I Learned To Skydive And It Changed My Life

This is me about to jump out of a plane, by myself, for the very first time. A dream that's topped my thrill-seeking bucket list for as long as I can remember. And although my terrified self didn't know it yet, I would soon be attempting a world record. On the day of my 18th birthday, when I was finally old enough to go skydiving, I immediately went to do my first jump. And despite being required to wear a human backpack, I was instantly hooked. I'm going again soon. I'm going to get my license, and I'm going to do a triple backflip. But of course, I didn't follow through with that. The thought of trusting some thin fabric to save my life was just too intimidating. Now, after five years of doing tons of crazy stunts and adventures, I'm still scared. On one hand, there's obvious risk. If something goes wrong, it could go really wrong. But on the other, I could be flying through the freaking sky. Eventually, that giddy feeling led me to watching endless skydiving videos, and it quickly became all I could think about. The fear was now slightly outweighed by excitement. So I had to do it. Mostly because I'm out of video ideas. To acquire a skydiving license, you have to complete, aka survive, 25 jumps. But I didn't want to take on this challenge alone. So I reached out to one of my best friends, a fellow acrobat who also shared this dream. We're going to be going through an existential crisis daily for weeks. I can't wait, though. Like, I'm so excited. This is going to be so dope. I'm going to be a better skydiver. Mark my words. Impossible. Instead of heading right for the skies, we decided to get some practice before putting our lives on the line. After watching Spider-Man go first, I figured flying in the wind tunnel would be pretty easy. But turns out, even just staying still is really difficult. Something Dom realized just as quickly as I did. Dude, that actually made me more scared to do the real thing. Feeling the power of the wind, but like imagining falling towards the earth. And I couldn't breathe. There was snot flying out of my nose at one point. I couldn't imagine being such a puss. I can. Every day, it's a challenge. Despite those shortcomings, I was now ready to turn this indoor skydiving certificate into a real one. So I just finished the 10-hour road trip, and I'm currently picking up a subscriber and then driving back to stay at his house. Never done this before, but hey, adding to the adventure. What's good, man? What's up, man? Colin. How was the drive? Nice to meet you. It was great. Nice to meet you, bro. Dom met us back at Colin's place, where we hoped our new friend wouldn't murder us, as we got some rest for our first big day. Let's see if this is our last day on earth. Well, since we're doing ground school, we might be okay. We're gonna live one more day, hopefully, once we end up dying at ground school. The paperwork was just too much. The reason we traveled so far to do this was to learn at one of the world's most renowned skydiving schools, Skydive Spaceland, where they have two giant hangars, tons of planes, and of course, top-notch instructors. What's your name? Carlos Rodriguez. How many skydives do you have, Carlos Rodriguez? Close to 8,000. How long have you been skydiving? 17 years. So, who's your latest student? Tanner. His last name is a little bit complicated, but Tanner. I thought ground school was going to be your typical boring class, but it was the opposite. Learning the fundamentals of skydiving was actually really fun and interesting, and on day two, we would already be putting it into action. Let's make a jump right now. Today, we were going to do the two tandem jumps that are required before you can jump alone, which would be Dom's first jump ever, and my first one, since I had actual mustard for hair. So, what's the plan on this first one? Um, pray. I feel like I'll be all right with it, and I trust Pedro. I know he's, like, top tier. He's going to be awesome. It's going to be hard not to want to, like, start flipping. I gotta follow, you know, proper procedure. How are you feeling? Like, balance of nerves right now? Um, I'm not one to get nervous at all. This is going to be great. Now, Tanner, on the other hand, he's going to panic. Dom went on and on, talking smack, but while he was messing around, I was getting a head start at becoming the better skydiver. With a 10-minute call until takeoff, we finished putting on our gear and ran through procedure one last time. There is so much more to remember in skydiving than any other thing I've tried. There's, like, 15 steps I have to follow. Then there's the landing, which is another 10, so I'm probably going to mess up. Just then, the plane door opened. I got extremely jealous watching this guy. Then it was our turn. After debriefing the footage of our jumps, I realized the reason I couldn't breathe was because I didn't have my chin up like I was told to. Once I fixed that, I was breathing fine, and looking fine, too. Regardless, the guys gave me a helmet for the second tandem, which made it a lot easier to stay relaxed and focused. This time, I was able to practice tracking with my arms back, checking my altitude, pulling the parachute, and even helping steer it down. Dom did most of those things, too, but for some reason, he was having trouble steering the parachute. Dom had just been the first of us to experience a malfunction, and although it looks scary, we learned that twisted lines are pretty common and easily fixed. It also served as a fitting transition into our packing class, where we learned the specifics about the most important part of skydiving. All I've got to say is whoever invented this ridiculously intricate contraption turned out to be one of the most is a freaking genius. I've now done three skydives. That is crazy. You've done three, and I've done two, and tomorrow, we have to do it on our own. Literally, I thought we were going to do, like, seven tandems. We're jumping solo tomorrow. During the first jump, I literally thought to myself, this sport is not for me. But then the second one, I was like, okay, maybe it's possible. While Dom was sleeping like a baby, I spent half the night unable to after watching far too many fail videos. Attempting to learn from others' mistakes seemed like a good idea at first, but it mostly made me more nervous than I already was. How are you guys doing? Everybody doing good? Yeah, how are you? I want to sleep good. Yeah, good. Going to be up that high alone. I'm not worried. Like, I don't know. I probably should be, but I'm not. Yeah, you probably should be. I never am. Send it responsibly, Dom. Always. Buy the merch responsibly. Take your credit card. After running through our landing patterns, the last thing we had to do before removing our human backpacks and going solo was something called malfunction junction, a parachute simulation where we learn to identify all the potential problems and how to respond to them quickly. Done all we can, so just gotta hope it goes right. You better work! Well, my main goal right now is to not have a panic attack and freeze up and forget things because I can't do that. Tandem, I could. Not now, so... I gotta make sure I land in the area I'm supposed to land, because I know I'll probably land safely, but it might just be on someone's house, you know? I seriously don't know how Dom was doing jumping jacks while I was here combing through every potential horror scenario. It seemed the higher we flew, the more confident he got, which for me was the exact opposite. But ready or not, the jump light was on. As soon as my feet left the airplane, all of my anxiety disappeared. My attention was purely focused on the objective at hand. I did my altitude checks and practice deployments, all while stable as a rock. Meanwhile, Dom must have thought he was at the local swimming pool. Just kidding, he did pretty good too. But after 60 seconds of falling, it was time to find out if we could get ourselves back safely. Hands all the way up, looking great. Hands all the way up. There you go, that's perfect. Hands all the way up. Be patient. Wait for me, you're doing great. Shoulders, chest, flare, flare all the way. All the way, stand up if you can. You just jumped out of the plane, how was it? It was incredible. That was insane. I didn't stick to landing, but I made it down and I landed near the drop zone. Speaking of drop zones, I didn't see Dom anywhere. Dom, what happened? Well, I was a bit too far away from the drop zone. I landed off the property. They had to come pick me up in a four-wheeler. Oh my God. Tanner's first jump went just fine. I mean, he didn't land on his feet, noob. I landed on my feet, but I also landed off of the property. I'm fine, I didn't die, so. Dom had the nerve to roast my landing when he couldn't even make it back to the drop zone. I was now determined to not only be the better skydiver, but the better parachutist as well. I landed on my feet once again. Sorry, Tanner. I know you're not too good at that, but you'll get the hang of it. By now, I was jumping out of the plane alone, completing turns, barrel rolls, and even flips, yet I still couldn't land a parachute if my life depended on it. I was so sick of watching Dom float down like a fairy while I sat picking grass out of my rig. I was landing this next one no matter what. Oh, sorry. I meant this next one. That was such a fast landing, man. I was sprinting out of it. It's a miracle. It is possible. So good, man. Yes. The best skydive so far. Yeah, for sure. We freaking did it. We did it. Solo skydiving. If you're thinking about skydiving, it's worth it. It's worth it. Freaking just do it. Now that we were officially obsessed with skydiving, we naturally had to convince everyone we knew to come do it. Our first victims were my roommate, Cameron, and our new temporary roommate, Colin. I always hear it's the greatest feeling in the world, so we'll put it to the test and see how it turns out. Colin's jump went just like 99.9% of them do. He overcame his fear and had the time of his life before flying away like a frisbee. Cameron's, on the other hand, included an extremely rare second skydive when his first parachute developed a small tear. Thankfully, the reserve parachutes are even safer than the main ones, so they made it back just fine. Oh my gosh. How was that? Enjoy your two for one skydive? Yeah. Oh my God. What do you want to tell your friends and family home about skydiving? Uh, do it. Even though if your shoot fails, still do it. We always have another one. How was it, mate? It was incredible. It was probably the most fun I've had ever. Ever. Before we get into the finale of this video, which trust me, you're not going to want to miss, I want to tell you guys a little bit about the sponsor of today's video. While I'm running around doing everything a video like this takes, as I'm sure you guys can relate, it's hard to find time to eat and give your body everything it needs to perform. But if we don't feel our bodies right, we aren't going to do or feel our best. We're going to feel like crap. That's why I'm glad I found FirstForm. I've been using their product for almost a year now, and they've been a huge asset to me on my journey towards optimal health and fitness. 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This company literally has it all, including my new favorite shorts, which you've probably seen me wearing in my videos. I'm telling you guys, go check them out. Take microfactor packs every single day, energy drinks when you need them, and protein always. Whatever your goals are, FirstForm has the highest quality stuff and is definitely the way to go. Visit the link at the top of the description and invest in yourself today. All right, back to the video. By now, Dom and I were nearing the end of the course and starting to do all of the really fun stuff that we were looking forward to, the most anticipated of which was up next, the flipping exit. This is our moment. This is the time. This is what we came here to do. I can't stop smiling. This is the reason I wanted to do it. Dude, I did a quint front out of a plane. That's sick. Most flips I've ever done beat my record of four on the tramp. On top of that, I was now starting to nail my landings and was basically as skilled as Dom, who'd landed on his feet every jump so far. Well, maybe I could use a little more practice. Okay, fine. I still kind of suck, but at least I'm good at controlling my flips, unlike somebody I know. Doing that quintuple flip made me wonder if there were any official records set for the most flips out of an airplane. And after a quick search, I found that the record for the most backflips was set at 19. It didn't sound impossible, but that guy had supposedly trained for over a year to do it, and I didn't even have my license yet. Regardless, our remaining jumps of the program allowed us to decide what we would do. So I had to give it a shot. Got that. Here we go, world. World record attempt one. Probably going to get like half of it. Right out of the plane, I went from looking like a superhero to a bowling ball, almost losing control, but just recovering. I knew I had no time to waste, so I immediately deployed my trampoline technique, which ended up working almost too well. But hey, accidental backflips count too. Then, after quickly checking my altitude, it was time for the home stretch. 13, 16, 17. Come on, come on. 18, 19, 20. Oh, did that count? Do another one. Do one more. I know they're happy. Yeah. Yeah! I was extremely happy after setting the new record, but that was before Dom showed me this. Somebody named Craig Lewis had the real record for doing 32 front flips. Yeah, I want the real flip record. The difference between 20-something flips and 30-something flips is so much scarier. I'm going to be a lot more dizzy, and that's where the danger comes in. I'm sorry, Craig. I'm coming for your record. 27, 28, 29. Come on. 30, 31. Do one more, you b****. No. Come on. Did I do any? Yeah, you were just being positive. I don't have to tell you. No, you're not. No! What? He missed it by one. By one. I'm going to have to try again tomorrow. My head hurts after that. Oh, man. I hope you're free tomorrow, because it's Craig's funeral. That took me a second to think about what you're talking about. Damn. I'm like, who is Craig, and why are we laughing about that? But I got it now. Yeah, Craig. 41. No way. 41. I was beating by 10. I'm so happy. I was like, I knew I'd beat it. I knew it. Let's go. Record, baby! Record in your face! I trained him. I trained him how to do that. Sorry, Craig. Whether or not a couple of those didn't count, we got it. We got it. It's Dom's final landing of the course. He's stood all of them on his feet. Let's see if he'll do it one last time or mess it up. I thought he was going to his butt. Let's go! Dang, he really is a better parachutist. Well, 25 skydives later, we were still alive and finally had our licenses. We were now allowed to jump with friends and in our normal clothes or without them. You're about to see these boobies flop. And flop they did as I soared freely through the sky, liberated at last from the bodysuit. Learning to skydive has truly been the adventure of a lifetime, and I'm so glad I didn't put it off any longer. Beyond the initial fear was a level of joy I didn't even think was possible to experience. And if you embrace what you're afraid of, you just might end up finding something you love. And if you don't embrace it, well, I will force you to. But for real, life is short. Don't let your fear make you miss out. Follow me on Snapchat for tons of daily content that I can't put on YouTube. And save $60 on your first skydive when you click the link in the description below. Thanks so much for watching.