"There's an inherent physics limitation when trying to strap a whole human body to the side of something small (and generally depicted as being strapped on your back, Bobba Fett style). The center of mass is off."
While obviously wasteful and goofy, there's always the option of putting an upwards-pointing (i.e. pushing down) thruster at the rear of a jetpack like a lever arm.
I was thinking that eventually they could design some kind of powered attachment between the arm pods and the backpack. It would accentuate your desired movement while relieving stress. Maybe they could control it with a Neuralink implant so that there won't be accidental movements due to buffeting. Then if you had that you could build an AI to make it mostly user-error-proof.
To be clear, this is all pie in the sky nonsense, but it's fun to think about. It would still be terribly impractical, but maybe it could be made reliable enough that using it over land would not be immediately fatal to most ordinary people who would want to try it.
While obviously wasteful and goofy, there's always the option of putting an upwards-pointing (i.e. pushing down) thruster at the rear of a jetpack like a lever arm.