What’s Worse: a Tandem Skydive or Going on Stage?

Today I’m jumping out of a plane.

Voluntarily. I even paid for it. Some people book a massage to relax. Apparently, I book an appointment with gravity.

When I actually think about that moment, my heart speeds up. My stomach gets weird.

And that is exactly what I hear from clients when they describe how it feels just before they step onto a stage: racing heart, queasy stomach, dry mouth, and a remarkably creative urge to escape. Meanwhile, an inner dialogue suddenly takes over as host without waiting for an invitation.

So now I’m sacrificing myself for science. All right: for a highly personal field experiment with one test subject. Me.

My question is: Is skydiving worse than standing in front of cameras and an audience?

The honest answer comes after the jump. Today is about the before: nerves, stage fright, thoughts going round in circles. And what actually helps when your body is already sounding the alarm even though the performance hasn’t started yet.

What do skydiving and stage fright have in common?

More than my stomach would like.

At the thought of a tandem skydive, the body reacts to an extraordinary situation it expects is coming. With stage fright, it reacts to attention: People are about to watch. Something could go wrong. I could lose my thread, turn red, or accidentally say, “Welcome to the Olympus of First Communion.”

The situations are different. The physical activation can feel remarkably similar:

• Your heart beats faster.

• Your breathing becomes shallower or more frantic.

• Your hands become clammy or cold.

• Your stomach offers an unsolicited opinion.

• Your attention narrows.

• Your inner dialogue produces broadcast-quality disasters.

In a small study of seven male first-time parachutists, heart rate, skin conductance, salivary alpha-amylase, and cortisol peaked immediately after the jump. The study is far too small to turn into a universal truth. But it does make one thing clear: a first skydive is not merely “a wee bit exciting.” The body really is working flat out.

Public speaking has a different trigger, but here too, the body can treat a performance situation as a threat. That is not a character flaw. It is a protection programme on steroids.

Nervousness isn’t the problem. The interpretation often is.

Before an appearance, many entrepreneurs, executives, and speakers want one thing above all: to calm down.

Understandable. But perhaps “I have to calm down right now” is not the best instruction for a body that is quite clearly not calm.

Harvard researcher Alison Wood Brooks studied what happens when people interpret their activation as excitement rather than anxiety. In her studies, people performed better when they told themselves “I’m excited” instead of desperately trying to become calm.

That doesn’t mean you should simply declare the fear gone. Please, no positive thinking with a permanent smile glued on. It means: The physical energy does not automatically have to work against you.

A pounding heart can mean: “Danger!”

It can also mean: “This matters. My body is providing energy.”

The pulse is the same. The story attached to it is different.

Ah, there it is again: it always comes down to the story.

The inner dialogue before the jump. And before the stage

My head is currently running several programmes at once:

“This will be brilliant.” “This is completely mad.” “Other people do this every day.” “Why did you agree to this?” “Alessa, you’ve done other wild things. Those were rough and windy too!”

An inner dialogue isn’t automatically clever just because it comes from your own head. Sometimes it helps. Sometimes it is an internal meeting with no chair, where fear, ambition, and imagination all present at once.

The point isn’t to stop every negative thought. Thoughts rarely respect notice periods. What matters more is recognising and checking them:

1. What exactly am I telling myself right now? Not “I’m nervous,” but the exact sentence.

2. Is that a fact or a prediction? “I’m going to embarrass myself” is not a fact. It is a film in your head with a very confident trailer.

3. What wording is realistic and helpful? Not: “I’m not afraid at all.” Instead: “I’m nervous, and I can still take the next step.”

For anyone who wants to go deeper, the zflys article “What science knows about your inner dialogue” looks at how self-talk affects emotions and communication.

Overcoming stage fright: five tips that didn’t come from a motivational calendar

1. Give the activation a new name

Don’t automatically say: “I’m afraid, so I’m not ready.”

Try this instead:

• “I’m excited because this matters to me.”

• “My body is getting ready to perform.”

• “Alessa, you don’t have to be calm. You just have to take the next step.”

That last sentence also creates a little distance. And yes, addressing yourself by name feels a bit like a council meeting at first. But it can help you avoid becoming completely fused with the thought. We also rather like hearing our own name.

2. Breathe without short-changing the exhale

Under stress, many people breathe quickly and high in the chest. Before a presentation, this helps me: breathe in comfortably and breathe out a little longer, without straining and without turning it into an Olympic breath-holding event.

If you feel dizzy, stop and breathe normally. And for the tandem skydive, obviously, I’ll follow the trained professionals’ instructions. My active listening will be turned up very high indeed.

3. Prepare the opening, not every single word

In front of a large audience, I don’t need to control every syllable. That wouldn’t be a talk; it would be supervised reading.

What I do prepare:

• the first sentence,

• the first minute,

• the core message,

• the final sentence.

Once the first step is solid, the rest is allowed to come alive again.

4. Don’t wait until you’re free of fear

The biggest con nervousness pulls is: “You can start as soon as you feel confident.”

Unfortunately, confidence often only comes from doing. From rehearsals. From small appearances. From bigger ones. From the next appearance, when the nerves return but you already know: I can work with this feeling.

Courage is not the absence of nerves. Courage is nerves with an appointment in the calendar.

My field experiment for communication

To stop the second blog post from ending with “It was somehow intense,” I’m documenting the experiment as precisely as possible.

I’m taking measurements at five points:

1. Now, two days before the jump

2. 30 minutes before take-off

3. Immediately before the jump

4. Right after landing

5. 90 minutes later

Each time, I’ll note:

Observation – my measurement

Nervousness – 0 to 10

Body – heart, stomach, breathing, hands, tension

Inner sentence – verbatim, with no PR department tidying it up afterwards

Urge to escape – 0 to 10

Focus – danger, task, people, or anticipation?

Pulse – if my watch provides it reliably

Afterwards, I’ll compare these notes with my memories and existing records of appearances in front of 16 cameras and 800 people.

This is not scientific in the strict sense. One test subject, no control group, no blinding. And the test subject has a suspiciously good idea of where the next blog post is going. But as an honest self-experiment, it can reveal something polished success stories often leave out:

the actual inner dialogue before, during, and after a courageous act.

So, is skydiving worse than speaking in public?

I don’t know yet.

My guess: the moment at the open aircraft door will be more physically intense. But an appearance in front of hundreds of people lasts longer, leaves more room for thoughts to spiral, and touches a different fear: not fear of heights, but fear of judgement.

Perhaps that is the point. Fear doesn’t just have a volume. It has a meaning.

When skydiving, I ask myself: “Am I safe?”

In front of an audience, I might ask myself (!): “Am I good enough?”

And despite a stage being objectively harmless, that second question can cut damn deep.

Today I jump. Then I write part two. I’ll record what my body did, what my head screamed or whispered, and which sentence actually helped.

Until then, the same applies to the jump and the stage:

I don’t have to be free of fear to do it.

If your next appearance requires you to step out of your comfort zone, if not out of an aeroplane: talk to zflys about clear, effective communication. If skydiving is not strictly necessary for that, I probably won’t be upset after this weekend.

Sources

• Messina, G. et al. (2016): Parachute Jumping Induces More Sympathetic Activation Than Cortisol Secretion in First-Time Parachutists, *Asian Journal of Sports Medicine*, 7(1), e26841. Small study of seven male first-time parachutists.

• Brooks, A. W. (2014): Get Excited: Reappraising Pre-Performance Anxiety as Excitement, *Journal of Experimental Psychology: General*, 143(3), 1144–1158.

• Bentley, T. G. K. et al. (2024): A Systematic Review of Breathing Exercise Interventions for Anxiety and Stress, *Brain Sciences*, 14(8), 757.