren't big spikes or big crashes, so the brain can just draw from it as it needs. Is there a certain food or type of food which is the most

optimal brain fuel which you can intake during a strenuous like cognitively heavy activity? So I think it's really about two things. First is just the practicalities, like something that is practical to eat in the air. But the second is, you know, kind of to your point at the beginning, like this isn't normal sport where you're burning tons and tons of glucose. So smashing like an energy gel or, you know, loads of sugar or other things like that, that's probably more likely to create spikes. So my take on it is actually you want kind of complex carbohydrates, so things that are broken down relatively slowly. So, you know, kind of bread or

cereal bars or things like that. That's kind of that's probably the scientific answer, but I know for a fact that sometime if I'm about to do something a bit stressful, then a few Haribo seems to make me feel better. And I can't really explain that by biochemical means, but I know by experience that that is what I crave at that point was an M&M's. So I think the scientific answer to your question would be complex carbohydrates that are easy to eat in the air. The practical answer is kind of what makes you feel good at that point in time. That's yeah, like because feel good factor is the bottom line, right?

Like if it feels good, then it's like whether it's placebo or not, but it's going to make you believe that it's good and you're kind of more likely to sail through that thought and eventually make it happen. I think so. I guess one of the things that this draws on is that it's quite hard to give paragliding specific answers based on the science. And I try, and I've tried to do some of the science, but if you think about it, paragliding is an incredibly complex activity. It's complex cognitively, but it's really complex environmentally. And so kind of classically, when you study stuff, you measure something in the Physiology like a drop in oxygen saturation and

then you do some cognitive tests like, you know, can you do a puzzle faster or more accurately? And then you generalise what that will mean for behaviour. Now in a really simple task that is a chain that's quite easy to make. But in paragliding, you know, it's something that paragliding could be a top to bottom or it could be a competition over 100 kilometres, or it could be acrobatics. It could be somebody who's a beginner, somebody who's incredibly experienced. It could be somebody who is feeling calm and chill or somebody who's had no sleep the night before. It could be somebody at the start of the season, at the end

of the season. You know, all of these things. The variation in within individuals and the variation amongst individuals means it's quite hard to give definitive answers and it's just quite hard to study. And so, and also because there aren't very many paraglider pilots, that means sample sizes are quite small. There's also not tons of money in it. You know, I've done all my research kind of on the side as a hobby really, because I love the sport and I enjoy doing the science. But it means that we don't have, say, the huge banks of data that we would have in running, for example, or football. So I guess all the answers that

I'm going to try and give during this and all the conclusion I'm trying to give doing this are the best collection of thoughts and ideas I've had drawing on all this other literature, sports stuff, environmental Physiology stuff, bit of military things, you know, all of these things I'll try and bring together. But I was a great big pinch of salt on all of my answers because none of us really know. But we've just got to try. I think even the manufacturers which probably make the most money or let's say the software people like such instrument manufacturers, even they are not in it for making huge amounts of cash, but like the amount of

satisfaction it goes. So regardless of how small it is, there is something that it gives back which is so valuable that kind of keeps all of us in as well. Oh I couldn't agree more. I've not been able to fly for a few weeks. I'm already getting frustrated and I'm already missing my flying friends. I couldn't agree more. But I'm more talk about the cashier in the sense that sadly research is a job like any other and so researched and to go where the money is. So when in these small niche sports, it's really hard to get stuff done that is directly relevant. I was thinking from the perspective of, let's say, a

pilot who wants to go out and make it big. And when it comes to because I don't know if competing is inherent when you're younger, because a lot, a lot of conventional sports kids starting from pre teens to getting into competitive circles and then investing all in, of course, for the help of whatever support system they have. And then reaching a fair bit of high level of exertion, mental, physical, like all kind of training by the late teens. And that kind of sets up a very solid foundation for them to peak or be in a position to peak when they are in their mid 20s or something. And then some of them get on to

be legends or those kind of things. I do remember Russ Ogden saying that paragliders peak around the age of 30 and probably I think one of the main reasons for that could be that monetarily the sport is very heavy and it needs you to be a bit more stable in your life before you can start going into it. But I'm like, if there is a late teen, preteen or early 20s pilot listening to this and they want to go out and chase the glory as hard as possible, what would be the ideal body type, training type and fuelling? Because if you as a researcher who has all of these resources

is saying the data set is fairly small, then these people who just have a dream or with a vision are basically layman and their only reference points is the small bits and pieces of media that gets put out in short form or long form. So I feel like, and that was one of the reason why I started the show actually, because I wanted, I had so many questions which I just could not find an answer to. And that is why I'm trying to figure out if we can give our audiences, I wouldn't say a mantra of some sort, but some sort of a baseline that all right, if you want to make it

large or do it in the most professional way, then this is where you should aim for when it comes to performing physically. Yeah, no, I see. Exactly. See where you're coming from. That quote from Russ Ogden is a shame because I started paragliding a week after.

My first, I'm going to have him on the show soon, you know, so we talked about that, so. I think it's interesting, isn't it? Is the question, is there something that is inherently important about being young, being in your teens and 20s? Or is it simply that just gives you so much exposure to the sport compared to somebody who starts later and has all the kind of life you're now chatting different podcast about how life happens whether you want it to or not. And so you know whether that's the challenge. And so it's interesting to think about. Certainly younger people acquire motor skills much faster. We all know that, but I'm

curious how much of it that is a factor. Or simply that they can just spend their summer doing it, or their parents are into it, or they've been exposed to it. It's a good question. To answer your specific point though, like where would I point people? I think Physiology is a relatively small component. I think my view on it anyway is that what is probably going to get people the furthest is consistent goal setting. And Malin Log at Flyyo has done some great stuff around this, really effectively setting goals and working out ways to achieve them. And also I think the sports psychology side of things, Kriegel started winning when he

started working with sports psychologists. Because once I think you've mastered the basics of pulling the strings and once you've got better at thermaling and gliding, the psychological component becomes so huge that I think starting that early on and developing very good psychological habits is probably an important route to success. In terms of the Physiology stuff though, purely I would think of it in terms of margin. If I think about my worst days in the sky, there are ones where I've exhausted myself on the way up to launch because in Scotland we've got to walk a lot. I'm dehydrated, I'm tired, I'm worried, I'm out of currency,

the conditions are marginal. Those are the things that I guess would set me up for failure as opposed to success. So when we think about how we might flip that around in terms of performance, you think, OK, you need enough general fitness that the act of getting to launch and getting ready is not going to be an exhausting or barrier to your day. You need the right kit. So because that helps you getting up there, getting set up, you need to make sure you're sleeping well. You need to make sure you're well fed and hydrated, as we've discussed, need to make sure that you've not been drinking or smashing a load of drugs the

night before such that your sleep has been disrupted and you're hungover. You need to think about things like sun protection, cold protection. All of those things, I guess are about giving you margin to fly your paraglider well and to make those good decisions. OK. I just quickly want to touch up on the topic of ideal body type and I think as a reference points we can take racing paragliders in a World Cup because obviously we can't just have all the other scenarios where you are a beacon flyer or you're going on a trip or like the acro competition. So let's say you are a pilot who

is racing in a cross country World Cup and ideal body type. Of course, the glider sizes, the ballast and everything is a whole different story. Which. I was going to say, I think the ideal body type is just being an absolute unit, isn't? It I think a lot of us saw that meme slash photo which Baptiste posted when they put a limit on the ballast that you cannot ballast more than 32 kilograms. And Baptiste posted a photo of him Maxime and Honor and with like huge ass protruding bellies coming out and saying that is how futurist leads are going to look like. I don't know because Formula One, yes you do lose a lot of

water or 5 kilograms or something like that. And I per race and I remember Horan saying that he also loses up to a few kilogram after a race. I'm just wondering, is an ideal body type someone like Horan or can they be a bit more muscular because of the amount of G forces that we go through? Or can there be a more stronger core because of the amount of the the core usage in, in those kind of scenarios? And of course, in our pre show notes, we exchanged the lower like benefits or lower heart rate and like avoiding the heart rate peak surges during the stress periods or something like that.

So what? What's your take on that? I think one of the nice things about paragliding is that it's pretty democratic in terms of the body types that it will accept compared to something like the high jump. I guess I think all of the points you allude to are things that could be helpful under certain circumstances. So having being someone who naturally has more G tolerance, which has a little bit to do with the heart reflexes, a little bit to do with the gap between heart and brain, and also a little bit to do, as you say with musculature. That's something that might be helpful if you have to do a

spiral dive, but it's also something that's very trainable and it's also something that's overcome able through equipment. So for example, like a drogue sheet. The the other stuff I think is probably just dwarfed by size if you're really talking about competition and your ability to fly the largest possible glider for all the aerodynamic reasons that we know. Beyond that, I don't think there is an ideal body type and I think that's a great thing. I think that's something to actually to be celebrated about our sport. And I personally would love to see rule changes in competition, which I know are difficult to do. And I know lots of people have

tried it through the wait lists or through the pool needle discussion or all of these things such that irrespective of your size, you can compete on a level playing field. And also I think that having to carry ballast is one of the most dangerous and unnecessary things that we do because the artificiality of what we have created. If we think about paragliding generally, like most people think, if you say paragliding, it's that thing where they pull you behind the boat. So no one really knows what it is we do. And lots of people in paragliding don't know who the world champion is, let alone my mother. So I think we've got this really

niche thing. And so we have the opportunity to make this really niche thing what we want it to be. And so creating an environment where if you want to race at the highest level, you have to fly a harness that is uncredibly uncomfortable, makes you sweat, the tail wraps around your face when you stall, that if you're a small pilot, you have to carry 30kg of ballast. That is a genuine health hazard, I would say on take off and on landing. To me that feels just put it kindly, like a wasted opportunity. There are ways of putting it less kindly. So I personally would love to

see us work together as a group to make it I guess both more more inclusive and also just more enjoyable for everyone involved. Because as you say, there are so few professional pilots that for most of us this is our hobby. Why are we making competing at our hobby actively unpleasant for quite a large proportion of the people that do it, and actively risky? But I'm also not a very competitive person, so I accept that other people have different views on that. Yeah, of course when it comes to competing, there is a certain aspect of our sport of pilots which are like, yes, the more crazier, the better, the more

fun. And then there's a rational side, which is let's be obvious guys. Well, I quickly want to touch upon the environmental side of the sport, that of course there's one thing that you can feel right that you can have a certain like controllable, such as the equipment and the laws and the rules and everything which kind of make it like that. But then there's a certain bit of, what do you say? Like what nature throws at us. And a lot of times you are flying in situations which are new, which are out of the ordinary. And usually one thing that I can say is that wind factor is such

a huge thing in paragliding that it it surprises you more often than not. And there have been so many times that I've gone up in the air and I've ended up with frosties on my fingers and I've had to like leave the risers and bring them back and warm them up. So when it comes to dealing with the environment, what is the biggest risk that you can be exposed to if you're not very well prepared for it? Because being prepared for something like that is only experience and experience comes from trying and getting to know about things. So it's, there's no ideal way to go out and saying that, yes,

this is how I will do it unless you've actually done it a few times. And then they're like, no, OK, I need to fine tune it a bit. So I totally agree with you and many people would say this because it's my passion or my profession, but don't underestimate these environmental factors. I think we have a tendency to do that. If we think about the environmental factors that can affect us, they're really oxygen level, cold G force and sun exposure. I would say like those are the main ones. The oxygen thing is interesting because I've flown a lot in India. It's my favorite place to fly.

I was fortunate to fly in Pakistan a few years ago, and that was wonderful as well, and to go up nice and high. Undoubtedly lower levels of oxygen affect us. They affect our ability to think. They affect, in some cases, if it gets low enough, our ability to see effectively in terms of our peripheral vision. All of those things narrow. They affect our ability to control the glider. And they also have a bit of a hangover effect. So if you get hypoxic and then you go down to a low altitude, you feel better, but you're still not back to 100% for probably up to about 90 minutes.

For those wondering what's hypoxic? So hypoxia is low levels of oxygen in the blood. Technically the term for that is hypoxemia. But I would think about it as we're in an environment when we fly high where the pressure is low. That means that the oxygen molecules, there's still 20% oxygen, same as there is at sea level, but they're all further apart. So that means to get the same amount in, you have to breathe faster, which is why actually flying at house 2 is so dehydrating, because what's happening is you're breathing in and out lots and you're shedding water each time you do so that that's one of the reasons why

it's dehydrating. The other reason is because the oxygen levels are lower. Your kidneys don't work as well, so you don't conserve water in the same way, which is why you desperately need to pee when you fly at high altitude or in cold environments. So oxygen's definitely a thing. It's hard to know what height it starts to matter at because that depends quite a lot on different people and it also depends on and by different people. Climatisation, sorry, genetics and fitness. It also depends on acclimatisation. We talk about that in a SEC. The there's a very easy way to fix it, which is to carry supplementary oxygen. But there's also a lot of

associated faff that comes with carrying supplementary oxygen. But I can only say from personal experience that when I flew within Pakistan, when I switched it on, suddenly my mood improved. I felt warmer. I could think more clearly. I almost felt like I could. I don't know if I could physically see better. I just felt less blinkered. But I felt a striking increase in bandwidth. So it's changed my perception a little bit in terms of I knew academically that hypoxia was an issue. It's first, it takes a while to really feel it, and then when you feel it, you're like OK. Or when you feel it going away or improving with oxygen, it

strikes you how much it might be affecting you. What are the first symptoms that come to you that you can understand? Because as we spoke about in the beginning of the show, that it's such a cognitively heavy load and there's so much to look and observe and be constantly thinking that it's so easy to be drifted away. So how do you identify that this might be coming in the next 10-15 minutes? This is why your point about experience is such a good one because everybody has their own. It's called a hypoxic signature. And so if you're a fighter pilot, you get put in a chamber, you get made hypoxic, and then

you get a load of puzzles and other things to do. And there's some brilliant videos of all these, like incredibly macho U.S. Marine pilots, just like mashing like kids toys together. It's fun to watch. But the purpose of that training for them is both to realise that they don't know they're impaired, but also to try and work out exactly what you said, like how did they feel in the the time leading up to that impairment? Because it varies. And so finding our own hypoxic signature as paradelight of pilots is a little bit difficult because we don't have access to these chambers. But I think one of the way to do it is to really try and be

observant of yourself when you go into these environments. So if say I'm in beer, I'm going over the back and flying up above 4000 meters. I'm asking myself what am I feeling? What can I see, what kind of thing? And actually, because I was quite interested in this, I put a little note on my cockpit to remind me to think about what I'm thinking. Because you can get so in the zone. But typically for people, they would say things like mood changes. So you either feel pretty euphoric or you feel a bit sad or a bit constrained or a bit afraid. Not having as big a bandwidth,

some changes in motor skills, so you're not thermaling as nicely as you would normally. You're bouncing in and out. Then as you get more hypoxic, the way you communicate with others might be a thing. So sometimes people become less commutative, sometimes that become quite garrulous, sometimes they start talking a bit of nonsense. Certainly if that's happening, it's too late. But that's also the advantage of flying with buddies because they can point out to you that this thing is happening. Obviously, the most kind of telling sign that it might be happening is just the fact that you are high. So taking a note of your altitudes and think that OK, I'm

now entering A vulnerable place and I would say probably about for most people because this varies a lot between individuals. Once you start flying above 3000 meters, certainly 3 1/2, you are going to be subject to this. All right, let's say how many minutes above 3000 because a lot of times we are, I wouldn't say exactly dolphining. You're getting high, lower, high, lower depending on the glides. So when do you start hitting the point of no return that OK, now I'm pushing my limits and then high box, yeah, is a very real thing now because I've been doing this for like past two hours. So again this no evidence specific to paragliders, but

that I guess the aviation like general aviation would be above 10,000 feet for 30 minutes or above 13,000 feet for any period of time. So I don't know what 10,000 feet is that about 2802 thousand 600 meters, something like that. But that's the general aviation guidance. But it's so individual, like if you're again, if you're tired, hungover, dehydrated, your tolerance is going to be worse if you're acclimatized. And a climate like where the paragliding is acclimatizing or not isn't really known. But the thing that is most acclimatizing is the altitude at which you sleep. So if you sleep at high altitude, you know, a little bit higher than normal or closer to

the altitude at which you fly, then that is going to help you tolerate the hypoxia. The really interesting 1 though, for me though is cold. Because when we think about hypoxia, we're thinking about supply what's available in the atmosphere, but also demand how much your body is using. And it's that balance or that lack of balance that creates the problems. And if you start shivering, your oxygen consumption goes up by about five times. And oxygen is being used to keep you warm. And if you can make sure that you're stay nice and warm and you certainly don't shiver, then I think that's one of the most

helpful things you can do to give yourself more margin when you're flying. You're in a hypoxic environment. Doc, I want to talk about accumulated fatigue a little bit here because it just hit my mind that yes, getting hypoxic once in a seven day period or 10 day period might not be as dangerous as it would be if you did that on a repeated basis. So from what I see is that as we mentioned in the beginning of the show as well, that there are times when your body is screaming for a bit of a break and your brain also says that I've had too much of it and I want to switch off and think

about something else. But specifically these kind of scenarios which can be life threatening very quickly because of course, if you're hypoxic and you get asymmetric, which is more than 5060% and it requires your quick reaction thinking pulling out the reserves or like anyways, in that thin air, there are a lot of variables that can go wrong. And I don't want to talk about Murphy's Law right now that, but it kind of gets pretty scary pretty quickly. So let's say, how does accumulated fatigue look like in paragliding even though you are trying to do everything right and you're trying to play within your limits before day seven of

the competition or free flying. This can be applied to any scenario hits you and then you are the most vulnerable to losing it all. I think you've in many ways answered most of the question. I think accumulated fatigue gives you vulnerability. I think it gives you vulnerability to poor decision making, to technical error, to loss of concentration, to reduction in observation in all of this stuff. Because as I said, the evidence isn't perfect and it's very individual. I frame it a bit differently. I frame it about giving yourself margin. We do something that is dangerous or potentially dangerous, and it's also something that's not our job. We're not forced to do this, so

let's try and give ourselves the best possible margin. And cumulative fatigue, which you're right will come from, if you want to take confidence comps as an example, periods of intense concentration, exposure to physical stressors like hypoxia, poor sleep because you're in a new environment, drinking because you're on holiday, and fair play to you, but it will mess with your sleep. All of those that fear, I guess if you have just the stress of it, like all of those things will accumulate and reduce that margin. So the question then is like, how do I give myself the most margin? And you do it by doing the opposite of those things, making

sure that you sleep well, managing your stress where you can, the psychological side of stuff, reducing burdens of decision making, checklists, body systems, all those things being physically fit so you're not exhausted getting to launch all of those things, build margin. So rather than saying the science says that if you do XY and Z, you will have a problem because I don't think we can ever say that for an individual. I think we can apply common sense to what would give anybody the best possible chance. That's very interesting, but just to clarify, can accumulated hypoxia also reach to lower levels of being hypoxic in days to come? Because if you have been hypoxic

2 three to four days in a row, then fifth day you will be hypoxic much more earlier than you would have been on day #1. That's a really interesting question. So in the short term, if you are hypoxic a little bit on one day and then your hypoxy again the next day, you're probably not going to be more or less hypoxic, but the effect of it might be bigger because to your point, the day before was fatiguing over a longer period of time. This is obviously the process of acclimatisation where you are hypoxic for a period of time and then your body starts to adapt to that and it adapts through changes in breathing, It adapts

that through changes in fluids and through creating more red blood cells so you can carry more oxygen. But those accumulate those I guess changes take place over days to weeks. And particularly in a competition where you're sleeping at low altitudes so you don't have an enormous kind of stimulus, I don't think that I don't think a competition would be acclimatizing to altitude. I don't think being hypoxic on day one of a comp and day 2 would make the hypoxia physiologically worse, but it might make the effects worse. It might be more tiring. I want to think about this from the perspective of people who are gung ho on pushing it hard regardless of how difficult it

seems. And basically I'm trying to understand the psychological side of these kind of Flyers. So if you are somebody who wants to go out and chase the rush. Now I do understand that I might be diving a bit into psychology of free flight here, but let's say the chasing the rush part. Is there a certain relatability to chasing the rush when it comes to experiencing limits of your flight envelope versus limits of your human existence and intoxication? I'm not saying really question because it's. Psychological. It's philosophical, it's moral. It took me so. Long, but yeah, I get it. Like it was hard to come up with it, but I'm glad you got the

vibe of it. Yeah, I've got some thoughts, but I'm not sure I'm any more qualified than anyone else to give them. Seeing as I'm a guest on the podcast. I'll give it a go. More generally, I think this psychological component of paragliding vastly outweighs the physiological. So this is a big shout out to my good friend, fabulous paraglider pilot and current PhD student Jessica Love, who is just finishing off a PhD on the psychology of fear and fear injury in paragliding. It's fascinating and I think will be much more impactful than anything I do. To answer your question, though, there's a great book called Dopamine Nation. Yeah, by a Stanford

psychologist. Now, I I bought that book because I listened to her on a podcast and she talked in the podcast about how she got addicted to teen romantic fiction. And I was like, I'm buying you a book. Now. I don't know how that played out. And in the Yeah, it turns out there's like just a really short slippery slope from Twilight to werewolf porn that she tumbled down. But the one of the really interesting things that came out of that bit for me was that there's very little research on drug of choice, as in why for one person it's pushing the paragliding envelope, Why for one person it's twilight. There's clearly a huge

biochemical overlap. Like it's it's triggering the same stuff, dopamine, serotonin, noradrenaline, all of these kind of neurotransmitters. But why one person gravitates to one rather than the other is not very well understood based on the book I read about the research. In other words, not much knowledge. It may be that there are some people who just have a higher appetite for dopamine in general, and so to your point would be chasing bits of paragliding that are at the extremes as an alternative or alongside substance use. Or it may be that people have a particular drug of choice and that's paragliding rather than substance misuse. But all of that is wrapped in people's social environment,

that upbringing, their view of the world, their kind of natural characteristics. So I think it's a little bit hard to say. I agree quickly. What does Jessica Love's PhD about? Because as you said, data sets are quite hard to come by and we barely see anybody putting in that kind of effort. And I would love to be in touch with her after we stop recording. But you know, just an intro like Fear Injury or what about it? Yeah, so I was texting Jess Price this podcast and I was like, you're next, Jess. Why not for sure? Yeah, because I think what Jess has been doing is much more actually relevant to a pilot's

day-to-day than than what I do. I try and help around the edges. The what her work is. This idea of fear injury, I think has grew organically in our community. Is it a term that you've heard? From Gavin, he throws it a lot on his cloud based mayhem show. Yeah, exactly. And when we try to chase it back, Jess and I, and we think it actually came from, yeah, an episode of cloud based mayhem where it was first heard in the wild. Honestly, that is the. Only source of fear injury that I've heard. There's no I never knew a fear injury was a it could even fit in a sentence until I heard him

talking about it over a pair of years. So I think everyone's source is gathered. That's interesting, yeah. But I've had a bunch of people talk about it now and I think it's like a lovely, it's a lovely conception actually, because the idea of an injury to me is something that can happen to anyone. It's something that can be rehabilitated only if you do it right and you have to put effort into rehabilitating it. It doesn't just go away. And also maybe you can prevent it in the same way that you can have injury prevention and you have some people who are more susceptible to them. Same way you can have a weak ankle joint, You can have be

more susceptible to fear injury, some who are less so. I think it's a great concept for our sport and it certainly overlaps with some with other more well known psychological things like the twisties or the yips or the OR even things like PTSD. But it's very definitely not the same, but something that happens really just when you're paragliding. And so Jess started looking into this. And for those of you who don't know Jess love, she's a highly experienced tandem pilot, spent a lot of time in Nepal, done a lot of comps. She current she's currently there meet director for the shower open. Yeah, very kind of somebody

who's been very not only paragliding has been a whole part of her life, but is very embedded in the community. So Jess started trying to understand what fear injury was, come up with a really good definition, got to that was her first bit of work. Her second bit of work was about how it changes in individuals over time. How does it evolve when someone is there a good route out? Are there some people who get trapped in it? And then her last bit of work that she's just finished is just doing things like SIV, change somebody's susceptibility to fear injury. So this is a teaser for that.

If you want to know what she found, we'll get her next. But it's great work. It's something that she's devoted kind of mind, body and soul to for the last four years and we're very lucky to have her enough support. Fascinating, fascinating, and definitely it's on the she's on the next guest list for the episodes upcoming. So to anybody who's listening, stay tuned, stay excited. As I always say, this magic is just getting started. Absolutely. Matt, you, you have been expedition doctor as well. I was just like browsing over you. I think you're one of those few para mining pilots who can be googled up and there are endless

search results that you can binge on to see what this pilot has been off to. But as. Long as there are no court records. They're all clean, but what do you say? Any experience? Like, how does your life look like when you're out and about in the wild and, you know, just just being out there making real money rather than just flying for a hobby? So I think it's debatable how much money I've made out of expedition medicine. It's another thing done for the love. I was really fortunate when I was a student that I got the opportunity to go to Bolivia as a Guinea pig on a altitude

science study run by this group called the Apex Collaboration, which is based out of Edinburgh and was a hilarious trip because we were doing the first randomised controlled trial of Viagra for prevention of lung altitude illness. So it meant you had all these students that got stuck in a bus, driven up to five and a half, 1000 meters, half taking Viagra, half taking a placebo, everyone criminally else. She's sick. And some of those couples are still together. Now wait a second. I don't get it. You put couples and gave them Viagra and drove up to 5000 meters? What? Like how? Why? Science and India Science. So the thing about Viagra is it wasn't originally designed for

what we all know it for so well. It was originally designed to relax the smooth muscle in the lung, the pulmonary artery, which carries blood from the heart to the lung. Because in some people that pulmonary artery gets really tight and compressed and the blood backs up and it stretches the heart and they get heart failure. And so the idea behind Viagra was that it was a drug that would relax that pulmonary artery. And it was only really when testing it that they discovered a extremely lucrative side effect, which is what we all now know it for. In altitude illness, particularly altitude illness that leads to high altitude

pulmonary edema or HAPE, you have the same problem where you get an increase in pulmonary artery pressure. And so the thinking went, and it's quite sensible thinking that if you take Viagra, you will reduce the pulmonary artery pressure because that's what it's designed for. And people would be less likely to develop altitude illness of the lung. Now interestingly doesn't seem to work. Variants on Viagra are still in some of the guidelines and the American guidelines in particular, but really not that helpful for something that should be textbook perfect for altitude. But this, and I can't tell you why, but this experience for me was very eye opening because I realised one, altitude is

fascinating and two, there's some semblance of a career that can be made within medicine and research where you get to go outside and climb mountains. And so that was what kind of set me off down this path. And I've been lucky enough my kind of core specialty is anesthesia and critical care medicine, but I've been lucky enough to spend more time out of the hospital than in working up at high altitude, particularly in Nepal, a little bit in India. And so it's great because it means that all the stuff I read about and doing the lab, you get to see and some of the lessons I can bring back to paragliding.

COVID kind of killed a lot of that for me. So it was all going quite well until February 2020 when I thought, oh, I don't have to go back to the hospital. I have enough. This altitude expedition will feed and clothe me. That came to a crashing halt in March 2020. I was very lucky. I got to go back to work in my local hospital. So I did that for wave 1 of COVID and then now I work online for a remote care company and that at least has the advantage of being very flexible in terms of where I work my hours, which is great for going flying and for travelling around the world

to some of the lovely spots where we go flying. I still keep one day a week where I do altitude and cold research through the Extreme Environments Lab at the University of Portsmouth, and that's also where Jess is enrolled as a student. So I used to do it all the time. Someone ate a bat, caused COVID, ruined my life. But I've fallen on my feet and I now get to visit these places as a tourist and still do a little bit of research. It sounds fancy to say that I'm a tourist at Extreme Environments Lab. The name itself sounds so cool. It's a great place. They do amazing stuff.

Actually. There are cold water labs. So they grew out of the Institute of Naval Medicine and they've done an enormous amount of work around why young people drown. They've really, that's the kind of core specialty. And then I came and just as they were expanding from a cold water lab to a lab that focuses on lots of different stressors. So things like epoxy, a cold heat, sleep deprivation, and how they will interact. And then I came along and said we should look at paragliding. And so I was able to do a little bit of work through them on the paragliding and then I helped support all the other more

general stuff. So what's the paragliding side of the lab that you? So the paragliding side, the lab, we've done a few things through that. We've created a simulator where we got a paragliding harness, put it in an environmental chamber and created hypoxia, cold and headland. And we got pilots to do a simulated flight up to 3 1/2 thousand meters and do cognitive tests. And what I found from that was a complete muddle, which comes back to what I said at the beginning, which is that it was a really small group of people. And sure, like when they got up high, they were less good at the

cognitive tests. Their reaction time changed. They weren't very good at stacking blocks and all the things that we had them do. But what that told me about how well somebody would thermal or whether they'd fly into the Cliff or not, I think it's impossible to say. And that was as much kind of my growth as a researcher going through that process is anything that contributed to paragliding. But what came out of it was this realisation that if we want to learn stuff in paragliding, we need to focus on really specific things. Like what I've done in that chamber was too general. And So what I then did next was

say, OK, the thing that kills paragliders is hitting the ground. What stops paraglide is hitting the ground. The reserve parachute is probably the last line of defence. Why don't people throw the reserve parachute? And so then I started doing the work that I think has been most useful for paragliding, which was around reserves, how we need to be different, why people do or don't throw them. Fascinating. I'm very tempted to ask, could you please tell us what that research was about and what have the findings been so far? Yeah, sure. We did two things. We got 55 pilots and took them to a zip line and we put them on a zip line and we got them to do

a cognitive challenge. So they looked up at 2 flashing lights. They had to pull their brake lines along with kind of flashing lights, and we got them to say all the things that could come up, beginning with a certain letter. The idea being that the hands were engaged, their eyes were in a position as if they were fixing a wing, and we'd give them a cognitive challenge. Then they were released down the zip line and they had to throw their reserve parachute as fast as possible, so they had to make a cognitive switch. We then from that work, we then went to the G Force simulator at Frutschler Hocheries in German,

who were wonderful people. Jess Barlow there, who ran at the time, was so helpful. And we repeated the same model with 83 pilots, but this time they're in rotation forwards and backwards between sort of two and 4G. And the reason why I think this was useful work was because for once in one of these studies, we had enough people and we were looking at something really specific. And So what we found was that, first of all, pilots look for their reserve handle along their skeleton. So if they're rotating forwards, their hand naturally goes to their hip bone. If they're rotating backwards, as they would in a sat or an auto rotation, they go a bit

further down their thigh. But when the reserve handle wasn't in those places, you could see people just repeatedly tapping all around trying to find it. We also found that pilots would naturally pull up on the reserve handle even if the reserve was designed to be pulled outwards. We found that they needed to grip it in a particular way. And all of these things gave us design suggestions for how a reserve handle should be because what we found in the studies consistently is that when people had a problem, they couldn't innovate, like they couldn't fix it under stress. So that to me means that our kit has to work for us.

We can't expect someone to. If you tell somebody what you need to do, if you're need to throw your reserve as you need to put yourself into Batfly, you need to find your reserve handle, you need to throw it towards your feet. All the stuff that people say, all of that's true, I'm sure, but the average person can't do that even in a simulated environment. There's just so much going on that we need to make it easy for people. And I would say there's been like mixed uptake from the research. Like I made some videos that show all of this online, can send you the link, wrote to the

manufacturers, wrote to the EM committee. They adopted some of the recommendations and some of the new harnesses like supper. The supper ones were great. The new, it might be the advanced one. The new advanced one is beautiful. It has a really nice big chunky handle. It's just on the hip. All of this stuff is wonderful. The little tiny strings that you see on some of them are clearly less in tune with what the average pilot does. But we've made some progress and particularly reserve containers, like most reserves now, you can pull them out at any angle. So I really like that work because I thought it was robust,

it was repeatable. We did it on lots of people. We came up with recommendations that were concrete and that we could change to make our sport better. So the Chamber study at Portsmouth was good to do because it led to this stuff. I wouldn't necessarily take all that I found from that and base your life. The question that comes to our mind is that when like XR7 EXO seed, every other reserve handle is generally at your hip, and then suddenly we move to submarine style where it's a game changer. It's right in front of you. So there is definitely a visual sense sensory input that is

coming to you that is saying that, hey, there it is. So no matter how much you're panicking, it's very hard to miss out. But as a pilot or as an end user, when you're switching your equipment, is it worth it? Or is it not worth risking your life? That's such a good question and I love that you came to that as well because when I went into the reserve studies, I was like front mount is going to be better, obviously going to be better. It's right in front, but what we found was that there was no difference in the time it took people to locate a front mounted reserve compared to a hip

mounted one. But what we did see is lots of people with front mounted reserves slapping their hip because that's what they used to have. Your point about changing gear is profound and so I went in thinking front mount is best. I came out thinking actually I don't really mind, but you need to pick one thing and stick with it because when you swap between the two, that's where you're going to have a problem. And I took that on board. So I fly an air design sock which has got a front mount and I have made sure that I have a front mounted set up for my hike

and fly gear as well. I think yeah, because what you said that make a choice and stick to it. Like I have been flying XR7 for the longest time and to be honest, I feel so at home in that harness because I know where and how my body, where it is touching to the harness, how it feels and everything. So I think consistency of something as important as that, like your seat, which is basically defining how you're going to make all the decisions depending on how comfortable you are, is like such an important part. So definitely I think this is what every listener should have in their mind that when they

make an investment, which is fairly difficult, do I guess it's not that easy to invest that kind of money. Make sure it is something that you want and not something that you would like to sell and then move on to something else and then retune your brain wiring system until you get used to it. I think that's true. And I think if we're honest about why we make the kit decisions, we make them because of newness and kind of social environment. We make them because of cost, weight, aerodynamics, safety, I think falls down the chain a little bit. And I don't know. This is again where I slightly

despair of the competition scene because I come back to this, that people in comps aren't paid and no one knows who you are except for the other people in comps. And if everybody's got a submarine, no one has an advantage for flying a submarine. So why not all agree to fly something that has decent back protection and an easy to access reserve container? But as I say, that's just me. I think maybe if I was a bit more competitively minded I might think. Like what you said makes complete sense. The whole idea of flying the top equipment is to gain the extra edge, but if that is negated by the whole field being upgraded,

then what's the point of risking the upgrade? Exactly, and that's why I think SRS is such a nice way to do competitions. Brett is a difficult man to get hold of these days. He's super busy with the good. More competition, more. SRS. Yeah, Matt, there's a lot we can keep on bouncing our thoughts back and forth. And especially I would like to just put this out in public domain again, that there is so much material from Matt that is available on how to in depth things on how to make sure that you're not hypoxic or cold exposure or even the first aid kit, which I think there are

quite a few videos that you've done with few creators which are explaining that in depth. So just Google up Matt Doctor, Matt Wykes paragliding and you will see endless knowledge to binge on. But if we quickly have to touch upon the topic of first aid, I'm going to take the worst case layman scenario because I think somehow, including me, a lot of pilots are susceptible to falling in this where they're like, it won't happen to me. So let me just go out and fly with whatever I have and let me focus on that rather than do the homework and whatever it takes. As you said, safety takes a

backseat for some reason. And that is another very interesting psychological effect. But let's say you're a pilot who has gone out. All by himself, very little contact with the outside world except the radio and the emergency whatever you can scurry off last minute. What does your first aid look like when you don't have a first aid kit in your back? I think it's your in reach, it's what your first aid looks like. One of the like interesting things about Paradigm First Aid, which is why I find it fascinating and what I've delved into it is most first aid stuff is either kind of first aid at

work, which is designed for cities and it's designed for. I've splashed this in my eye or I've cut myself or I've fallen off a ladder or it comes out of military stuff and military stuff is really first aid is one has some very specific injuries, ballistic injuries, but also it's very much part of an organised chain. Military first aid assumes that a bunch of other things are going to happen in rapid succession. Someone's going to get picked up and shipped out. So paragliding first aid then becomes this kind of really interesting hybrid. It's a bit like what we said at the beginning about how you have

to cherry pick your evidence from other sources. And sometimes, as you say, we fly alone, but more often we fly in small groups with friends and we fly in remote places. So if an accident happens, then the people who are first on scene are either you, the person who has had the accident, or your friends. And they often have to be there for quite a long time, and they need to look after things that are quite serious. And the environments themselves and the rescue services aren't necessarily predictable. So it's not like first aid at work in a city, and it's not like military injuries. So then the question is, what

general principles can we apply under those circumstances that will be helpful and won't make things anything worse? And so a lot of it for me is really about organization because to your point about if you're on your own, you don't have any kit, what can you do? We can get someone to come to you who does. So when I think about managing an accident or how we should think about managing an accident, the first thing that we need to do when an accident happens is establish who we have and establish A-Team. So what you sometimes see in accidents is as an accident, everyone stands back and suddenly everyone rushes to the

casualty, then no one knows what to do and then suddenly a functional team will emerge. But we need to short circuit that and become a functional team straight away. So that's where talking to your friends, you say, not ignoring safety side of things, talking to your friends about what will happen if there's an accident, mentally rehearsing these things, all of that stuff that helps short circuit that process and establish A functional team. So it's functional team, it's making the scene safe, so securing the wing, not tumbling down, not landing in exactly the same place as where the other pilot landed. So the same thing that can

happen to you. All of the things to make sure that you are an effective rescue team, not extra casualties. Then locate the pilot, find safe access to them, secure them so they, the pilot don't fall down a Cliff or fall out of a tree and get help. And there's been a million podcasts and things about how to get help, and it depends where you are, but just making sure you have multiple means of communication, phones, radios in reach, whatever is appropriate to where you are. So everything's secured, you're safe, the pilot is physically safe, and help is on the way. Then the next thing is that if they're bleeding, obviously work

to stop it. That's most effectively done through applying direct pressure to the bleeding. In certain circumstances, tourniquets are the right thing to do. Again, huge discussions, but these are just the big principles. Stop the bleeding and then do all the usual first aid stuff, assessing them for their airway, their breathing, their circulation, all of that stuff. But the thing that's different here is protect them from the environment. We've talked a lot about cold and hypoxia and all those things. Keeping somebody warm, dry, out of the wind reduces their chance of death. It makes their blood clot more effectively if they're not cold. It reduces their energy requirements, it makes them less

fearful and adrenaline ridden. So really work to make somebody comfortable. But that might mean the harness is quite good because insulation from the ground, but it might mean wrapping them in the wing. It might mean sometimes dragging them behind a rock if you have to. It might mean drying them off. Like all of these things to keep them comfortable, reassure them if you're going to move them gently and move them once planned, think ahead and then look after them as you would want to be looked after yourself. That's I think sometimes the best guidance. When people say like, how do I develop judgement? We develop judgement through

experience. If you don't have the experience, then all you can do is draw on what you do have and think, if I was in this position, what would I want done for me? Go ahead. But to sum up, establish A-Team, locate the pilot, make sure the scene is safe for you, secure them, get help, stop bleeding, and then protect them from the environment. That's such words full of wisdom. Dark. I think the way you put it out was the most professional way. In 5 minutes of a podcast section we could have covered it. She had done that at the beginning. People would have to listen to all the other nonsense, me

telling you I don't know and there wasn't any science. I can put this in a trailer, we can keep the listeners tuned like for the best for the last kind of a bit. But before I close on to this topic, Doc adrenaline is such a superpower in these situations. How to make the most optimum use of the adrenaline that will come, the spike of adrenaline that will come after the impact for the next First of all, how long does that spike last? And secondly, how to make the most effective use of it, because that is the time you're feeling the least pain. Yeah, I think it's both helpful

and unhelpful in the sense that it's helpful because you're feeling the least pain, but it can be unhelpful because you might do stuff assuming that you're fine. So it's the classic thing of somebody who breaks their leg and then stands up and makes the break much worse. So the spike of adrenaline, I think if you have the presence of mind, is best used by getting yourself to a safe place and calling for help. It can be used by those around you to do the same thing on your behalf, get you to a safe place and call for help. After a while though, adrenaline stops being helpful because adrenaline causes metabolic load

that makes your heartbeat faster. It puts demands on your body when you're injured. So that's why once you've done the immediate stuff, keeping somebody warm, comfortable, being reassuring to them, giving them simple painkillers, giving them a little bit of food and water if that's appropriate. If you're there for a long time, by all means give some and their awaken can ask for it. By all means, give them food and water, all of those comfort things you've made use of the spike, but now it's actually about reducing that adrenaline and keeping people calm and relaxed because that's what will help them long time. I would like to throw back on my postal experience.

When I deploy it, I had like more than 50%, I don't know, 607080 or asymmetric cascade, double twisted auto rotation and eventually landed in a tree. By that time my hands were frosted like crazy. They were like freezing, in fact, when the collapse happened, which was probably the reason why I couldn't really stop it. But when I was in the tree, when everything calmed down, when it was nothing but quiet, like everything was silent, I just said that you know what? Let me just soak in what happened. So I just like stayed there, I don't know for how many minutes, but until I could feel my hands

again. So it could be like, I don't know, four or five or something like that. And that kind of course to let my heart rate come down, but I think it did bleed off the adrenaline away from the body as well. So is staying put and just getting a breather one of the best things? Like doing nothing is the best way to do the right thing as well in these situations. Hell yes, hell yes, because the worst thing you could do under that circumstance would be unbucky your harness and fall out of it and fall out of a tree. So one of the best pieces of

advice I was given by a senior doctor was don't just do something, man, stand there. So the opposite of don't just stand there, do something. It's that idea of take some time, soak in what's happened, think about your options and make the right decision. And actually and actually what's interesting in there is it's not always easy to do that. That shows a lot about your experience and presence of mind that you were able to take that pause and then do the thing that was right under the circumstances. Psychologically, it's also been shown that if you're able to integrate the experience and understand why something happened, then you're less likely to find it traumatising

afterwards. So 100% the right thing to do. Even when we're talking about first aid before that idea of so one of these other sort of things that people used to remember 10 for 1010 seconds for pause, for 10 minutes for the net to plan the next 10 minutes is a really sensible thing to do to make sure that no, no further time is wasted by indecision or doing the wrong thing. So 100% the right thing to do. Well done. I can see how you might have had some adrenaline though after all of that. You have no idea. There was a time like, yeah, I mean, I deployed, so that was like the last for that.

It'll do something. Otherwise life as well cease to exist. So the spikes were high as hell. But it's amazing how many people don't. That's why I got so interested in that and the research because that is the deploying your reserve is the single best thing you can do to save your life if you are too low or in an unrecoverable situation. But people don't, I think quite a lot about this. And I think some of it is potentially, you know, ergonomic as we've touched on, like they just can't find the handle under the circumstances. But a lot of it, I think is this idea of loss aversion.

We hate to as humans, we would rather not lose something than gain something. It's this kind of heuristic. It's a psychological trait of humans. And so we know that if you throw a reserve, you're going to lose some stuff. You're going to your flights, definitely done, you're going to have to repack it, you might end up in a tree. And so I think we just try and avoid that loss for ages. We try and fix things and we carry on and we carry on. Whereas the obvious gain is if you say save your life, sometimes I think under these circumstances people struggle to make that switch.

So again, speaks to your presence of mind. The other thing I wanted to pick up on because it was a great point, was your point about not being able to manage the collapse because you had cold hands. I think where it came down to that thing we were saying about underestimating the environment, like I think we really need to be switched on about caring for our hands because when our hands get cold, we lose fine motor dexterity. So we lose again feeling of that imminent collapse, potentially the ability to fix it or through a reserve. It's cognitively distracting, but brain energy instead of making all the decisions is being directed to my hands are

cold. And finally you can do long term damage to your hands repeated like frosties screaming barfies, whatever you call it damages the nerves and blood vessels of the hands, which means you then get it more frequently and ultimately you can end up with permanent pins and needles or loss of feeling. So I think one things that I've become very conscious of is caring for my hands when I fly. And we're in a terrible position for you because they're exposed to the airflow like all the blood drains from them. They're wrapped around the top of your brake handles. So we're very vulnerable. And one of the best ways to do

it again is keeping a really warm core. But otherwise, there's no perfect solution. Piece of gloves, down sleeves, whatever works for you, but paying attention to keeping the warm I think is really important. Thank you for pointing that out, Doc. I missed that one. I'm so glad you picked up on that one. But coming to the reserve party, before we close, I want to ask your opinion on this. Does this relate to the self-confidence levels in life? And I'll give you an example that why my thought process is going that direction. For example, somebody comes out and roasts you. Now you have to bring out your defense mechanism.

And this might sound unrelated, but just stay with me for a SEC. I'm here for it. For it. So a response to a roast will come much more successfully if you are more confident and happier in your life because you know how to stand up for yourself. Similarly, if you are generally more confident in your flying, then the response to a collapse that the answer is a reserved throw will come much more confidently I believe rather than if you are just like jittery about you're flying and you don't know like does that make any relation or sense? Because to me it does. Yeah, it's interesting. I suppose the, if you were to put a counterpoint to that, are

you more likely to throw a reserve if you're jittery or if you so confident in your SIB skills that you think you can fix it? But more broadly, I think your point is interesting. And I, I suppose what I would take from that is the importance of creating a positive training environment for pilots. So I guess when I look at paragliding culture, there's quite a lot of comparison stick, isn't there? There's there's people who are very positive about what flying means. There's also those perhaps who've had bad experiences themselves who focus on the negative or who focus on performance rather than progress. And so I think if we want to create a positive environment in

the sport, it's about growing people and encouraging them to do things like SIV to throw their reserve if they need to. And no one will say to them, you're an idiot, you threw your reserve. Somebody decides not to fly because conditions are too much for them and they decided to walk down being like, well done, great choice, all within moderation. But doing things like that, I think to your point, could build people up or give them the best again margin possible to use their skills in the best way at the right time. I mean, my part about confidence was that it just helps you be more decisive.

So if you're confident, then you're decisive in your actions, be it like coming back to the roast or coming back to the decision that do I throw or do I not throw. But if you're under confident, then the indecisiveness just lingers on a tiny bit longer and that is where you're losing critical seconds which could be make or break totally. Agree with that and there's some very interesting research actually that you're a bit like your roast point. Your kind of confidence depends on the environment that you're in. So if you're with a group of pilots and you're the best pilot there, you are more likely to be

overconfident and take risks, so you're more vulnerable. If you're the worst pilot, you're likely to be under confident, doubt yourself and underperform relative to your average skills. So there's vulnerability at both ends there. None of us. I'm so glad I asked. I just came to my mind on the flight. But doc, I can completely understand. We are running way beyond our time limit. This has been more insightful than what I thought it would be and I'm very thankful that you have given us all of those things. But before I let you go, Doc, one flight that has stuck with you which you can't pick out from your carrier.

I'm always very curious to ask this question to my guest because the answers are vividly creative and amazing and wild all at the same time. It's so hard, isn't it? Because I was thinking that it's like the Desert Island Discs thing. What would you take? And when you said what's the most memorable flight I thought of, I had four that came immediately to them. I think the one that springs to mind is I live in the Highlands, and the Highlands have a mountain range called the Cairngorms in the middle. And I live on the West side. And on a particular day, we were flying on the east side and I

was flying with a bunch of pilots who were better than me. I didn't have my normal wing with me. I was on a really old raggedy swift. And for some reason I just fell on it that day. And, and everybody was flying and they were flying a triangle. And I suddenly thought, I think I can cross the Cairngorms, like I think I can fly to my house. And so I set off a kind of perpendicular to everybody else and started flying across the Cairngorms. And I got a third of the way across and was like, oh God. This wasn't a good. Idea I'm like, if I land here, I'm going to be like 2 days late

for because they're quite icy. But I bobbed along and I if I made it over to the other side and I nearly made it to my house. And I think the reason why I loved it so much was so many things came together. It was flying, something that I'd always wanted to do in a place that to me is very special and very beautiful. But also it was the culmination of a lot of years of slowly building skills that meant that I was able to put things together and make that happen. So that was a wonderful thing. But equally, anytime I've flown tandem with anyone, I've always

loved like sharing. Sharing a flight with somebody is almost always more joyful. Than testing on your. The most meaningful value comes from sharing your passion. I completely agree with that one. Not beyond words. Powerful for sure, but even. So that's what's yours. Have you said? Oh. Shit, no, come on, don't ask me that. Well, I was not prepared for this. Yeah, man, you did, you know, reversed. What is your? What's your favorite? Bring it on. Come on. Without thinking too much. You know what? I'm so tempted to just give you the flight that I was thinking about because living in Oslo, there is a flight that you get to fly over the city, and I live

on the other side from the takeoff point. And one of these. Yeah. But more than that, I was going to say that to complete my sentence, Like one of these flights where I just bobbed over the city where I was having similar questions. Like shit man, if I land, I have to look for a soccer field because it's otherwise it's trams and buses and roads. And if I land on any, even if I land for like normal, I will be pulled up by the authorities and it'll be a lot of shame around it. That why did you Outland? But hands down one of the most spectacular flights that I've

had is big mountains in beer billing when I did the upper Ridge from beer to Dharamsala. Holy freaking moly man that. Just that wall, just that wall that you go by when you do that flow. Nothing else comes close man. The mightiest, the grandest, the most majestic, every single element which makes you go fuck is this even real is condensed into one and you are living it real time.

Shit. Let me say one more and I know this is not the rule. You have to pick one, but. I snuck the tandems in. Fair enough, yes, then I should get this fast as well. So both Bulgaria I was flying last year. This is baffling to me. So here is the Ridge, right? This is the take off and I take off from here. On this side of the Ridge, the clouds are towering at least 1500 meters higher than the clouds on this side. I don't know what the system is by the way, I'm going to come out with the wing review video within a week or two, so stay tuned on the channel.

Every single detail of this flight is coming out and it will show you how spectacular it was. So what I do is I take off, I circle out in these clouds and then I go fly above this cloud layer which is on the other side of the bank. And I was like, I can do this all day. And I was just like, beyond what's fascinating. And I was the only parallelizer in at least 100 kilometer radius that day which was able to experience this. That's amazing. Sometimes those cloud formations just blow your mind. That is, it was insane like how does one weather systems stick on this side of the Ridge and

the other weather system is just like booming with thermals up to thousand 1500 meters on the other end, so. Yeah, imagine that's a humbling thing to the guy in the sky. I'll send you the link and to the audiences. Stay tuned. This is one of the most beautiful, except the dollar dars and the mighty Himalayas. So life is a blessing when you're in the air or the otherwise. Yeah. That's a perfect note to end on. Yeah, exactly. Agree with that. Doc, how can I say thank you? I'm out of words, but I hope you get my wife. It was an honor having you here and there was only so many

topics we could touch upon. But I'm so glad we did, and all I can say is, until next time, let's do this again. Thank you so much for having me.