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Hey does anyone here have any experience with some kind of lumbar back brace that can help absorb the opening impact? I’m dealing with chronic lower back pain, bulging and degenerative discs, and the openings kill me. I don’t want a back protector for crashing into the ground because honestly at that point I’m fucked anyways. Just need to be able to have openings not feel so bad. Any advice is appreciated.

After i broke my back, i looked for something like that. I didnt find anything. Ended up doing yoga stretches and pilates to strengthen those muscles. It works.
Also, for delays of 2-4 seconds, G strap works. I think Jimmy P or Jojo came up with it, Jojo made mine. Basically a slider strap for rear line groups. Heading performance is not affected.

Todd has been playing with the "g-strap" as well lately.

Shoot him an e-mail (todd@apexbase.com) and he can chat with you about a 2 grommet slider.

In addition of stretching, I would recommend strength training. It will help with supporting your lower back, increasing tendon strength and flexibility, and bone density. Get with a good coach and just attack it.

Most back pain is associated with muscle weakness. Not only will it make openings more tolerable but it will reduce pain and fatigue from packing and hiking. Increasing your overall strength will also give you a better chance of walking away from a crash.

Strong people are harder to Kill!!!

Some have had success with the reverse hyperextension strength exercise in dealing with those back issues. Look it up, it might be able to help you out.

can you take a pic how does it look like?

Do you know if a slider with the grommets and tape and nothing in the middle has been tried?

Yes, it has. In my opinion it's not really any different than a mesh slider at slider down airspeeds. The difference becomes more noticeable as you take greater delays, and is probably very large at terminal (I've never seen one taken to terminal though).

The thing that makes a slider made from a different material descend slower is that it "catches" more (or less) of the airflow. At very low airspeeds, the amount of airflow to be "caught" is so low that there is almost no difference between different materials. We actually tested this (a long time ago) on PCAs (measuring opening altitude with laser range finders) using the same canopies but with large mesh, fine mesh, and sail sliders on subsequent loads. There was almost no measurable difference in opening altitude on PCAs (when there is basically the least airflow to slow down the slider).

I've also seen sliders that were just the two rear riser groups, but I haven't had as much chance to mess around with them.

Do you think it is the air being caught in the slider that can cause off heading with low delays or the slider itself slowing the opening?

I was talking with a friend about it and we were thinking you might be able to get softer opening on 3 or 4 second delays and with no mesh in the slider perhaps no opening issues?

Chuma has one you can see at 0:48 in this video, maybe he has some insight:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ph-6ZlOyVc

I think it's the slowing of the opening itself.

I'm basing that opinion on the lack of difference in opening heading between the various types of sliders. Fine mesh sliders at short delays (2-3 seconds off the bridge) don't seem to have any worse (or better) opening heading than large mesh sliders at the same delays. I have pretty limited experience (maybe 10 total deployments) with sail sliders at that kind of delay, but I wouldn't say that I observed any particular difference there either.

I think the "rear riser only" slider strap gets better heading because it promotes a nose first inflation (kind of like a tailgate), and nose first inflations generally have better heading.

Building a "spider" (tape only) slider is easy though, and means that the theory is fairly testable. You just have to come and spend a week here jumping your new set up to decide for yourself. :)

I will come back, it is on my ever increasing list of shit I want to do

go noticing, I will ask him

Rear riser line groups and control lines.

For "rear riser only" sliders, is there any legit concern about increased risk of the slider entangling on another part of the gear?

He says he only uses it with Spectra lines. And even then it can snivel and some off headings. So not ideal.
The rear riser only looks interesting