Still Nervous on Takeoff?

Why more groundhandling won't fix it.

Looking back at Signal Hill , Cape Town

I first became obsessed with ground handling when I saw a video of Chrigel Maurer launching in an insane amount of wind at the 2014 X-Pyr. In this one short clip Chrigel shows us a skill-set, and the confidence to pull it off, that most pilots will never achieve.

Chrigel wasn’t rocketed to Earth from planet Krypton endowed with superhuman powers. In fact, dismissing his skill as talent is an injustice to his legendary training: like practicing in 50kph + winds on snow fields to stretch his limits and learn how much he can deal with safely.

“When I want to compete in a hard race, I really have to train hard to be ready... to train even harder than you have to be in the race — that’s my goal.” — Chrigel Maurer, Cloudbase Mayhem Episode 45, 2017

I took his philosophy to heart, working my way up to strong winds on big obstacle-free grassy fields surrounded by trees for some added spiciness. I learnt how to active fly on the ground developing the sensitivity to handle my glider in all sorts of strange configurations.

In 2016, proud of the work I’d put in and confident in my skills, I pulled up my glider for the first time on Signal Hill in Cape Town with a fresh Sport’s Licence (IPPI 5) only to make a meal of it, dancing left and right running all over takeoff and narrowly avoiding the bushes under the watchful eye of a community of Tandem Instructors.

“What the hell happened?” I asked myself. It took me years to discover that it was a hidden type of fear and nothing to do with skill at all. And in this discovery I realised that there is a gaping hole in paragliding today.

Enter the Hole

For any worthwhile skill you need to learn both the technical and the mental side of it. Pilots want to fly, of course, but few pilots put sufficient time and effort into the fundamentals of glider control, and even fewer spend any time on developing their mental game.

The community at large sells SIV, but this is damage control (the cure) and it won’t help on takeoff or with a collapse low to the terrain. Relying on “passive-safety” — whatever that actually means — is a fool’s errand. Glider control through active flying (prevention) is the key to the technical side of this craft. But this needs to be trained, on the ground, in progressively more difficult and turbulent conditions (like Chrigel did) to develop the sensitivity and feeling needed to master your glider on the takeoff and in rough air.

It’s true, you do need to work hard. Self-belief only works if you have reason to believe it. Confidence comes from evidence. If you want to gain confidence on takeoff you need to practice, accumulate the reps, and put in the work. There are plenty of pilots that haven’t worked hard enough, who try to cheat the process through buying performance.

But does confidence really come from skill alone? And why does it so often fall apart, even when a pilot has every reason to be competent?

Fear Is Not Your Friend

In any high-stakes activity, fear can carry valuable information, but your takeoff nerves rarely involve immediate danger.

The common advice is to face your fear so that it gradually goes away through exposure. But this unwittingly reaffirms the false belief that fear is bad which forces it underground where it grows and strengthens in the dark causing further psychological stress.

Another common narrative is that you need fear to perform in these environments. That fear is what keeps you alive. I’ve been saying this too — but I’ve come to realise it’s only half-true. Fear isn’t your friend or your enemy. Fear is what you feel when your nervous system reads a signal as a threat. This arousal is information — it tells you where to put your attention. But it won’t tell you how accurate the threat is. That you have to decode.

The same arousal can get read in one of two ways: as challenge (I’m ready for this — energy mobilised cleanly, body opens up, attention sharpens) or as threat (this is too much for me — energy locks up, body constricts, attention narrows).

If you can amplify the signal and dance with it, the physical arousal sharpens your senses, drives focus for flow and powers up your performance. But suppressing it makes noise that muddies the mind-body connection, turning an otherwise skillful pilot into a jellyfish flopping around on takeoff.

These embarrassing performances are usually followed by excuses. Not through ill-intent but from an underdeveloped inner intelligence. I know because that’s what happened to me and, in my work as an instructor, I’ve seen it with countless pilots since. It’s rarely a skills issue.

On top of their own struggles, the pilot might receive critical comments, whispers and smug looks of judgement on their ‘lack of skill’ while in reality they’re struggling with something deeper and the unsupportive eyes only make it worse. But none of this is rooted in ill-intent either, it stems from the same underdeveloped fear intelligence of the status-defending individual.

The more shame there is around this feeling the deeper it gets buried. The fear may be miscalibrated, but the activation is real.

There’s Nothing Irrational About Fear

Paragliding culture hands pilots the judgment pre-installed: your fear is irrational — you’re high, you have time, you’re safe. Just fly more, do more SIV, ground handle.

But this conflates two separate questions: is the threat real? (threat assessment) and is the feeling legitimate? (nervous system response). The first might be no but the second is always yes.

The feeling is real nervous system activity, often built from lived experience. A pilot who’s had or witnessed an incident, or watched emotionally charged crash videos has had their model of reality updated — their brain now predicts danger in similar-looking contexts and fires accordingly.

Think of it like a smoke detector going off at burnt toast. The alarm isn’t irrational — it’s responding accurately to its input. The input just doesn’t match a real fire. Fear works the same way. The question isn’t “is this fear rational” — it’s “what is the signal trying to tell me and how well-calibrated is it to an actual threat?”

The problem with seeing this fear as irrational is that it creates a meta-fear, the fear of fear itself. This cascading cycle is known as a secondary emotional spiral. You experience an initial, normal fear, but the judgmental thought “I shouldn’t feel this way” converts that primary feeling into shame leading to suppression and the undesirable behaviours that come with it, like standing around on takeoff.

A better frame for this is to think of it as signal clarity vs signal strength. The strength of the signal is always real but the clarity of the message might be off. Only by accepting (as a gift) and honouring the signal can you get clear on its wisdom.

The Two Types of Fear

When you go to jelly on takeoff, two types of fear can be running at the same time, but the standard advice only addresses one of them.

I’ve started developing the terms Somafear and Egofear which I’ll expand on in an upcoming essay. Here’s what they mean.

Somafear (somatic fear) is the fear you feel when you interpret a threat signal as a danger to your life or physical wellbeing. Turbulence, busy skies, a strong wind takeoff, a tight landing are all things that could trigger Somafear. It commonly arises if you don’t feel that your skills quite meet the challenge and in this way Somafear can be a great teacher. If your fear is rooted in a genuine ability gap, more reps will dissolve it.

Through acceptance and understanding, Somafear’s energy can be harnessed for performance as it activates the body readying you for the challenge at hand and drives focus for flow. But when you resist and fight it the energy gets trapped in the body creating rigidity and tension as you try to avoid the feeling — which is what white-knuckling through is all about.

Egofear is the fear you feel when you interpret a threat signal as a danger to your identity, image, reputation, status, or self-concept. What blowing this launch, flying this category glider, feeling this fear, would say about you. It’s the fear of being judged or rejected, and sits at the heart of status-driven competitiveness and comparison. This fear, often unnoticed, subtly leads to poor decision making, avoidance, and noise that prevents optimal performance and flow.

This is the misdiagnosis that keeps thousands of pilots stuck. They treat all launch nerves as a Somafear problem. They might spend tons of time ground handling or flying but the fear doesn’t go away. Eventually they either lose confidence in their skills, or they get good enough to hide behind them.

Ask yourself: if nobody was looking, would I still be feeling this? If nobody would see my tracklog, would I still be flying?

Progress Can Make Egofear Worse

A few weeks before my unglamorous takeoff on Signal Hill (which also happened to be my first Kommetjie run) I threw my reserve a week before a scheduled SIV course.

The cause of my cascade was a type of Egofear born from insecurity and driven by the need for recognition — also known as intermediate syndrome. I’d burst onto the XC scene that year winning our local league and when I saw a friend doing wingovers I felt compelled to try them too. I hadn’t studied the skill and didn’t understand the dynamics, so when I had a small asymmetric on high side my immediate thought was, “ah that doesn’t scare me, I’ll just do it bigger,” incorrectly thinking that it was a lack of energy that caused the collapse. On the next turn I went bigger and the typical sequence of events for this type of mistake occurred — big assym on the topside into a cravat.

The need to prove myself, to be the best, to win and fly further than others came from deep wounds. Once I had reached this level of status in our community (which by the way only came after others had started singing my praises) the need to uphold this position became immense and stressful. Other pilots doing well was a threat to my underdeveloped and fragile core.

This fixed mindset was also the cause of the noise on Signal Hill. I felt I had an image to uphold and if I messed up, who was I — the imposter that lived deep in my shadows?

This is why “just fly more” doesn’t fix anxiety for many pilots. More skill doesn’t dissolve Egofear — it often inflates it. After some success, the self now has more to protect, not less.

Somafear shrinks as your competence grows. Egofear can grow with it.

Fear Intelligence

“No Fear.”

This simple slogan captures a misaligned desire that most pilots have — to be fearless. But fearlessness leads to carelessness.

Being fearless implies turning the alarm off — which in a high-consequence sport, is exactly what gets you killed.

What you’re actually building is fear intelligence: the skill of reading the signal accurately, classifying it correctly (Somafear or Egofear), and responding appropriately. Heed it. Recalibrate it. Carry it. Or see through it.

Fear intelligence leads to a state that I have called fearfree. Like being carefree, it’s not without fear, but no longer governed by it. The signal still fires but with a new clarity, you’re free from being controlled by it.

Being fearfree is what makes flow possible. I can now walk up to takeoff and launch in a state of dynamic calm. If the conditions are on I might feel my heart beating, but it doesn’t turn into avoidant fear. It’s a sensation that I can now notice, embrace, and let go before it turns into a gremlin.

The pilot who walks up to launch unbothered by the watching eyes isn’t braver. They’re not pretending to be fearless. They’ve done both the external skills work and the fear intelligence work to meet the task at hand, turning what could be seen as a threat into a challenge.

And no matter what happens, their identity can’t be harmed because their flying is no longer a representation of who they are. Their value isn’t based on being “good” or “bad” at paragliding. But rather they now live in accordance with their values.

Try this:

Imagine a pilot that you admire uncharacteristically messing up on takeoff. What would you think or say to them? Would you judge or encourage them? Would you lose respect for them as a person or pilot?

Now ask yourself who you are. What values do you live by? Next imagine yourself messing up on takeoff. Does this performance change anything about how you see yourself?

Separating value from achievements can be very difficult for many pilots. This is where the inner work becomes important and having an outside perspective, like a Flow Coach, can be transformative.

Final Thoughts

I share these stories because of the incredible growth I’ve experienced through the mistakes I’ve made. When I started, it wasn’t for competition or even sport — it was purely for the adventure and the experience. For flow. I’ve spent years finding my way back to that. Speaking about fear has changed my life and the lives of the pilots I’ve worked with.

I hope you will do the same.

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P.S. The Way of Fear Course is now live inside Wingmates. We have almost reached the founding number of 30 members. Once we do the doors will be closing for a while and the price will be going up to the normal rate. So if you’ve been on the fence now’s your chance to join us.

Here’s what a member had to say about it:

The Way of Fear course is so rich. I can’t remember when I last came across anything so promising. Excited to put it all into practice. I’ve used bits of it in the past. Expecting the sum of all the parts, used, to release change, where bits haven’t. I have been blocked the last few years. Onwards 🙂