Thanks, Toby and everyone else for your feedback.
I quickly skimmed through the replies and went out the next day with the same 5m kite & 30kt wind. Towards the end of that session, I was landing smaller jumps half the time but still crashing the ones where I had more than 2.5 sec airtime. Here are two of my landings and crashes (0.5x speed)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/tjlyizxq0ut7s ... d.mp4?dl=0
I watched your great video Toby and have more questions than answers
1) Why is popping helpful for me? Wouldn't popping make my jumps even higher and potentially cause even harder landings if I can't even manage my landings at the current heights?
2) You mentioned it's very dangerous when the kite starts to pull forward when you're up in the air and recommend sheeting out the bar and then sheeting back in (just before landing). This might be very applicable for me as I can feel I'm going downwind with quite some speed on some of my jumps. So when do I sheet out? At the peak? Won't I drop even faster when I keep the bar sheeted out while I'm coming down?
3) Also, you said it's easier to land softer if you have more speed. Just curious why this is the case. It seems the opposite in my case where I crash hard when I have speed
Lastly, you mentioned landing on the ass is safer. Unfortunately I proved you wrong.
Basically I ignored your biggest advice to practice during lighter winds with bigger kites and got my balls injured! It happened during the first 20min of the session and strangely I didn't feel any pain. When I came out for a break, I was adjusting my crotch a lot and joking with my girlfriend that my balls feel funny. And I continued the session and probably had 20+ crashes after that which was really stupid in hindsight. Only after I finished the session and took off the wetsuit I noticed my scrotum had become huge, 50% bigger than a tennis ball. I stupidly ignored it and went bouldering after that. While bouldering, although I still only had minor pain, I started feeling more awkward due to its size, and decided to go the emergency room. The doctor did an ultrasound and found that my testicles are ok but I had a testicular hematoma (rupture of some blood vessel in there) and it'll take 2-3 weeks to heal and drain that fluid and go back to the original size.
All said and done, I'm feeling lucky and thankful that there's no long-term damage. I'm curious if any of you have heard about kiters having testicle injuries. According to Woo and sessions apps, I went 3.8m and 3.3m. While that's not super high, perhaps that height combined with the high downwind speed might have caused the injury
Anyway, I learned the lesson not to ignore the safety advice given here
. I won't practice any jumps on my 5m till I can master landings with my 8m with lighter winds. All your advice is much appreciated.