Formation skydiving — FS, or relative work (RW) as an older generation still calls it — is one of the foundational disciplines of the sport. Before freeflying became widespread, almost every licensed skydiver's progression ran through belly flying: first solo, then two-way, then four-way, then bigger. Many of the sport's most technically precise skydivers came up through FS competition.
It fell slightly out of fashion as freeflying took off, but FS has a dedicated community, a mature competitive structure, and something that other disciplines sometimes lack: an unambiguous way to measure whether you're getting better. In competition, a point is a point. The scoreboard doesn't lie.
What formation skydiving actually involves
In FS, a team of belly-to-earth skydivers exits an aircraft, builds and breaks a sequence of defined formations (points) in freefall, and lands. Competition is scored on the number of complete, correctly held formations within a set time — typically 35 seconds for four-way, 50 seconds for eight-way.
The skill set is broad: exit body position, fall rate control, horizontal movement, docking precision, and the discipline to break and reform without wasting time. A fast four-way team can complete 20 or more points in a 35-second working time; a recreational team might complete 4–8. The gap between those two numbers is years of deliberate practice.
Where to start: two-way
Two-way FS is where almost everyone begins. You and one other jumper, working through a set of points, building on each other's position and movement. Two-way is deceptively demanding: with only two people, every error is visible and there's no one else to compensate. It's also the most efficient way to build the foundational FS skill set.
Most dropzones have skydivers willing to do two-way coach jumps or just recreational two-way. The community is generally welcoming to new belly flyers — ask at manifest or at the packing area for who's doing FS that day.
For two-way competition, most governing bodies have beginner categories that allow you to use a printed dive pool and fewer points per round. Check your national body's rules before assuming competition requires a fixed memory set.
Four-way and the team dynamic
Four-way is the core competitive format. The team is four flyers plus a fifth as a videographer, whose footage is used for judging. The dive pool for four-way competition consists of 22 blocks (two-formation sequences) and 16 randoms (individual formations), and a competition round is a randomly drawn sequence of those.
Finding a four-way team is partly a skill match problem and partly a social one. You'll be spending a lot of time with these three people: debrief video sessions, jump planning, and potentially tunnel time and travel. The team dynamic matters as much as the individual skill levels.
A good approach early on is to join an existing team as a slot filler when they need a substitute, or to join a coached training camp. Many regional drop zones run FS camps specifically for intermediate skydivers building their four-way skills.
Tracking your FS progression
FS is unusual in that you have an objective metric: points per round. If you're not measuring this, you're missing the most useful feedback the discipline provides.
Log your FS jumps with the formation sequence you flew, the number of completions, and what broke down. A note like “4 points, lost slot on block 7 transition, docked 1s late on randoms” gives you something concrete to work on next time. After ten jumps with that level of detail, you'll see patterns that pure jump-count logging would hide.
In Jump Logs, use the notes field to record your dive pool entry, the completed points, and one observation from the debrief video. Video review is non-optional in serious FS training; making a logbook note while the video is fresh keeps the feedback from disappearing before the next session.
When to move to bigger formations
Eight-way is the next step up from four-way in the competition structure. It's also a bigger coordination problem: more bodies means more opportunities for error, and the exit and transition timing becomes more demanding.
The honest answer on readiness is: when your four-way team can consistently complete 8–10 points in a 35-second working time, you have the base skill set to learn eight-way without frustrating the rest of a larger group. Below that, more four-way work will be more valuable than moving up.
Large formation records and big-way events (16-way, 32-way, or larger) are a separate category with their own discipline and training requirements. These are typically approached through dedicated big-way camps, not through the four-way competitive route.
The underrated value of a good debrief
FS debriefs with video are some of the most instructive sessions in skydiving. A good debrief examines each point of the sequence, identifies who broke formation timing, and produces a specific correction for the next jump. A bad debrief watches the video and says “that looked pretty good.”
Investing in honest debriefs — which means watching video critically, acknowledging errors rather than explaining them away, and committing to specific changes — is what separates teams that improve quickly from teams that plateau.