The Health Benefits of Wind Tunnels

The second time I visited the wind tunnel I decided not to do the introductory thing and spend 15 minutes in the tunnel with an instructor.  It is amazing as to how healthy the instructors are not to mention their fitness level.  They obviously spend much more time in the wind tunnel than the students.  I bet that they sleep incredibly well at night.  I decided to take my girlfriend along as well with me to watch.

The skydiving championships were going on that weekend in Eloy, Arizona and I happened to be grouped with three other people who just happened to be some of the judges of the competition.  The competitors were restricted from using the wind tunnel during the event so it was kind of nice.  I did not know that the people watching on the outside of the tunnel were judges as well.  My girlfriend is extremely personable and engaged them in conversation while they were critiquing us in the tunnel.  I had only a few jumps under my belt and was definitely the novice in the group.  There were some encouraging comments that were made about my body positioning, which is always nice to hear.  In actuality it does not really matter to me as other’s opinions do not really matter because I was having so much fun.

The skydiving sports competition was an international event and the judge from France was found to be a really nice person.  I ended up seeing her a few days later in the wind tunnel and her skill had improved by leaps and bounds from when we shared time together.  It was her first time in the wind tunnel and it was obvious that the next time I saw her that she had spent much more time in the wind tunnel over the next few days.

I realized what the instructor was trying to get me to do in the wind tunnel on my way home.  He wanted me to bring my arms in closer to being in front of me rather than out to the side.  Communication in the wind tunnel is not easy as everything is based on a unique version of sign language.  I learned sign language as a kid and strongly feel that someone that actually knew how to sign would be a great benefit to have in the tunnel.

We sat in a queue in the wind tunnel staging area and took turns every three minutes until the hour was up.  The degree of physical fitness required to stay in the wind tunnel much longer than three minutes at a time is more difficult than one might expect.  One typically gets about 45 seconds of freefall time during skydiving so the difference in physical health required for the three minutes is analogous to a runner transitioning from a 10K run to a marathon.

We all stayed on our bellies while flying around.  I realized the next day from muscle soreness how much effort it really took, my level of fitness was not quite where it needed to be.  Do not get me wrong the soreness was the pleasurable kind and I am definitely not complaining about my health as you never know what muscles one has until they are used in new ways.  Although I have been in sports all of my life, the wind tunnel was the best 15 minute workout of my life.

The next day I found myself at work imagining that I could fly around various people’s offices, which was kind of fun.  All I wanted to do was to get back into the wind tunnel and practice some more.

Tags: arizona, fitness, health, sports, wind tunnel

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009 at 1:39 pm and is filed under Early Wind Tunnel Experiences. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.