Have you had that annoying situation with your GoPro line mounted footage where you go into a trick the correct way up and exit upside down! This often requires more complicated editing or that annoying turning of the head to watch upside down

Thankfully the newer GoPro Hero’s cameras (9 and above) have a great feature called the Max Lens Mod that will keep you upright in the shot whatever you do with the kite. Normally this requires an actual lens attachment BUT you don’t have to use the lens attachment to get this great stabilisation feature.

If you are using a GoPro Hero 9 or 10 and submitting footage to me for Virtual Coaching then this setting should be used as it will make your footage far easier to review and it will match up with my library of GoPro Hero and Max footage. 

There are two ways to setup the camera:

Setup using the Quik app on your Mobile device

1. If you haven’t already Install the GoPro Quik app and pair it to your Hero camera
2. Tap the “Control Your GoPro” button and go throughout the sets to connect
3. Then tap the Wrench icon into the top right corner to change the GoPro preferences
4. Scroll down and switch on the two options for:
   1. Show MAX lens Shortcut – which gives you the options to use this feature on the camera
   2. Max Lens Attached – which activates the feature, even if the lens isn’t attached!

And you are ready to go.

On the camera you should see the main display showing the Max Video as your current camera settings:

Setup directly on the Camera

1. On your camera go to your preferences
2. Tap on the Mods option

3. Then tap “Show”

4. Now you can switch the MAX Lens Mod on and off whenever you swipe down into the main menu

5. And you can change settings for the MAX Lens Mod in the usual way  by tapping the current video settings at the bottom of the normal display:

For virtual coaching 25 or 50 fps is fine along with 2.7K resolution. 

Line Mount on the Kite

If you haven’t already then you can watch our “How to Film Yourself” video for general information on setting your GoPro up on a line mount.

The MAX Len Mod feature crops the footage in to allow for the stabilisation so you will need your camera to be slightly further away from you compared to if you have been using it previously in Superview or even Wide mode. Normally somewhere between 4-6m up the lines will work best. If you have a high “V” line setup, place it just above the split. For those kites with a low V, place it further up the lines which effectively will give you a slightly higher V point but should be fine for filming over a short period of time. 

You want to ensure the rider is no larger than this in the shot:

Which should mean that no part of yourself, your board (and foil if kitefoiling) ever goes out of shot. It also means we’ll be able to see the horizon when the kite is lower which we can use to infer the kite position.

As with all GoPro filming you might need to pay around a little to get it all set up correctly but then its pretty quick to strap it on for 20-30 minutes get a few shots and then come have a Virtual Coaching session.

You can find out more about how Virtual Coaching with Rob Claisse, works and how to sign up here. I’m currently taking sign ups for the anyone who wants a quick and convenient way of improving their Kitefoiling. I’ll be launching Kitesurfing and Kiteboarding virtual coaching in the near future – give me a shout if you have any questions.

The post Progression Blog – Kitesurfing Tips, Tricks, Equipment, Travel… first appeared on Progression Sports : Become a Better Kiteboarder / Kitesurfer / Kitefoiler.

To kick things off, part 1 is all about understanding the overall concept of tacking and answer these common questions:

• What are the four main tacks and how do they differ?
• What is the one key technique they all share and most vital to understand?
• Does tacking on a surfboard help?
• What order to learn the tacks in and where the 360 fits in?
• What are the best conditions and equipment for your first tacks?

What are the Four Main Tacks?

First things first, what is a tack?

In its most simple form, it’s when you change direction and the nose of the board goes through the eye of the wind. So you carve upwind, the nose points directly into the wind and then it points away from the wind. Any technique that does that is effectively a tack but there are 4 core variations that you can focus on and are the basis for other tricks you can learn after.

Roll Tack

This is the classic racing tack, also called the duck tack because you “duck” under the lines. It requires a foot change mid-carve and you are always facing into the wind, so your body does a frontside rotation. It allows you to maintain speed throughout, go strap to strap, and always see where you are going.

Push Tack

This is the opposite body rotation to the roll tack. It also requires a foot change but here you turn your back on the direction of travel, performing a backside rotation. This tack requires you to cross your feet and so is not suitable for those using straps. and is often a tack that strapless surfboard riders may have already learnt.

Heelside to toeside Tack

Here you don’t have any foot change, we ride in on our heelside and carve upwind much like the Roll to push tack, but then twist your upper body so that we can come out riding on our toeside. The first half is very similar to that of the standard 360.

Toeside to Heelside Tack

Again no foot change required here but we start riding on our toeside, carve upwind and then what is for most people, a more difficult twist of the body to get the bar and lines round in front so you can come out on your heelside. This one can be hard to get your head around, but feels amazing when you have it dialled in!

Now we understand there are 4 different tacks, we’ll look at some similarities in technique but we come back to each of these tacks and give you advice and tips on which ones might be best for you to try first.

The Most Important Technique to Learn

Yep, you guessed it, it’s the kite! It will come as no surprise that the kite movement is the first thing you have to master if you have any chance of getting around any of these tacks dry. The great thing is that once you truly understand how the kite moves through each stage of the tack, then it is essentially the same kite and bar movements for all 4 of the tacks (with some small additional tweaks here and there).

In a gybe, the kite is pulling us downwind, through the carve. The bonus is we can see the kite all the time, which helps with getting the kite positioning right.

In the tack, things are more complicated because the kite flies overhead so we can’t see or follow its progress. It all comes down to feeling the kites position. But the similarity to the gybe is that the kite is still leading us through the upwind carve – if we get the kite position correct!

Ultimately you are trying to get the kite directly overhead BEFORE you start carving upwind. This way the kite will fly with you, as you carve upwind, and then as you rotate your body (with or without a foot change), you’ll be rotating directly under the kite, with upwards lift keeping you correctly balanced over the board and foil.

The most common mistake is carving upwind too soon, with the kite still rising, you tension the lines, the kite then resists wanting to pull you downwind and you want to go upwind.

Now I’m not going to go into detail on this kite movement here but thankfully I’ve already covered it in quite a bit of detail somewhere else…

Does Tacking on a Surfboard Help?

Yes, it does, 100%. There are small differences in some of the body movements and the nature of the foil means mistakes can become more exaggerated but as far as the kite and bar movements go, it’s essentially the same. So it’s kind of lucky that Episode 6 of KiteSOFAing looking at Tacking, laser-focused on the kite movement. It’s centred around the surfboard version but I show and discuss how similar this is to the foiling version.

If you are learning to tack this is essential viewing:

And though you can learn to tack straight away on your kitefoil, some people will find learning on a surfboard easier because it can be more forgiving. And it’s nice to have a common technique you can practice on your surfboard on days when it’s not suitable for foiling.

What order to learn the tacks in and where the 360 fits in?

Your other kiting experience will have an effect on which tack you may find the easiest to learn first, along with the conditions you ride in, your style of kite and foil.

The 360

One thing we have discovered is that most people find learning the 360 the easiest first step. Ok, it doesn’t actually allow you to change direction, as you ultimately end up riding back in the same direction, but the kite movement for the first ⅔ of the trick is the same as the tacks.

If you have yet to try the 360 or are still struggling to get that mastered, it’s a good place to focus on. Thankfully I have a good video that focuses primarily on the kite and bar positions:

Now, just because you might put most of your energy into the 360 to start with, that doesn’t mean you can’t start trying some of the core tacks too. There is no right or wrong order to try them, but here are some pros and cons for each to help pick one to start on.

1. Heel to Toe

• Often best first step, particularly if you have started learning 360’s.
• Effectively you kick out halfway through the 360 before you loop the kite.
• The entry feels natural as you are just carving upwind on your heelside.
• The main difference to the 360, is working out how to get your weight back up over the board, forward and the required twisting of your upper body to get into the toeside position.
• Practising beach drills to get the timing for the body movement in relation to the bar and kite can really help.

2. Push Tack

• Good cross over for those who already can do it on a surfboard
• Riding strapless – if you have straps, the push tack is near impossible to do smoothly as the body rotation has you heading into the straps.
• Used to be less popular before larger foils became common place. A medium or large foil – 800 sq cm2 or greater makes this far easier as you can lose speed but keep the foil gliding. Once you have the knack, then any foil is possible but learning on a small foil or performance wing is not ideal.
• The backside rotation allows you to keep tension in the lines by swinging out over the nose of the board.  This tack allows room for less finesse and therefore, a higher success rate early on!

3. Roll Tack

• One of the most technical tacks due to the need to duck under the lines and that can mean you lose tension/lift from the kite.  You often see people who are learning to roll with their legs are bent up under them and their butt nearly sitting on the board.
• Many people may try this first because they are riding in straps and particularly if they are riding on race or performance foils and kites.
• Requires the best kite control – sheeting out, and then back in, at just the right moment can be critical The devil is definitely in the details with this one!
• It is a tack that is made a lot easier when you are riding foil kites, that generate way more prolonged lift by simply sheeting in.
• Remember this is essentially a foot change mid carve. If you can’t foot change riding in a straight line then throwing one into the middle of a turn is making life even more difficult for yourself. Working on your standard foot change will definitely help with the roll tack.

4. Toeside to Heelside

• This one comes last but it’s by far my favourite! Nothing feels better than Toe to Heel tacks!
• It is difficult because you have to carve upwind on your toeside, something that we don’t usually do.
• It also feels odd to shift your upper body so you are facing away from your kite and to a position where it can feel like your bar and lines need to be behind you!
• But once you understand the movement it will feel completely normal.
• This tack is the one that is hardest when you are powered or overpowered as it can be hard to keep weight over your toes as you carve upwind, so best to save learning this one for when you are under or moderately powered up.

And because it’s one of my favourites, it’s actually the video I am working on next so keep a lookout on Youtube and socials.  I  have a little trick to tell you in this video that I promise will change everything, and speed up your progress x10. I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to spot it, but it is the secret that is gonna get everyone toe to heel tacking this summer!  You won’t be waiting long for the video I promise!
[UPDATE: The video is out]

What are the Best Conditions and Equipment for Your First Tacks?

Not all conditions are as easy as others for learning to tack.  Seeing that all the tacks are probably going to be some of the most complex techniques you’ve attempted on your foils, you might as well pick your battles and focus on tacking when the conditions are best.

• Tacking is easier to learn moderately powered up. In very light winds, tacks are super handy but you’ll need your technique to be spot on to get the lift required throughout the manoeuvre. In strong winds, you will be on smaller kites and though you will have lift, smaller kites (6m and lower) generate lift for less time. You might find you get a surge of lift and then it goes before you can complete your tack.
• 8-10 metre kites are great for learning, giving a good compromise of lift and speed of flying, helpful on the exit.
• Foil kites are very helpful for tacking, due to the prolonged lift they offer and will open up the lighter wind locations.
• Flatter water makes a big difference.  You can carve hard into the turn with less chance of a wingtip popping out and also there’ll be less turbulence under the water. This will give you more stability as you make your foot changes and body movements.

Conclusion

I hope this has helped to give you some background into everything tacking related, along with some ideas of where to get started with your tacking journey. There is no right or wrong path, the most important step is just trying your first tack, whichever one that might be. Try, make some mistakes and then work on it from there. Focus on one or two tacks (along with the 360) and every time you crash just think – what did I do with my kite and bar, as more often or not, that is where the problem lies!

Keep your eye here on the Progression blog, along with our YouTube, Facebook and Instagram channels for short and long-form videos that relate to all these tacks.

As always I’d love to know how you get on, any tips or alternative views points are always encouraged :-D

The post Progression Blog – Kitesurfing Tips, Tricks, Equipment, Travel… first appeared on Progression Sports : Become a Better Kiteboarder / Kitesurfer / Kitefoiler.

Most people focus so much on their board and feet when learning to tack a surfboard, they forget the most important element that makes this move possible; the kite!  Get the kite movement and timing wrong and everything else will struggle too. This blog post breaks down the fundamental timings of the bar and kite movement throughout the tack and will have you upping your tacking game immediately.

Let’s face it,  both the push and roll tack are such elegant moves they make any rider look effortlessly cool. This elegance comes from the fact that your body, board and kite all move in the right way at the right time.  And central to that, the right kite movement and its timing is the foundation for all tack tricks; surfboard and foil. So if you can understand and learn this technique, it will open up a whole range of cool new moves to try.

So here’s the full video to watch and do read on for some further tips:

Why learn to tack?

Tacking is a great way to maintain ground in order to catch more waves on your surfboard.  It allows you to change direction really quickly, without losing ground downwind, meaning you can get upwind much faster.  The tack also has a great flow feeling when you get it right and very different to a gybe. On a foil, it is actually a gateway skill to some other beautiful moves and will see your foiling become really dynamic and skilled.

When to start learning the tack

It’s a good idea to get the basics of riding a surfboard or foil under your belt before you start to progress to tacking.  Learning to gybe, hard carving turns, riding toeside and getting comfortable with foot changes are good skills to focus on before getting to the tack and get you comfortable being more dynamic with your board.

Getting the kite movement and timing right

When it comes to tacking, getting the timing and position of the bar and kite in sync with your body is the most important element.  Here we break down these timings in a step by step way to make it easy for you to remember and repeat when you get back out on the water.

STAGE 1 – Entry: Kite Up to 12

You are coming into your tack…….

• Hold your ground and course and maintain your direction of travel.
• Good speed and control is important throughout this stage of the tack.
• Direct the kite up to 12
• DO NOT CARVE YET – hold your original direction as you bring your kite up to 12.
• THE AIM of this stage is to get the kite flying as close to the top of the wind window as possible and pointing directly into the wind. The tension created from carving too early will stop the kite moving to the overhead position and you won’t be able to position you or the board correctly.

STAGE 2 – The Carve: Sheet Out

• Your kite is now close to 12 but we want to get it right overhead and to do that…
• Sheet the bar out fully at this point  – THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT, SHEET OUT FULLY! IF your tack is not successful and you feel resistance; check to see if you have sheeted out enough.
• The act of sheeting out allows the kite to luff and fly forward right over your head.
• Carve hard upwind
• The kite is overhead, flying with you, as you carve upwind

STAGE 3 – Body Rotation: Kite Stays Overhead

• The kite continues to stay at 12  for both the push and roll tack
• Now you sheet in, getting which will help get your weight forward over the board
• Allowing you to rotate directly under the kite.
• Then pull with your front hand – but only when your new front foot is in place

These three stages are a brilliant way to break down the tack and get a good feel of what your board and kite needs to be doing together.  The foot change will become far easier after this because the rotation of the board combined with the lift of the kite, from directly above, will give you space and time to change feet. There are some other key body position tips that will help with getting the carve and rotation smooth and controlled but we’ll save for next time!

So go give it a go and let us know how you get on – Happy Tacking!

The post Progression Blog – Kitesurfing Tips, Tricks, Equipment, Travel… first appeared on Progression Sports : Become a Better Kiteboarder / Kitesurfer / Kitefoiler.

Also when I say you need to ride faster, that doesn’t always mean riding at Mach-10. A small but significant increase in speed, which might still feel scary/exhilarating, can make all the difference.

For some of you, just the realisation that riding faster could be enough. You may be happy riding at speed and just not realising that you are slowing down before performing a trick or technique. If that applies to you, then no need to read on. Just Remember to add speed the next time you screw up and see if that fixes the problem.

When might riding faster be helpful?

Let’s start by running through a few situations for each kiting discipline where a lack of speed might be the root cause for a lack of progression. Before I start, let’s be clear, speed “might” be the issue, there are of course a lot of other mistakes that could be holding you back, but speed is always a good area to consider.

Kiteboarding

• Jumping higher – in fact, any jump will benefit from speed. Whether it’s going from a few inches off the water, to 2m, getting over 5m or that next step to 10m – riding faster will be a big part of helping to make this happen.
• Riding Toeside – it can feel like such an odd position to start with and it’s easy to ride slowly to maintain control, but all too often that just leads to a bad stance and stalling. Speed will make the board feel more comfortable and as you improve it will have a big effect on general kiting skills.

Kitesurfing

• Carving Turns / Gybing – losing speed through the gybe and as you exit is so often due to tentatively entering at a slow speed. Entering slowly actually requires you to be super aggressive with your carve and kite flying. If you enter with a little more speed, you can actually carve more gently through the turn.
• Foot Changes – if the board is travelling slowly then any weight changes are more likely to cause it to tip or sink.  If you are skimming over the water with speed you’ll have a little more room for error
• Bottom turning on a wave – maintaining speed through a bottom turn is crucial but a big issue for many kitesurfers. Here it’s both about knowing how to generate and maintain speed whilst feeling confident that you can stay in control.

Kitefoiling

• Rise and Glide – if you find yourself pogoing up and down as you try to rise up on the foil, the most common mistake is a lack of speed off the foil before you rise up. So it’s important to be able to ride with speed and control off the foil but also once foiling to ensure you stay up and gliding.
• Carving Turns / Gybing – just like with carves on a surfboard, dropping off the foil during a carve, along with many other mistakes, stem from entering with too little speed.
• Foot Change – speed gives stability on the foil, and more time if you make mistakes, both of which can be crucial during the foot change to stop you accidentally breaching or losing speed, touching down and crashing.

How do I ride fast?

Whether you are riding a twintip, surfboard or foilboard, the key steps to increasing your speed are the same. There are a few elements unique to each discipline, which I’ll cover when needed. But ultimately we need to create more power, deliver that to the board (or foil) and find ways to maintain control as we accelerate.

Let’s look at the three key elements that will come together to help you achieve this:

• Kite Position
• Bar Position
• Board Position

Kite Position

Your kite is the power source, and it will generate more power the lower it is in the powerzone. The sweet spot for speed and control is holding the kite at 45 degrees and really that is the highest you want it. If you put it lower still, it can be possible to transfer that power to the board more efficiently, with the right technique, setting you up ready to perform a certain manoeuvre.

If you are riding along comfortably and in control, slowly lower the kite to 45 or lower. In this position, we are not looking for a surge of power because we already have some board speed and riding along nicely. We are moving the kite slowly down to gradually increase speed so we can maintain control.

If you are less powered and struggling to ride smoothly, you may need to drop the kite faster or be flying it up and down to build initial speed.  Your ultimate goal is to park the kite low when you have built up enough board speed and apparent wind.

Bar Position

It will come as no surprise that sheeting in is going to be important here. Generally, we all think – sheet in for more power, sheet out to depower – it’s not always that straight forward but here the basic principle holds true. The key is:

Gradually sheeting in

If you just pull in hard you may stall the kite or get a surge of power you can’t control. You need to:

• Slowly sheet in by maybe just a centimetre
• Feel the increase in power
• Feed that down into the board
• Feel some acceleration forwards
• Are you still in control?
• Then sheet in another centimetre and repeat.

At times, you’ll probably need to sheet out if you can’t control the power channelled down into the board. Again, just sheet out a small amount, just enough to regain control. If you sheet out completely you’ll lose all power and be back to square one.

These small movements in and out, are what will help you maintain control as you gain experience of how to ride the board and handle the increase in power.

Board Position

Unsurprisingly, the board position is one of those areas where we can see some difference between how we handle things on a twintip, surfboard or foil.

For all disciplines, the lower kite means the pull is lower and we need to use the board to resist that lower sideways pull.

Kiteboarding / Twintip

On a twintip, you need the rail of the board fully dug deep in the water to convert that power into forward speed.

In flatter water, this is far more straightforward as you can keep a constant edge engaged but as the water gets more choppy or even wavey, this will be more challenging. You can achieve this by keeping the board angled right over and aim to cut through the chop rather than trying to constantly roll up and over every little bump. And in many ways going fast will give you a smoother ride, as you can cut through the chop, and even if you lose contact with the water, you’ll slice straight back into it when you reconnect, maintaining speed and control.

Kitesurfing

On a surfboard, when powered up you can ride much like a twintip burying the rail and edging hard, but you also have some big fins sticking out the back of the board which gives you some other options. When moderately or underpowered you can still work to ride fast but keep the board slightly flatter pushing your feet sideways so that you drive off the fins. This technique works well as you can be dynamic and adapt to changes in the wind and maintain that speed through lulls and gusts.

Kitefoiling

For foiling, we are essentially doing the same as on a twintip – canting the board and foil over to counteract against the lower pull from the kite. The lower the kite, the more you need to cant the board and foil, and the faster you will be able to go and maintain control.

Practice Drills for Riding Faster

Here’s your homework for next time you are out on the water.

1) Focus on Speed Runs First

To start with, whatever technique or trick you are ultimately wanting to improve,  but that specific manoeuvre aside and just focus on the practice of increasing your speed riding in a straight line. One thing at a time and break the skill development down into parts.  Once you have the speed in control and comfortable, you can start integrating it into the main skill or trick.

2) Long Runs

As I often recommend, take a short period – 5-10 minutes and just focus on doing long runs working on your speed. Build up slowly, making small changes to kite, bar, board and body positions. Don’t rush in and slam your kite down a foot off the water, work up to that, getting used to lower and lower kites over time.

3) Different Angles

1. Upwind – Most people will probably find it easier to first practice speed runs riding closer to the wind or even properly upwind.
2. Beam/Across the wind – Once you feel comfortable and in control, try bearing off a little so you are riding on a beam reach, across the wind.  You will go faster and the board will require more effort to keep it pointed in the right direction.
3. Broad/Downwind – Finally bear off further and ride on a broad reach.  How broad you can go will depend on the wind strength and how powered up you are. Here you will have the opportunity to go the fastest.  The board will feel at its loosest and will need maximum control from your legs and lower body/core to keep it in the correct position..

4) Then Combine with a gybe, foot change, jump etc etc

Now that you feel you can handle more speed, it’s time to carry that speed into the trick or technique you want to improve. Your first attempts may not go quite as planned, as the timing for any kite and/or board movements may need to be adjusted, but stick with it and start tweaking your technique to bring it all together.

I hope the understanding of how to increase your speed gives you the confidence to move into the next gear and see the effects it will have on your overall kiting performance.

Happy speeding!

The post Progression Blog – Kitesurfing Tips, Tricks, Equipment, Travel… first appeared on Progression Sports : Become a Better Kiteboarder / Kitesurfer / Kitefoiler.

I’m a bit of a latecomer to the whole wingfoiling explosion. Partly due to delays getting the right size board and because I still love Kitefoiling. I have loads of new things I want to learn on my foil and it gets me out in a wide range of wind strengths (10 – 35 knots), so I wasn’t really looking for a new hobby. Having said that, I have been curious about all the winging fuss and it does look like a great way to ride waves, without all the paddling and excessing pumping!

So I have given winging a go. I’ve now been out 7 times over 10 weeks (injury and the lack of a board slowed things down a bit) and think because of my kitefoiling skills, I’m progressing pretty quickly. I am already thinking about how I would teach the core skills, both in person and in videos, and I have been playing around with the wing to see how different positions affect performance and control. It really is a very liberating experience; with full depower and the ability to spin the wing in all manner of different ways, the possibilities are endless and fun.

I won’t lie I’m not 100% convinced it’s for me. I am still keen to get back on my kitefoil, but it does have a wide appeal to people of varying sporting backgrounds and it will be a very interesting few years to see how the sport develops. But, if you are learning to wing here are my 7 tips after 7 days of wingfoiling.

1) Board Size Matters

I’m not saying anything new here, but its worth re-iterating that starting on the right size boards will make a huge difference. Whilst waiting for my F-ONE board to arrive, I tried a slightly lower volume board; I got up ok, but it was under water a lot and hard work to get going.  It was good but the length got annoying very quickly and the 2 inches less width was surprisingly less stable.

My big take away; getting the right board will make learning all the basics way way easier and more fun. Just accept that you might have to get a smaller board at some point in the near future, but if you start small you may never get off the starting blocks. For me, the standing up part is the hardest bit of it all (made harder by being a tall, heavier than average guy who isn’t that flexible). Once I’m up it’s relatively easy, having kitefoiled for years but, I dread trying to stand up on the thing. It gets easier with practice.  Having the right board under foot speeds things up massively. Volume is really important – more than your weight for sure and width really helps too. For me now, 6’0” still feels fine for everything I am learning – no doubt riding a 5’0” board would be amazing but there is no way I’m going to be able to stand up on something with volume that is close to half my body weight!

2) Attach the board leash to a belt

Rather than have the board leash attached to your ankle and then get caught up in it all the time, wear a simple belt and attach the leash there. It helps to keep the leash out the way and also allows you to untangle the leash by sliding it around the belt. Everyone down our beach now does this and it seems far more convenient. Some people have the wing wrist leash attached to the waist belt too.  I haven’t tried that yet but might be worth a go.

3) Pumping – Wing and Board/Foil

Unless you are really powered you are probably gonna have to pump the wing and/or board to get it up and foiling. No one really makes this look graceful, but there are definitely some ways that are more effective than others. I’ve found bearing the board off slightly downwind helps. I keep the wing at about a 45 degree angle, giving short hard pumps, and with the wing at this angle you get some lift and some sideways pull which you can translate into power against the foil. I also try and keep the wing at arms length, forward towards the nose of the board. This way, when you pump, think about pulling the board toward the wing to get it moving. You’ll also find that when you start to rise up on the foil, it is easier to keep weight forward and level the board out. Pumping the board is more tricky to learn; If you kitefoil already then you can practice easily on that,  and practice wake foiling behind a boat is good too.

4) Stance – stand tall, straight arms

I think the stance part is where windsurfers have a bit of an advantage. The stance for winging is very similar to windsurfing because they are used to having to hang off a sail. To start with, It’s easy to ride with bent legs and bent arms with quite a lot of tension in your body.  But, this gives you less control of the board/foil and wing and will get you tired out really quickly. 30 minutes into my second session and my forearms were nearly exploding and I could hardly hold the wing anymore. But then I remembered back to my windsurfing days and the stance of hips forward and straight arms; suddenly the wing felt light and balanced in my hands rather than me hanging off it. Imagine you’ve got a golf ball held between your butt cheeks! Squeeze those glutes to stop yourself from dropping the ball and it will help to push your hips forwards, that in turn will allow you to stand more upright. Then shoulders back and push the wing away from your body. Two hours of winging is now so much easier!

5) Upwind – Wing Forward

This leads on from getting that correct balanced stance –  standing straight; hips forwards and shoulders back. Now the wing is balanced in your hands, you’ll find you can move it around, experiment with its position. Try pulling slightly harder with your backhand. Try letting go with your backhand and balancing the wing with just your front hand.  Pushing the whole wing forwards towards the nose of the board was an eye-opener for me for making everything so much easier. Suddenly the wing gets even lighter but you also can point an extra 5, 10, 15 degrees higher upwind! And it makes sense – in kiting the further forward you can get the kite in the wind window the higher you can point upwind. In the old days of windsurfing, when we had adjustable mast tracks, you pushed it right to the front to go upwind. It’s fun to play around with the wind position as it will help you when you start doing more than just riding back and forth.

6) Carving Turns – wing high and Forward

And here is our first example of that. If you can carve on a kitefoil, then doing it on a wing is pretty straightforward. For those that don’t foil already, it can be tricky to master.  I’ll keep it brief for now (there is a lot to really understand about the gybe) but the essential thing to realise is that these big wing foils will glide for ages if you just keep weight over your front foot. When it comes to turning, it’s less about pushing hard on one rail but more from light pressure on a rail and using the foils yaw to pivot around the mast using the front wing. What I discovered was that  if you can keep the wing forward in front of your front leg then it will help to keep your weight forward through the carve. It also means the pull from the wing, is in front of your front foot and the front foil wing*, so it helps to pull the nose of the board around, using the yaw. So only light pressure on your toes (or heels) to carve, Stay reasonably upright and keep the wing at arms legs towards the front of the board.

* What idiot decided to call the thing we hold in our hands a wing, when we already have two wings on the bottom of the foil – endless confusion!

7) The Foot Change – Pop the board

Next up is the foot change which is another technique that if you are coming from kitefoiling is relatively easy.  In fact, it’s so much easier as you have that crazy big stable platform.  But if you are not a surfer and have never foot changed before, its a challenge to learn and understand the right way to do it. Using Kitefoiling as a reference for coaching, the fundamentals are the same and easy to learn. These are the three points I’d focus on:

1. Pop the board up, so it rising as you go to change your feet. Initially drop low on the mast (step 1) and then pop it up just as you step forward with your back foot (step 2).
2. Why does this help? Because when you step forward and all your weight is forward, the board is pushing up into your feet, rather than you stepping forward and your weight pushing the nose of the board down.
3. Push down on the wing as you get your new back foot back (see image 3 to 4). This allows you to keep your weight even over the board, and also get some weight off the board. Then you learn to shift your weight more easily  forward and backwards to find the right balance point to correct any pitch issue with the foil.

All of this foot change technique is exactly as we do on a kitefoil, Winging is even easier as we don’t have to worry about flying the kite around.

So those are my key takeaways from my first 7 wingfoil sessions. Still way more to learn as I’m now trying to perfect my tacks and starting to ride waves, but hopefully something above will help with whereever you are with your wingfoil progression. And as I said, I am new to all of this, no doubt I’ll adapt my techniques as I improve but I’d love to hear if anyone has different ideas or ways to improve on this.

I have shot some rough video for the stance, carving turn and foot change techniques, check out my Instagram posts over the next couple of weeks for short technique tips and the Progression YouTube channel for more details explanations. Once they are online I’ll add links to them here.

Update: Youtube video focusing on 3 key tips for the Stance, Gybe and Foot change:

Also be sure to check out the new Wing Surf World online mag but particularly the “Wingsurfing Journey” for more info on getting into Winging!

The post Progression Blog – Kitesurfing Tips, Tricks, Equipment, Travel… first appeared on Progression Sports : Become a Better Kiteboarder / Kitesurfer / Kitefoiler.

But the truth is, to become a better kitesurfer or learn a new discipline like kitefoiling, it can be a lot cheaper, way more efficient in terms of learning hours and really less painful than you think.

This blog is not specifically about how you can save money, it’s more about the most effective way to invest in your passion to get the most progression. We outline what we think are the priority areas that you can invest in to see the fastest and biggest improvements in all your kiting goals.

We see the potential investment as three main areas. We also believe the order and priority of these areas makes a difference to the gains you can make – decreasing your mistakes as well as saving you some pennies.

Investment priorities

1. Understanding
2. Time
3. Equipment

Equipment

We are going to talk about equipment first. Even though we think of it as probably the last priority of these areas, it is often the first thing people turn to in order to get started and progress.

Hands up ? if you have found yourself stuck in a rut, not progressing, wanting to improve ‘right now’! Or just bored? And….. the first thing you do to solve this issue or frustration is to go out and spend some money on new kit?  Don’t worry, we have all done it, been there, got the new kit :). We are even seeing a lot more people today buying kit before they have even learnt to fly a kite or have a kiteboarding lesson.

And….. the truth is, why not? Whether you are looking to get to the next level in your kiting or even start a new discipline, there is nothing like something new to kick start your motivation and intention. But what if it doesn’t fix the problem? Or actually becomes the thing that holds you back. Go out and buy more kit?

We see, all too often, how easy it is to turn to the ‘new kit fix’ to try and move things forward. But, here’s the thing; most of the time, new kit isn’t always the best place to invest in first to see the fastest gains.

We have lost count of the number of people we see on the wrong kit for their learning stage or ability. We can’t stress enough how important it is to get the RIGHT kit, FOR YOU, for WHERE YOU ARE at this point in your learning journey. A lot of the time people buy the kit ready for when they are a bit better, so they don’t need to buy twice. But a ‘WORD OF WARNING’; being on too advanced kit may actually slow you down and actually stop you getting to the level you were aiming for!

For most of us, the first point of advice comes from our more experienced kite friends. Absolutely nothing wrong with that as they should be able to guide us quite well, right? Except, most people’s experience is limited to their own learning journey and what works for them. Advice often has an unconscious bias towards their own ability, skill level, body type, weight etc etc. And don’t forget the bias towards the kitesurf brands they tend to favour, or are ambassadors for, or brands they need to just sell. The truth is, whilst this advice might be well-meaning, it may not be quite right for you.

So before you jump right in and invest in kit, here are some thoughts that might help you get the right kit first time;

Do your research and get a broad impartial view of how the kit works and feels for all levels and how it relates to your own needs and ability. Look for the positive and negatives and how this might help and hinder your kitesurf ambitions. For example, there is no point buying a boosting kite because you can get it at a good price, when you hate big jumps and just want to ride waves. Ask people you know have broad kit experience and expertise for the discipline you are looking to progress in. Don’t forget to always put your needs at the forefront of their advice before you part with your cash.

Don’t just go for what everyone else has. It might work for everyone else, but may not be quite right for you. We see this a lot in our foiling camps. People want the cool small boards, or buy a set-up because it was cheap….or actually the most expensive kit on the market. But once they have it they find they just can’t progress on it. It’s never nice telling people they have bought the wrong kit for their level.

We will talk more about board size in another post later – but here are a few reference points for broad guidance on kit. Of course, there is a lot more out on the big world wide web too – happy researching:

• Kiteworld gear reviews. What we like about this is you can filter your kit search to what you are broadly looking for. Search for your level and discipline, and then get reviewing.
• IKSURFMAG also have a wide range of reviews that are worth checking out
• Progression’s guide on twin tip boards

Time

Over the years of running Progression, it’s become really obvious that what holds people back the most, is time, or rather, lack of it. We’d all love to ride 7 days a week, but that is not practical or possible for most of us. And of course, when you do have time, there’s no bloody wind!!

We believe it is therefore really important to invest in the time you have properly to achieve the gains you want. Here are our tips on how to invest in time better that we share with our students to help progress their kiting as efficiently as possible:

Make sure you maximise your time on the water. Stop procrastinating on the beach, changing your mind on what size kite to fly. I know you may have not seen your kite buddies for a while, but make sure you don’t talk too long either. Spend as much of the time you have on the water.

Make the most of the time you have.

Stop cruising around and just mowing the lawn. Focus on specific goals and drills to work on and build your session into 20 or 30-minute drill sections to start developing specific skills.

Master of one vs Jack of all?

We also see a lot of people changing disciplines because they are bored or frustrated with where they are at. So we see them continuously changing boards and disciplines and not really developing any one of them. If you want to become a master then you need to put the time into developing that one discipline. Unless you have endless hours on the water to work across different disciples, we think it’s best to focus on one for a while in order to see more and faster gains in that discipline.

There is never a bad or non-productive day.

If the wind is light or drops and you are underpowered, there is always something you can practice to make the windier days more fun and productive. Bettering your kite skills will always make you a better kiter – and learning to kite in light winds is a skill that is massively undervalued and practised.
Learning kite loops is a brilliant light wind skill. Learning in the shallows without a board or in light underpowered winds are a perfect time to practice.

Check out our KiteSOFAing episode for some extra tips on how to kiteloop.

There are so many different conditions and scenarios that you can work with to learn new things and progress. Just get out there!

Land training

Learning and training for a new skill when you’re away from the beach can make the most of the time you do spend on the water. Find ways to mimic the skill or movement on land and spend time getting it right off the water. For example; the foot movement in a tack is easily practised on land. As is balance drills and foot changes on a foil or surfboard. You can even rig up a system to practice downloops and even get those twintip grabs positions worked out sitting on your sofa.

And there are lots of videos out there to watch and study off the water because the most important way to improve is to understand…

Understanding

Last month, in the feedback session of our five-day Progression camp, a client made a comment that the coaching week was actually the most cost-effective way of improving he had experienced. Funnily enough, this feedback was actually the inspiration for this blog.

After spending money on lots of different kites and foils, our client frustratingly found he was still not progressing. As part of our coaching program, we went through our teaching framework to work out the best way forward for him:

• Identifying specific kit needs according to the discipline level and then what the right and wrong bits of kit were for him.
• Specific drills were then essential to change the way our client was using the kit so he could get the best out of it and not waste any more time crashing and not progressing on it.
• Understanding how your kit works and how to ride it is essential to get the best out of it.
• Setting skill and session goals was also a massive step forward so our client could maximise his progression within the time on the water he had.

Unfortunately, this particular client does have to buy more kit. But the key point is; he could have saved money for sure, crashed way less and progressed much much faster had he invested in understanding what was right for him earlier.

Work on your weakness

A lack of understanding, whether this is around what kit to buy or even knowing how to really develop your skills, is a massive limiting factor to most people’s progression. Talking of skill development, we see poor technique even in the most experienced kiters – time and time again kiters with 15+ years flying a kite come for kitefoiling lessons and nearly every time they say the same thing “I thought I was good at flying a kite! I didn’t realise how rubbish I actually am!”. And it’s not that they are rubbish, it’s that in stronger winds we can paint over the cracks and often we can get away with more restrictive kite skills to do the specific things we do every session.

Constantly reviewing and understanding our skill weaknesses is a good thing. Ditch the ego, it’s what the best athletes from all sports do constantly to ensure they improve. It’s actually not a weakness to admit that you have areas that need work, or you were not as good at something as you thought you were. Believe me, there is always something to work on and perfect.

Whilst I don’t like being injured, I actually enjoy the message my body gives me about the weakness I have that has led to that injury. And I love the process of turning that weakness into a strength. Finding and acknowledging areas of work, potentially getting help to develop, is where progression and mastery starts.

Have a lesson, get some coaching

It is easy for us as coaches to say the best investment you can make is having a lesson to learn what you are doing wrong, or rather what you need to do right – but in all seriousness kiting instruction doesn’t have to end when you have learnt to waterstart.
The cost of a lesson is often the cheapest, fastest and less painful way to progress.

And obviously we are here to help…. Progression’s philosophy and foundations are based on this theory of understanding. We have made it our day job to understand every skill, trick and kit type and then distilling all that knowledge into a coaching path that will work for everyone. So you can save some time in your own quest for understanding and invest in just want you need, to get the most out of every session.

Check out Myself and Danny’s coaching page if you are keen to work with us. Or there are lots of brilliant coaches out there across the world. Drop us an email and we will try and guide you to the right coach in your area.

Or get started with our online coaching videos which can get you started with a better understanding of the next trick or technique you want to master.

What has made the biggest difference to your progression in the last 12 months?

The post Progression Blog – Kitesurfing Tips, Tricks, Equipment, Travel… first appeared on Progression Sports : Become a Better Kiteboarder / Kitesurfer / Kitefoiler.

Or it’s more that, I have learnt to love crashing.

Actually a better way of saying it is; I love to learn and in order to really learn, you have to be prepared to make mistakes and crash. So if crashing is an inevitable route to progression, why not find a way to enjoy the journey and embrace a love of Crashing!

Alongside coaching loads of kitefoilers to progress and learn new skills this last year, I’ve been working pretty hard to improve my own kitefoiling. From this, I’ve shared several videos of my successes and a few key tips for each. But I’ve never really shown the path it’s taken to achieve my goals.

It will come as no surprise that it involves a lot of attempts and a lot of crashes. I actually build crashing into Progressions learning development and teaching structure. It’s actually one of the many things we teach our students to help them progress quicker. I’m gonna share this learning insight with you, and how I became a better kiter by learning to love to crash – and hopefully you will too!

Side note: My examples here may focus on foiling but the principles apply to every discipline; twintip, surfboard rider, and hell yeah – wingfoiling too (something I am just starting to learn and believe me I am crashing a lot).

So stop avoiding crashing and embrace it, with these two key tips:

OK, you crashed – now get over it. Quickly!

I always ask people how their session went, and it’s amazing how often that their reply is the same; “I spend more time in the water than actually progressing!” I’m not actually surprised by this answer because a lot of people take AGES to get back on the board. Sitting in the water looking pissed off at having crashed, slowly body dragging back to their board, gingerly getting the board back into position or they crashed the kite into the water – the biggest time waster! All this time in the water is actually the tiring bit; swimming around getting frustrated and demotivated, trying to relaunch the kite. Too much time in the water people! Stop wallowing around, get back on that foil/TT/surfboard as quickly as possible – that is the challenge: 10 seconds from crash to back up and riding.

Here are some tips I use to speed up what is actually dead time where you are NOT KITING:

• First – keep the kite in the sky. As soon as you know it’s all going wrong, start working on kite triage – keep it moving, loop if it necessary, get it back to a stable position.
• Second – get back to the board quickly
  • Keeping a foot or hand in touch with the board if you can
  • Fly the kite, in whatever way you can, so it takes you back towards your board fast. If you are happy looping the kite and the board is downwind, loop that baby and shave off a couple of seconds dragging back to your board.
  • In lighter winds, when the board is upwind or either side of you, swimming is faster than body dragging – kick with your legs, let go of the bar and just swim upwind

The key is to make it a game and make it part of the session – see how much quicker you can get back on the board/foil after crashing.

Lots of Lols!

This is gonna seem like the daftest idea of all, but I promise you it really works! Laugh your bloody head off. If you get pissed off, scared or frustrated and end up shouting angrily at yourself, you’re just gonna kill your motivation. Instead, force yourself to smile and see the funny side of every crash. It’s honestly hilarious if you just change your perspective and enjoy the crashes. I actually think of it like some water park ride, where the big splash at the end is the finale! It’s fun!

Ok, this is the first step to progress. I promise if you do this, you will try more tricks and techniques and push your boundaries a bit more. So now you have got this really important step, the next phase is to learn to actually crash less.

Learn from it

If you just keep trying the same thing over and over, making the same mistakes, laughing or not, you will get frustrated and make the mistake a habit. So you need to start analysing your mistakes. Try and work out what you did wrong each time and then try to tweak or change something for the next attempt. This is a whole blog post on its own that I will cover in more detail in the future. But for now, just try and look for one thing you might have done wrong. Ask yourself; where’s your kite? Where’s your board and why might it be there? Where’s your body in relation to the kite/board? Where’s your bar – sheeted out/in? Were your knees bent? Start to look for possible mistakes and then make a small change on the next run and see what happens.

Practice Period

Set yourself 10 or 20 minutes to try a new trick, or work on something consistently during this period. Set a stopwatch if that helps. In that time you are going to stay positive, stay focused on getting back up as quickly as possible between crashes. And look for mistakes to change for the next run. Once you have got something right, increase the number of attempts by doing short runs and lots of repetition. For example, try 50 attempts in a 10 minute period. Again there are a lot more to these kinds of drills that we will cover in another blog post or video, but for now, just try a short fixed and focused time period, with short runs – high reps.

So there you go, it’s time to stop fearing the crashes. Make them a fun part of your learning journey. And most importantly see how a bit of laughter can speed up your progression.

The post Progression Blog – Kitesurfing Tips, Tricks, Equipment, Travel… first appeared on Progression Sports : Become a Better Kiteboarder / Kitesurfer / Kitefoiler.

In all seriousness, last week I found myself falling into the bad habit track myself!!! I’ve been working on my kitefoil board grab body rolls; some days they work great, others are really hit and miss. My foiling buddy Stav (fellow kite/snowboard instructor/coach), pointed out that when I crash, it was often when I was staring down at my board. Doh! We tell our coached clients all the time; “head up, look where you want to go”. Even though I know this is a bad habit, I still need to be reminded not to do it. I remember self-correcting this last year when polishing my foot changes, but here I am again falling into that same bad habit.

Earlier this year I created a video on what I felt was the No.1 bad habit for beginner and intermediate kitefoilers *. Kiting with only one hand on the bar.  It got a bit of push back from people who didn’t necessarily agree it was a bad habit.  More importantly to me, it also got a lot of great feedback from foilers who focused on changing this one habit and saw huge improvements in their overall control and ultimately their progression.

My own habit slip reminded me to follow this video up with a review of common bad habits that can often hold us back.

Bad Habits Effect Us All – Beginners and Pro’s Alike

Whatever level you get to in your kiting, or any sport for that matter, you need to constantly re-evaluate your techniques and habits. Whilst good habits need forming, bad habits are unfortunately easy to fall into and harder to break out of.
Whether someone else helps to point them out, or you take a good look at your riding/crashing, you can take some easy steps forward in your progression and change those bad habits into good ones.

Here are some of the common bad habits I see a lot. They apply to pretty much every discipline in kiting, from twin tip to foiling. With an awareness of them and some simple changes, you will see some huge progression in your riding.

My Top 3 Bad Habits in Kiteboarding:

1. ?Riding with your front hand off the bar.?‍
2. ?Straight Legs ?
3. ? Not looking up and where you want to go ?

Now, let’s give each a little context because I’m sure people who have some strong opinions if I leave it vague!

Riding with your front hand off the bar

The issue with riding with one hand off the bar is that it can cause you to ride with a less ideal stance for progression, It might initially feel like you are gaining balance against the kites pull but ultimately it can limit your ability to move dynamically, which you need in kiting. You may find it harder to quickly react and make changes in kites control. It can put you in a position where it is harder to control the board if you make a mistake. And no doubt it is harder to recover and stop yourself from crashing. I’ve written about this a lot in relation to kitefoiling, as I feel this is a big no-no and no point repeating the reason here, You can check out the previous blog post.

For kiteboarding and kitesurfing, it’s less cut and dry. You’ll be riding with more power and can handle that power easier through the edge of the board, even with one hand, but it can still lead to a less ideal stance from which to develop various tricks and technique. So just be aware of this and if you are having problems with certain movements, look and see if you are riding one-handed. It could be the limiting factor in your progression.

Legs too straight

Anyone who has ever come on a Progression camp or clinic will have heard me shouting out “Bend your knees!”. Whatever the discipline, this one is at the heart of many mistakes. Straight legs make your weight distribution erratic, often disproportionately overloading one rail or the other. It’s also really hard to move your weight around or be dynamic enough in this position, This will limit the performance of most tricks and even your ability to go upwind effectively,  Try jumping off a straight leg – it doesn’t work. You also find that common mistakes like breaking at the waist is a result of legs that are too straight. I can’t say this strongly enough, bending your legs and dropping low can you get you out of so many bad situations so it is should always be something to check if things are going wrong.

Not Looking where you want to go

Stop looking at your feet or the kite! We all do it (that’s me in the left-hand image above!).  It’s amazing what a negative effect it has on body position and therefore your board control. If you look at your kite the chances are you will just ride towards it. Looking where you want to go, rather than where you are heading, is the key in any form of a gybe, but also when riding upwind or through any kind of rotation – a back roll, a tack or a lazy Susan.

Crash = Checklist

When I crash, 80% of the time it’s one of these things that are at the root of my mistake – and I say root because something like straight legs, causes you to make other mistakes. So a good practice to form is to observe if any of these common habits could be the fix.  Running through this checklist, spotting what could be the culprit,  then consciously correcting it on the next attempt, gets me closer to achieving my goals. It could well help you out too.

So come on what bad habits do you have?
Any others worth adding to the list?

And remember all our premium videos contain a Common Mistakes chapter where we can help you identify what you are doing wrong, why you’re doing it and how to fix it. Check out our Library for all our kiteboarding, kitesurfing and kitefoiling videos & collections.

* For all those who enjoy spotting me riding with one hand off the bar and laughing at me for not listening to my own advice – watch the video(!!!). It’s ok if you are relaxed and cruising in control and your arm is doing nothing and not affecting your balanced posture. For beginners and intermediates however, whilst one hand off the bar might feel like a quick fix, it is often masking other bad habits and will often get in the way of further progression because body balance and control is off. I have been kiting for a very long time, when things go wrong for me, I can often save myself from a crash with just one hand on the bar, others may not be so lucky. But keep the comments coming in, the discussion never gets old :)

The post Progression Blog – Kitesurfing Tips, Tricks, Equipment, Travel… first appeared on Progression Sports : Become a Better Kiteboarder / Kitesurfer / Kitefoiler.

Learn to progress your kitesurfing from your sofa!

Episode 5: Carbon Masts for Kitefoiling – this one is for all the kite foilers or wannabe foilers. Is it time to upgrade from that aluminium mast and go carbon?

Rob’s been testing the new F-ONE carbon mast for the past 6 months, after 3 years riding aluminium, and three big advantages have become blazingly clear to him – watch and find out why he is a convert!

He also gives a quick round up of some of the technical details of the new F-one carbon masts and compares them to the aluminium offerings.

Learn to Kitefoil with Progression:
https://www.progression.me/c/kitefoiling-volume-1-collection

Foiling Toeside and the Foiling Foot Change:
https://www.progression.me/c/kite-foiling-gybes-collection

New F-one v3 Kitefoil Collection:
https://www.f-one.world/kite/kitefoil/

WE WANT TO KNOW YOUR QUESTIONS

Email us your questions for the next episode – tricks you are struggling with, mistakes you are making, or anything you think we might be able to help with. Send over any video clip or record a short video asking your question.
kitesofaing@progression.me

Kitesofaing is Progression’s new web series, offering constructive techniques you can practice at home during the COVID-19 lockdown (though nothing to stop you carrying on when things go back to normal). The plan is for two videos each week:

• The Weekend video will be focused on “doing”, activities you can try and practice at home
• The Mid-week video will cover a range of topics and focus more on better understanding through detailed theory briefings and question and answer sessions – submit your questions to Rob at kitesofaing@progression.me

Thanks to:

F-one: http://www.f-one.world
Manera: http://www.manera.com
Music: Brooklyn Nights by Chelsea McGough (via Soundstripe)
Producers: Rob Claisse & Michelle Blaydon
Kiters: Rob Claisse, Titouan Galea

KiteSOFAing Previous Episodes:

• Episode 1: Board Grabs
• Episode 2: Looping the Kite
• Episode 3: The Foot Change
• Episode 4: Riding Toeside

The post Progression Blog – Kitesurfing Tips, Tricks, Equipment, Travel… first appeared on Progression Sports : Become a Better Kiteboarder / Kitesurfer / Kitefoiler.

Learn to progress your kitesurfing from your sofa!

Episode 4: Riding Toeside – Do you want to learn the 3 key tips that will have riding toeside like a pro? The first trick for any new kiteboard and an essential technique whether you ride a twintip, surfboard or foil, riding toeside is an initially awkward stance but one that plays an important role across all these disciplines. And once you have it worked out, it just feels good! So join Rob on the sofa for some background chat, demos and a resistance band practical for you to try out at home.

Kiteboarding – Riding Toeside Video:
www.progression.me/v/riding-toeside-kiteboarding

Kitesurfing – Carving Turns Collection
www.progression.me/c/kitesurfing-carving-turns-collection

Kitefoiling – Riding Toeside:
www.progression.me/v/foiling-gybes-riding-toeside

WE WANT TO KNOW YOUR QUESTIONS

Email us your questions for the next episode – tricks you are struggling with, mistakes you are making, or anything you think we might be able to help with. Send over any video clip or record a short video asking your question.
kitesofaing@progression.me

Kitesofaing is Progression’s new web series, offering constructive techniques you can practice at home during the COVID-19 lockdown (though nothing to stop you carrying on when things go back to normal). The plan is for two videos each week:

• The Weekend video will be focused on “doing”, activities you can try and practice at home
• The Mid-week video will cover a range of topics and focus more on better understanding through detailed theory briefings and question and answer sessions – submit your questions to Rob at kitesofaing@progression.me

Thanks to:

F-one: http://www.f-one.world
Manera: http://www.manera.com
Music: Brooklyn Nights by Chelsea McGough (via Soundstripe)
Producers: Rob Claisse & Michelle Blaydon
Kiters: Rob Claisse, Danny Morrice, Lee Harvey, Colin Heckroodt, Jalou Langeree, Karine Navitel, Christian Harris

KiteSOFAing Previous Episodes:

• Episode 1: Board Grabs
• Episode 2: Looping the Kite
• Episode 3: The Foot Change

The post Progression Blog – Kitesurfing Tips, Tricks, Equipment, Travel… first appeared on Progression Sports : Become a Better Kiteboarder / Kitesurfer / Kitefoiler.

Learn to progress your kitesurfing from your sofa!

Episode 3: The Foot Change – to tie in with the release of our new Foiling Foot Changes coaching video, today Rob is going to run you all through the body movements for the foot switch – whether you are riding a foil or surfboard. These are the drills we use with our coaching clients down the beach, so its perfect for you in your living room! Build up muscle memory ready for when you get back on the water. The body movement is just one part, the kite and board/foil is equally as important and you can see how they all fit together in Progression’s full Foiling Gybes: The Foot Changes video.

For all you kitesurfers, the Carving Turns Collection covers the relevant foot change in each of the videos.

WE WANT TO KNOW YOUR QUESTIONS

Email us your questions for the next episode – tricks you are struggling with, mistakes you are making, or anything you think we might be able to help with. Send over any video clip or record a short video asking your question.
kitesofaing@progression.me

Kitesofaing is Progression’s new web series, offering constructive techniques you can practice at home during the COVID-19 lockdown (though nothing to stop you carrying on when things go back to normal). The plan is for two videos each week:

• The Weekend video will be focused on “doing”, activities you can try and practice at home
• The Mid-week video will cover a range of topics and focus more on better understanding through detailed theory briefings and question and answer sessions – submit your questions to Rob at kitesofaing@progression.me

Thanks to:

F-one: http://www.f-one.world
Manera: http://www.manera.com
Music: Brooklyn Nights by Chelsea McGough (via Soundstripe)
Producers: Rob Claisse & Michelle Blaydon
Kiters: Rob Claisse, Danny Morrice, Oswald Smith

The post Progression Blog – Kitesurfing Tips, Tricks, Equipment, Travel… first appeared on Progression Sports : Become a Better Kiteboarder / Kitesurfer / Kitefoiler.

There is no doubt, a flying foot change on your foil, when you get it right, feels amazing. It is also the gateway to advancing your kite skills and opens up endless possibilities to more tricks. But getting the consistency of the foot change is the challenge. The key is learning the individual movements and how they have to work together. Knowing how to correct small mistakes that have a big impact on the whole movement will see you up your success rate and finally get consistently in your foot changes.

This latest video by Progression reveals the secrets to make foot changes on your foil easy.
Learn the precise positions of the kite, body and board that guarantee solid foot changes on both heal and toe side switches.  With unique multi-view video syncs that make understanding easy and Progression’s tried and tested foot change drills, this video will have you dancing on your board in no time

Watch the Foiling Foot Change Video

Key teaching features you won’t find anywhere else

• Learn the best dry land and beach drills that consolidates your muscle memory and speeds up the learning process to successful foot changes
  
• Learn both heal to toe and toe to heal changes and the little tips that make these moves different
  
• See the kite, body and board positions in unique synchronised video formats for a better and more in-depth understanding of how to complete your foot changes
  
• Try and tested on over 50 students over the last two years. Learn from the expert Progression Live coaches so you can foot changing successfully, faster than from any other video content
  
• Understand the common mistakes students make in the learning process so you can identify what you are doing wrong, why you are doing it and the learn how to perform the movement correctly

Watch the Foiling Foot Change Video

The Full Foiling Gybe

The Foiling Foot Change is just part of the Foiling Gybe, our upcoming collection which also includes Toeside Riding, which was released last year, and the upcoming Carving Turns video which I am working on next and will be out in the coming months. The carving turns are the hardest of the three techniques to teach through video (though not necessary to learn) because there is so much variation depending on the kite size, wind strength, and style of foil. Finding a clear concise way to teach this without losing the nuance of the many edge cases has been tricky but I finally think I have found a way through!

The new Foiling Foot change video is 25 minutes long featuring two full Progression for the Toeside to Heelside and then the Heelside to Toeside foot change. It’s available to purchase today, here on the Progression website and start streaming it immediately or head over to the Progression App on your iOS or Android devices and download it there.

Watch the Foiling Foot Change Video

The post Progression Blog – Kitesurfing Tips, Tricks, Equipment, Travel… first appeared on Progression Sports : Become a Better Kiteboarder / Kitesurfer / Kitefoiler.

Learn to progress your kitesurfing from your sofa!

Episode 2: Looping the kite – Many kiteboarders will look scared when you tell them to try looping the kite but not all kite loops have to look the way the Pro’s do them at the King of the Air! In this episode, Rob will introduce you to the key steps so you can practice your first loops of the kite safely in shallow water. Understand why you can loop the kite without getting pulled off your feet and how your kite and bar movements make this possible.

WE WANT TO KNOW YOUR QUESTIONS

Email us your questions for the next episode – tricks you are struggling with, mistakes you are making, or anything you think we might be able to help with. Send over any video clip or record a short video asking your question.
kitesofaing@progression.me

Check out our full range of kiteboarding, kitesurfing and kitefoiling coaching videos and become a better kiter today even if you can’t get out on the water:

Kitesofaing is Progression’s new web series, offering constructive techniques you can practice at home during the COVID-19 lockdown (though nothing to stop you carrying on when things go back to normal). The plan is for two videos each week:

• The Weekend video will be focused on “doing”, activities you can try and practice at home
• The Mid-week video will cover a range of topics and focus more on better understanding through detailed theory briefings and question and answer sessions – submit your questions to Rob at kitesofaing@progression.me

Thanks to:

F-one: http://www.f-one.world
Manera: http://www.manera.com
Music: Brooklyn Nights by Chelsea McGough (via Soundstripe)
Producers: Rob Claisse & Michelle Blaydon
Kiters: Liam Whaley, Lasse Walker, Rob Claisse, Artur Santos Bodinho, Danny Morrice, Oleg Krasnoborov
KOTA footage: © Red Bull Media House

The post Progression Blog – Kitesurfing Tips, Tricks, Equipment, Travel… first appeared on Progression Sports : Become a Better Kiteboarder / Kitesurfer / Kitefoiler.

Learn to progress your kitesurfing from your sofa!

Episode 1: Board Grabs – It’s time to get some exercise with a few grab routines and build up that muscle memory ready for when you are back on the water! All from the safety of your sofa, Progression’s Rob Claisse will introduce you to the basics of the tail grab, giving you the in-depth understanding of what, why and how to make that first grab. Then we’ll look at how to improve our technique by hanging under the kite before we run through all 9 backhand grabs.

WE WANT TO KNOW YOUR QUESTIONS

Email us your questions for the next episode – tricks you are struggling with, mistakes you are making, or anything you think we might be able to help with. Send over any video clip or record a short video asking your question.
kitesofaing@progression.me

Improve your Jumping with our premium video:part of our full Kiteboarding Intermediate Volume 1 Collection.

Can’t remember all board grab names? Check out our previous board grab blog post.

Kitesofaing is Progression’s new web series, offering constructive techniques you can practice at home during the COVID-19 lockdown (though nothing to stop you carrying on when things go back to normal). The plan is for two videos each week:

• The Weekend video will be focused on “doing”, activities you can try and practice at home
• The Mid-week video will cover a range of topics and focus more on better understanding through detailed theory briefings and question and answer sessions – submit your questions to Rob at kitesofaing@progression.me

Thanks to:

F-one: http://www.f-one.world
Manera: http://www.manera.com
Music: Brooklyn Nights by Chelsea McGough (via Soundstripe)
Producers: Rob Claisse & Michelle Blaydon
Kiters: Oli Sweeney, James Boulding, Danny Morrice, Karine Navitel, Christian Harris

The post Progression Blog – Kitesurfing Tips, Tricks, Equipment, Travel… first appeared on Progression Sports : Become a Better Kiteboarder / Kitesurfer / Kitefoiler.

So there were some great comments on Youtube and Facebook, both from kiters who had given it a go and found it helpful, along with some instructors and foilers with other ideas. So I  wrote this rather long response to a comment on Facebook’s  Hydrofoil Kiteboarding group by Willie, who asked:

What are the better ways to teach balance?

Genuinely interested

So here we go, my response which hopefully answers this and a few other points:

BEWARE – this is a long post, because kitefoiling is complicated and I never said one simple change will solve all problems 　

So WIllie you asked about some other ways people can try and improve their balance on the kitefoil without taking a hand off for balance reasons. What follows isn’t just directed at you specifically cos it sounds like you are past the stage where this is directly relevant but hopefully clarifies some of what I have talked about in the video for anyone that can be bothered to read the essay that follows 　 And anyone that knows Progression knows I am a person who likes to cover things in detail and be thorough in my explanations! And just so we are completely clear when talking about one hand off I am referring to a tense arm, whether it is sticking out to the side, in front or by their side – but not an arm that is completely relaxed and in particular for people who are in the earlier stages of learning to foil.

The whole one hand off issue in the early part of someone learning to foil is actually a just a symptom of a bigger underlying problem – it’s the signpost to say – look around and see what else might not be quite right. But if someone relies on having one arm off for balance for too long, then it can become the root of problems further down the line and a hard habit for people to move away from.

Kite flying skills are, IMHO, the area that dictates how quickly and easily someone will learn to foil. Your ability to fly a kite both aggressively but in control and also make subtle movements and adjustments without having to overthink is a huge advantage for kitefoillers. So with this being the case, where kite control is so very important – wouldn’t we want to give beginner kite foilers the best chance of controlling the kite? And would anyone argue that flying a kite with one hand is as easy as with two? Therefore if someone starts to rely on having one hand off the bar so they can get their body in the correct position to stay balanced, what happens when they enviably need to put that hand back on the bar to help control the kite, because they will (no-one flies their kite with one hand continuously and when you have a foil that is taking your full focus kites drift around out of place), surely now they are riding with two hands on the bar but don’t know how to balance correctly in this position so things start to go wrong. They end up putting their hand on and off the bar, with their weight shift around and having to compensate with a more erratic kite or just an unstable board/foil. So we look to find ways to allow people to keep both hands on the bar, keep full control of the kite and get their weight forward into the correct position. And there are lots of ways to do this and many of them start before people even get on the water:

Equipment

Often people riding with a bad stance or unable to get weight over their front foot, who then start using the front arm for balance / additional forward weight, are doing this because their foil/board are not set up incorrectly. This happens way more than people might think and we end up tuning most of the foils for our clients when they come on our camps. Strap position, mast mount position sometimes shimming of the rear wing – a 1cm change of position of straps or mast or a 1mm shim on a rear wing can make a foil way easier to ride and allow people to focus on the correct stance far easier. Sometimes it can be something bigger, we had a client struggle all day just trying to get up and riding on or off the foil  – she was riding her board and foil and had previously got some foiling runs in at a different location. We tried her board/foil and it rode fine but she continued to struggle. So we put her foil on our beginner board and within 10 minutes she was up and riding. In this case, the point is that different people suit different styles of boards and getting them the correct one (and foil for that matter) can make all the difference. If someone is taking a lesson with a foiling instructor then this can be solved by the instructor, for the person self-learning, they need to be open to the idea and maybe find an experienced friend to ride there foil and see if there is another obvious that can be tweaked.

Practice the correct stance on the beach

If you ask new foilers, or people struggling to get into the correct stance, to get into the correct stance standing on the beach, nearly everyone stands incorrectly with their weight too far over their back foot. If someone doesn’t realise the correct stance when standing static on the beach, how are they going to get into this position on the water? So it’s a great exercise, easier with an instructor or experienced foiler friend who can show you the correct stance and move you around to get you in the correct position. It allows people to really see how much weight they should put on their front leg and often it’s good to get them to overcompensate this.

Riding off the foil

It’s surprising how many people you see, particularly self-learning who get up on the board and immediately try and rise up onto the foil, whether its by choice or accident. New foilers should start riding with the board on the water as this is an essential skill and the starting point for anyone learning to foil. It allows people to over-exaggerate front foot pressure without any negative consequences plus small mistakes in body positions that would cause instability and venting when foiling are more likely to be able to correct and learnt from. We recommend people are able to ride in both directions in control off the foil and hold there ground upwind before they learn how to rise and glide. Part of this is learning to deal with the foil rising up accidentally and getting it back down without crashing. Learning techniques like this all make the act of them learning to ride on the foil far easier because you only have a few extra techniques to remember and master whilst build on what you have already learnt. It’s never a bad thing to take a step back to riding off the foil if on any given day you are struggling with balance on the foil.

Kite high

Too many people start foiling and focus on trying to get into a different stance than their twin tip but they put the kite in the same places that they would if they were twin tipping –  45 degrees or lower. On a foil this position is hard to balance against as it is generating too much sideways pull and not something novice foilers can deal with. So get the kite high in the sky so it is pulling lightly upwards and forward rather than allowing it to be lower and pulling sideways. The high kite position is the starting point to allow foilers to get their body in the correct position, stand over the board and foil rather than needing to lean outwards. If the kite needs to be flown, particularly when riding off the foil, fly it in smaller movements in the top of the wind window between 10:30 and 11:30 or 12:30 and 1:30. And often people fail in the initial stage of waterstarting when trying to get their kite into the correct position. They drop the kite low to get pulled up on the board but then leave it low. Ideally, use one large movement of the kite to get you up out of the water but drive that kite back up high, using the power from the upwards stroke to keep you moving, now the kite is high and you can park it at 11/1, or keep it flying high in the sky. With the kite high there is far less need to take a hand off as the kite pull is from a direction that is far more manageable.

Bend your legs!

Hopefully, people have learnt the correct stance on the beach, practised it and got a feel for the stance but other than the kite most peoples biggest mistake is standing too upright, reverting to twin tip stance with a straighter front leg and slightly bent back leg. Though some people will say that taking a front hand off allows them to bend the front leg and move away from the twin tip stance, often it is a short-lived fix, and people revert back to straight legs and weight back and just stick there arm out in front to get weight forward. What we find is that if people know that an exaggerated bend leg stance is something that will help them initially but they will transition out of it as they get better balance, then they are more likely to give it a go, get really low and into a more survival stance. A low centre of gravity is just easier on a foil, that is physics for you, and though it may look a little less cool and not be the most comfortable position when people realise how bent their legs can be, they find this allows them to get weight forward because it allows you to get your upper body forward over your front leg. And as they get more foil control, they natural stand up more, moving away for this slightly uncomfortable position, no ones get into a bad habit of squatting down low for that long! Another big advantage of bent legs, low body, is it naturally makes it easier for people to keep weight across the full length of their feet, equal weight on their toes and heels. It’s actually quite hard to lend back on your heels when you squat down slightly.

There is more, lots of small things that can be tweaked and suggestions made to people to get them into the correct position – a lot of it is in my Progression videos or things you just pick up when you see people ride and tweak as you go – I can’t give away all my gold here ;-) But it is a combination of many of these fundamental techniques that will help people to get the correct balance.

The Importance of Self-Evaluation

Rather than looking at the hand off issue as something that someone should or shouldn’t do, maybe a better way to think of it is as a way of looking at one’s own riding and self-evaluating, a trigger that allows them to question if they could improve their stance. Someone may be struggling to ride at speed or maintain control and simply blaming on the fact that foiling is hard when in fact they could be making some fundamental mistakes and they just need to look deeper, to work out what they may be doing wrong elsewhere, rather than papering over the cracks with a short term fix.

Anyway, I think this discussion is great and if nothing else gets people (including myself) thinking about areas that they take for granted and looking to see if there are better ways to do things. I’m lucky that I get to do this everything day in my job, I’m surrounded by people with different points of views and we get to test out theories and hopefully try and stay open to changing our teaching techniques. Over the last 3 years, most of my time has been focused on foiling, working on the Progression Kitefoiling videos, building up our foiling coaching business and working with the British Kitesports Association to get more kiteboarding instructors qualified as kitefoiling instructors. In that time my points of view and methods for teaching foiling has changed subtly in some areas and massively in others but that is what is so exciting about kitefoiling at this stage of its existence. So I look forward to hearing more opinions and differing points of view so we can all try and make kitefoiling safer and easier to learn and improve at.

The post Progression Blog – Kitesurfing Tips, Tricks, Equipment, Travel… first appeared on Progression Sports : Become a Better Kiteboarder / Kitesurfer / Kitefoiler.

And I’m not talking videos or camps, both of which are definitely ways to help achieve this but most of us need something more. Something that links all those videos, session, camps together, helping you reach long term goals and most importantly keeping you excited and stoked for kiting. At the end of the day, a kiting session needs to be fun and make you smile and laugh more often than not. Ultimately, Progression has always been about me creating the tools that I wish I had to help me keep learning and stay motivated. It’s evolved over the years but I’m always looking at my kiting, my progression, and seeing if there are ways that I have managed to keep myself excited about kiting, over the last 20 years, that I can adapt so you can share those techniques too.

I have a new product/service that is in the early stages of development that myself and my business partner Danny are starting to look into and for me, the easiest way to test out new concepts is to try it out on myself. And the starting point for this new idea is all about Goals! It’s about realising what you what to achieve and then finding the right, realistic path to how you achieve them. So today I’m just going to share my goals with you, put them out there and I hope by the end of reading this you’ll share some of your goals in the comments and we can all work on reaching them over the next 12 months.

Here’s my goal list for my kitefoiling (you can do this for kiteboarding and kitesurfing, I’m mainly foiling so this is my focus but I’ll have goals of the other two disciplines too in due course). I’ve broken the trick/techniques into three stages – New, Consistency and Polish – more on why those groupings existing below…

Goals 2020: Rob Claisse

Discipline: Kitefoiling

NEW:

• Toeside –  drop to sitting (LFF)
• Pirouette (Lazy Susan?)
• Strapless Air – Back roll transition
• Strapless Air – Pop shuvit
• Sitting on the board – standing up (RFF)
• Powered T2H Carve, foot change mid carve
• S-Turns – Super tight and short T2H Carves back and forth, foot changing mid turns
• Push  tack drop to seating on exit
• 360 Handstand Tack

CONSISTENCY:

• Roll Tack (LFF)
• Riding Parallel Feet – Tack
• Strapless Air – Board off landing foiling (LFF)
• 360 – Carve H2T => Tack T2H (LFF)
• Seated Push Tack to standing

POLISH:

• Roll Tack (RFF)
• Sitting – Feet on the nose – Riding and Gybes
• Tack – T2H – No Hands (LFF)
• Sitting on the board (RFF)
• Tack – T2H (RFF)

Commitment:

• Long term: 180 days a  year. So close to 50% or 1 out of every 2 days.
• Short Term Streaks: 20+

RFF – Right foot forward
LFF – Left foot forward
Where I haven’t mentioned a specific stance than I’m currently attempting equally in both directions

Structure Explained

The Stages – NEW / CONSISTENCY / POLISH

I group my goals into three stages:

• NEW – this is something I can’t yet do. I may never have tried it or if I have given it ago and got round its been a bit of one-off or fluke
• CONSISTENCY – These are tricks or techniques that I can do some of the time, maybe 1 in 10 times up to 50%, I understand most of what I need to do but I need to improve my muscle memory and figure out the small mistakes.
• POLISH – I can get around this trick or technique 4/5 times but I want to make it smoother, more stylish, build up confidence so I can do it without thinking or in situations where I am under pressure.

COMMITMENT is an important consideration, as the amount of time you can commit to your kiting will have a massive effect on how realistic it is that you will reach certain goals.  And we want to consider both long term and short term commitment:

• Long term, over the course of a full year, roughly how many days will you go kiting in  this discipline
• Short Term Streaks is looking at how many times a year do you think you’ll get the opportunity to kite 4-5 times in a  single week – for most people, this will probably be kite holidays but may you are able to kite after work during the summer or just fortunate enough to kite regularly during the week.

For instance, you might get out on average once a week, so long term about 50 days a year, and have two kite holidays a year, so 2 opportunities for Short Term Streaks.

Choice of tricks & Techniques

Granular / Break it down – you’ll see that I have been very explicit about what I want to learn. I don’t just stay a Tack. I don’t just stay a Roll Tack. I include the stance – left foot forward is generally my strong side, right foot forward my weaker side – so I plan to tackle these as separate goals. And wind and water conditions, along with kite size all have an impact so I sometimes include those too. A trick I  need to polish on my 8m, powered up in water flat might be New for me when its 10 knots on my 15m in rolling swell.

The key here is to break things down so you have smaller goals to achieve, this way  it is easier to focus on very specific things rather than ambiguous ideas that cover too many options. And you are more likely to achieve that goal, tick it off – and that achievement is important as it keeps you motivated. So…

• Be realistic – how much do you kite each year? How good are your underlying kite skills? What conditions do you predominately get to kite in? Your overall goals need to reflect all of these areas – though some can be focused on specific situations: a trick you want to focus on when on holiday or somewhere with specific conditions.
• Be adventurous – take the point above into account but also aim to push yourself within your limits with some stretch goals. Something we say a lot on our camps – the only way you will learn something new is to try it that first time. Something that seems out of reach always starts with just giving it a go and even if you crash and get nowhere near, you’ll have at least taken the first step.
• Timescale – At the moment my list doesn’t say when I think I should be able to start moving a trick on to the next stage – so how difficult I think it will be for me to learn. This kind of detail will get added to the goal list but at the moment it’s in a more detailed spreadsheet version, but that isn’t quite ready to share yet!

For now, I keep my list in a note on my phone, this way I can quickly check it before I go  out kiting and pick a few tricks to work in that session –  but more on how to  structure a session around your goals in  a future post,

Build your Goal List

I’d love to hear what goals you have for the next 3/6/12 months, and I hope giving your goals some structure may be the starting point for you to actually start achieving them. Below is  the basic template you can copy and paste into any document and then start adding goals for 2020:

I’ll be following up this post with other building blocks that will help you achieve these goals, as we work on this new product/service but always remember that our premium coaching videos are there to help or check out our 2020 Foil and Wave camps for an easy way to jump-start your progress and get a sneak peek into many of the frameworks we already use when coaching you in person.

UPDATE: I actually wrote my initial goal list on Christmas day. But since then some tricks that I had been work on for some time have suddenly jumped from NEW to CONSISTENCY, whilst other new ideas have been added – so this goal list is something that evolves. I’d suggest writing out your first list and then update it every month but keep a copy of it at each stage so you can see how you progressed when you look later in the year.

The post Progression Blog – Kitesurfing Tips, Tricks, Equipment, Travel… first appeared on Progression Sports : Become a Better Kiteboarder / Kitesurfer / Kitefoiler.

Then last week Danny (my coaching partner at Progression Live) told me he landing two, off the foil. Damn it! He’s beaten me once again. So I did what I do best I got researching! And you know what? It all came together. In one session I landed 9, some riding off in the same direction others saved by coming out as a transition. I must have tried about 50 so 1 in 5 ain’t bad and better yet, right at the end of my session I got my 10th and that one, I landed on the foil! I couldn’t believe it, but now I know it’s really possible and I know what works and I can spot my mistakes. The next day I proved to myself it wasn’t a fluke and got another 8 and this one below on the GoPro landed and foiled out of it – I’ve still got a long way to go to add more style and height but we all have to start somewhere!

And before anyone asks, no I have no plans to make an instructional video on Strapless Airs on a kitefoil!! The foiling gybes and tacking videos still have to be edited and filmed respectively first! But here are a few insights I’ve had that have helped me increase consistency:

1. First up watch these two videos, Back to Brazil and Twist and Turns both helped to show me it was possible and allowed me to work out some of the techniques I’m gonna list below. (Also just use these videos for inspiration for loads of other cool strapless tricks)
2. Start with smaller jumpers, if you boost too high it’s hard to keep the kite in the correct position ready for landing, which leads on too…
3. Kite position – when you send the kite be sure you don’t let it go any further back than 12 which is important when it comes to landing…
4. Landing – as you get close to landing, sheet in and pull hard with your back hand to loop the kite. You need it ideally at 12 so it loops in the middle of the powerzone so you can keep weight over the tail of the board. If the kite has drifted behind you, then when you loop it you’ll get a bigger loop which pulls you backwards and it will be hard to keep weight over the board. And be patient with that loop, leave it as late as possible.
5. Board grab – this was key for me – it’s easy to grab up near the nose of the board but if you can grab the rail around where your front foot is, you’ll find it easier to control the board in the air and it will make the landing easier…
6. Hold the rail and keep holding as you land, get all your weight back over your back leg but push down with your front hand on the rail to keep the board flat. Prolonging this grab made such a huge difference and allowed me to land with speed and was the main reason I could keep foiling out of the jump without touching down.

Now all of this is my first thoughts after three days of practising and trying to improve my consistency – I’m sure my technique will change as I better understand what is happening and particularly as I jump higher but for these smaller, first jumps it seems to be working for me.

What I think is really worth considering for everyone – some tricks/techniques just take time, for me a year of on and off practice, but you won’t ever get it if you don’t try the first one, fail and then start your progression and 1000’s of attempts may just be necessary.

Love to hear anyone else’s thoughts and tips for this trick – chuck them in the comments below.

If you are keen to learn to foil then check out our Progression Kitefoiling Volume 1 Collection of coaching videos, or check out our 2020 Foiling Camps to improve your foiling – hey we can start teaching you strapless foiling airs now!

The post Progression Blog – Kitesurfing Tips, Tricks, Equipment, Travel… first appeared on Progression Sports : Become a Better Kiteboarder / Kitesurfer / Kitefoiler.

We’ve had a great year of kitefoiling camps with lots of successes helping foilers reach their goals and 2020 looks to continue that with more foiling but also wave camps. Booking for our 2020 camps will be open to everyone on the 1st December but for now, get the dates below in your diary and be ready in December to book up and get your early bird discount (available until the 1st January). Anyone who has come on a foiling camp with Progression Live in 2018/19 gets exclusive early booking starting today – lookout for an email from us with further details.

Camp calendar for 2020

Wave Coaching

Private Coaching and Group Clinics

If you have any questions, always feel free to get in contact – live@progression.me – and let’s have a chat about how we can help you become a better kiter.

Once again sign up for our Kitefoiling and Wave Coaching Newsletter to stay up to date with everything we’ll be offering in the future.

The post Progression Blog – Kitesurfing Tips, Tricks, Equipment, Travel… first appeared on Progression Sports : Become a Better Kiteboarder / Kitesurfer / Kitefoiler.

Breaking Down the Foiling Gybe

As with the off the foil gybe you’re carving the foil and board downwind around 180 degrees. We can start on our heelside, carve down to toeside and that is a gybe but often we refer to the full gybe being completed if we then do a foot change so we are back riding heelside.

And we can also do the opposite – starting heelside, first do the foot change so we are riding toeside, then carve downwind, through 180 degrees ending up heading the opposite direction on your heelside again.

Today I’m releasing the first of these videos – Riding Toeside.  I didn’t want to hold back all videos until they are all completed as each video can be view on its own and will help with those specific techniques.

As I finish each video, over the next few weeks, I’ll be releasing them and once all 4 videos are released you’ll be able to purchase them all as the Foiling Gybes Collection. But there is no need to wait for the full collection, you buy the Riding Toeside video today and when the full collection is available you’ll get the price of that video (or any others you buy) deducted from the Collection price. You can read more about how our Complete the Collection feature works.here.

Riding Toeside – OUT NOW

Riding toeside is the lynchpin of the gybe and all its component parts. If you are carving around you’ll have to start or end on your toeside and the same for the foot change. At some point you are going to end up in this position so I think its the best place to start!

Now some people pick up toeside riding relatively easily, your foil and the conditions you ride in can help or hinder you, but for most people, it feels unbalanced and like a horse ready to try and kick you off.

So understanding the key elements that will make toeside riding more comfortable can make the difference so when you make it round that carve or foot change you’ll be ready to gain control and keep foiling.

This video has two progressions, starting with riding broad in a more stable stance so you can get comfortable and build up some confidence before we transition into the second Progression, riding closer to the wind, handling more power with a stronger stance.

You can buy the Foiling Gybes: Riding Toeside video today, here on the Progression website and start streaming it immediately or head over to the Progression App on your iOS or Android devices and download it there.

Learn to Ride Toeside on the Foil Today

When are the next videos being released?

I know the number one question will be when the next videos will be released – my only answer, for now, is when they are ready! The toeside video got rewritten 3 times with the finished edit then ripped apart and reworked before I got to the video I am now happy with AND releasing today. The same is true of the Carving Turns video, which is actually the most complicated video to write as there are many variables to consider and so much is dependant on your foil, kite, wind strength and kiting experience – my second attempt at the script is looking good so finger cross it will come together quickly. Bare with me,  I am working as quickly as I can (alongside, coaching, marketing, support and app/web development). But as always, if you have any questions please get in touch.

The post Progression Blog – Kitesurfing Tips, Tricks, Equipment, Travel… first appeared on Progression Sports : Become a Better Kiteboarder / Kitesurfer / Kitefoiler.

• Location
• Accommodation
• Conditions
• Spots
• Hazards
• Time of Year
• Learning to Kitesurf in Viana
• Eating Out
• Getting to Viana
• Non-kiting Activities
• Best Forecast

Location

Viana Do Castelo is located in Northern Portugal, just 25km from the Spanish border. Sitting on the Atlantic coast means colder water but a stronger thermal. The town hosts a variety of conditions from perfectly groomed Atlantic rollers for the wave riders to flat water fun with the Viana sea wall providing protection for some idyllic summer foiling conditions. Just a short 2.5-hour flight from London with budget tickets available, this could be your next ideal destination.

I’ve been to Viana 3 times now, each time staying somewhere different and there’s plenty of options from 5* luxury all the way down to free camping in the sand dunes.

The main kite beach of Cabadelo is located just 40 minutes drive away from Porto airport. Here you’ll find two spots which make up Viana’s kitesurfing, one tucked in by the sea wall and the other just 500m down the beach. You’ll also find a handful of good restaurants, some great campsites and free camping spots as well as the fantastic Feel Viana resort where Progression Live is based for it’s coaching camps. The main town is just the other side of the river from the beach, a short 5-minute drive, taxi, or even a water taxi which runs across every hour, here you can find plenty of other accommodation options and some great AirBnB’s.

Accommodation

There’s every sort of option for accommodation in Viana do Castelo. If you’re on a budget then there’s a selection of great campsites that are just a few minutes walk through the sand dunes to the beach. Whether you want to rent a small static caravan or pitch a tent they offer some cheaper options.

If you’re planning on staying in Viana town then there are tons of AirBnB’s – we stayed in one right at the top of the hillside where you could watch the wind come in every morning. You will want a car if you are staying up here as it’s a 10-minute drive down to the beach.

For those of you looking for a bit more luxury – Feel Viana is a 4* resort located in the sand dunes just behind the main spot at Cabadelo beach. This is the resort where we choose to host our Progression Live foiling camps. Set amongst the pine forests this place offers a really relaxing vibe combined with everything you could ever want- conditions wise and an amazing breakfast. For those wishing to travel with a non-kitesurfing partner, this is a great place to hang out with a really nice restaurant, pool and spa.

Conditions

The prevailing and favoured wind is an NNW, which as long as there’s a small amount of heat will be accelerated by a sea breeze. This comes in cross shore, and slightly cross off over the low sea wall. The beach faces west and will work in Northerlies through to NW and S. Being the cold Atlantic and sea breezes’ a result of temperature differential, the thermals can start to kick off relatively early in the season, as soon as the land starts to warm up. Another common occurrence of the Portuguese west coast is sea mist, often you’ll find yourself with a 15m visibility in the mornings which will soon burn off as soon as the sun comes out, again this is just a result of the cold ocean.

You’ll be wanting a 3.2mm wetsuit in the summer, the air temperature can get nice and warm – up into the 30°C’s, the mornings may often start off slightly fresher when the sea mist is about but this will soon break as the land warms up. Riding here in the winter months you’ll be wanting the full works of a 5.3mm suit, boots and gloves. In the spring/autumn something in between.

Spots

Viana has two main kite spots, which are both on the same stretch of beach and separated by just 500 meters of sand. They do however both produce quite different conditions.

The main spot in Viana Do Castelo is located at the Northern end of Cabedelo beach. It’s sheltered by a larger outside sea wall which spans across the whole river mouth and protects the town from the harsh Atlantic waves. On the southern side of the river mouth, there is another much smaller sea wall, this creates glassy flat water on the inside as the wind blows over the wall and it’s this spot that can produce some of the best foiling conditions that I’ve found in Europe. Big swells can wrap around the main outer sea wall and be groomed to perfection at this inside spot with rumours of perfect hollow barrels reeling down the sand bars in the winter months. The winds are very cross-shore at this spot and can bend slightly off at times, so be prepared if you’re planning on foiling in the lighter winds.

Rodanho is located about 500 meters further south down the beach and provides a more onshore prevailing wind, this stretch of the beach tends to pick up a lot more swell. The waves break on a sandy bottom and you may have to move about to find the best sandbank that’s working at the time.

Hazards

There are only a few hazards to be aware of on this beach. The main one being a small patch of rocks between the main spot and Rodanho, most are visible at low tide but keep your eyes peeled as the tide pushes up the beach. As when visiting any new spot chat with the locals or the watersports centre to understand any issues you should be aware of.

It’s a popular spot in the summer months and it can get quite busy on the water at times. The beach can often also be busy with regular beach go’ ers – generally as the wind picks up they get sandblasted off the beaches!

Time of Year

The best time of year to visit Viana for wind is in the summer months. The thermals get accelerated by the hot land and cold sea differential. Any time from late March – October you’ll expect to get a helping hand from this summer breeze effect. In the winter the riding here is not for the fainthearted, large swells and big Atlantic storms frequently come rolling in from the west. If you’re not afraid of the cold ocean and air temps around 10°C then you could be in for some world-class wave riding.

Learning to Kitesurf in Viana

The spot is one of the better places to learn to kite along this stretch of coastline. The predominately flat waters and consistent winds in the summer months will provide conditions that will help to get you hours on the water. If you’re not a fan of colder waters then it would be a trickier place to learn as you’ll be wanting at least a 3:2 wetsuit in the summer. There are a few schools in the area, if you’re staying at Feel Viana there Sports Centre has some great instructors.

Eating out

Viana do Castelo has a variety of restaurants and bars in the main town – you can get everything you want from  Portuguese delicacies to great Italian and Indian food. If you’re planning on staying in one of the hotels or camp spots around Cabedelo beach then there are a  handful of cafes and restaurants at the northern end. Top tip – head to the Aqaurio Bar for a Franceschina after a long day on the water. Restaurants in and around town vary from €7 to €20  for a main course and there are tons of amazing bakeries if you’re looking for a cheap and delicious breakfast or lunch. Expect to pay around €2.50 for a beer at most places. And be sure to try some port seeing as you are just 45 minutes from its home in Porto!

If you’re planning to stay in a bit more style at the Feel Viana resort, you’ll wake up to an amazing breakfast spread and the restaurant here is really fantastic for dinner but a little more on the pricey side in comparison to more local places.

Getting to Viana

By Road:

Road tripping here is great, I am a big advocate for the van life having spent several months exploring the beaches around this area as well as the rest of the west coast of Portugal. There are endless places to free camp en route too which helps and it’s at the very beginning of an incredible stretch of coastline if you’re travelling from the north.

By Air:

Flights to Porto from most European cities are very cheap and frequent. LGW – Porto comes in at around £80. Porto is just a half an hour drive away from the main town, there are lots of places to hire cars from the airport there and this tends to work out the cheapest option oppose to taxis if there’s a couple or more of you.

Non-Kiting Activities  

There’s more than just kiting to this place. If you’re a keen surfer then there’s plenty of waves to play on. There’s often idyllic Surf or SUP foil surfing waves rolling in over one of the sandbars if it’s a bit smaller but head down the beach towards Rodanho to find something with a bit more size.

If there really is no wind and waves then you can always take to the trails, for the keen MTB’ers then head to the Feel Viana Sports centre where you can hire a great variety bike from road to MTB and even E-bikes. For hiking and running, there are tons of places to head, from just exploring the sand dunes to the trails which lead you all the way up the hillside behind the town.

A few hours exploring nearby Porto is also worth a trip and an opportunity to visit the port wine cellars for some tastings.

Best Forecast

You’re looking for the NW’s here but the beach will work with any wind with W in it all the way from the Northerlies to Southerlies. The sun is the key factor for making this spot work in the summer months, as long as the wind is in the right direction the forecast may be incredibly light but when the land heats up you’ll happily be out riding on a foil. I always use Windguru and find that that has been nice and accurate for this spot, just be sure to add a few more knots onto the forecast when it’s sunny! Windfinder’s superforecast is also another good option as it seems to add in the local thermals.

There’s no doubt that Viana Do Castelo is going to please every kind of kiteboarder, it really does have it all. Planet Kitesurf is our booking agent for all of our Progression Live camps, and know the area well having sent kiters there for the last couple of years. So no matter what sort of trip you’re after they’ll be able to cater to your needs to ensure you make the most of the great conditions.  Whether it’s a quick weekend getaway or a two-week Portuguese special we’re certain you’ll enjoy your time here. If you’re looking to up your foiling then join us for a camp staying at the wonderful Feel Viana Hotel in September 2019.

The post Progression Blog – Kitesurfing Tips, Tricks, Equipment, Travel… first appeared on Progression Sports : Become a Better Kiteboarder / Kitesurfer / Kitefoiler.

Currently, we have 5 events planned, primarily on the South Coast of the UK but we’ll be going further afield in the summer and I hope to be touring around the UK hunting out new foiling spots and will always have a selection of foils in the van that people can try out. Don’t be afraid to ask me down the beach for a go!

Current Demo Days:

• Poole – Friday 17th May
• Lancing – Saturday, 18th May
• Camber – Sunday, 19th May
• Exmouth – Sat/Sun, 25/26th May
• Hayling – 21st-23rd June – Kitesurfing Armada*

Click any of the above to go to the Facebook events page for that day and show your interest. That way we can keep you informed nearer the time of exact plans and locations depending on the wind and weather.

And obviously, this is a demo and we want as many people as possible to get out on the water and try the foils but we also want to ensure that it is as safe as possible. To that end, assuming we have the right weather conditions, please be aware of a few conditions that are required to demo any foil equipment:

1. You must already have some foiling experience being able to ride back and forth and hold your ground upwind on a foil.
2. You must have your own wetsuit, harness and it is your responsibility to wear a helmet and any suitable impact vest
3. You must be a BKSA member or have suitable 3rd party liability insurance that covers kiteboarding. You MUST have your BKSA membership card with you (or 3rd party liability insurance certificate) to sign up to demo equipment.
4. Demo’s will primarily be aimed at kite foilers – limited demos are available for those wanting to surf/sup/wind foil.

As well as being around to talk you through the equipment, I’ll also be able to give some inform foil coaching for anyone stuck on particular tricks and techniques and looking for some advice.

The post Progression Blog – Kitesurfing Tips, Tricks, Equipment, Travel… first appeared on Progression Sports : Become a Better Kiteboarder / Kitesurfer / Kitefoiler.

Racing has always been something that has interested me. Previously kitesurfing had a look in at the Olympics without a foil but unfortunately, the Olympic committee decided to pull kiting out of the equation, leaving lots of people with some very expensive worthless kit. However, with the foil, the racing side of the sport has been taken to new heights. Being the fastest sailing craft around a course, other than an Americans Cup boats, it makes for some pretty exciting scenes. The last few years the Hydrofoil Pro Tour has been leading the way for the racing community, but with the International Kitesurfing Association (IKA) and Global Kitesurfing Association (GKA) taking a more active role, as we head towards the games in 2024, 2019 will see world championships along with Europeans and national rankers where registered kit has to be ridden. Having the registered kit rule hopefully will tame the current arms race that is going on between manufacturers and allow a level playing field on the water.

My first step into racing was getting some equipment, which proves a lot harder than you’d think. There are currently only a few foils that are up there and fast enough to keep up. The Mikes Lab is said to be the foil to own, yet impossible to get hold of, with waiting lists over a year long. So I found myself a second hand Enata built with the same design as the Mikes Lab,

it’s a one piece wing and fuselage set with a 110cm mast all made from carbon. This makes it very stiff giving lots of stability at higher speeds. Race kites are a must so I got myself a set of Ozone R1 V2’s. This kite is very very different to the likes of any freeride equipment, it’s built for one thing and for that it’s exceptional – going fast, but going from a cruize-y freeride foil and arguably the tamest kite on the market (Airush Ultra) the adjustment took a bit of time.

My first few sessions were in Langebaan, South Africa a spot which is getting increasingly popular for foilers because of its consistent wind, flat water and endless space to explore, combined with some sandbars, it can make for some exciting up/downwinders through the African nature reserve. The wind tends to blow strong there, it may start light but you know as soon as you get out there it’ll be building with every passing minute. Some sessions I would head out on my 11m feeling underpowered for 10minutes and within an hour I’d be holding on. This was all great training though but reinforced the fact of how many kites I was going to need, it allowed me to start to trust the kit riding so powered and learn how incredible the kites were. They may look lightweight and flimsy but they can put up with such enormous amounts of power. With my first few sessions in SA giving me a solid grounding on the equipment, I’ve decided to allow myself this year to get comfortable and up to speed before starting to compete in 2020.

My next stop was La Ventana, Mexico. The spot is renowned as a Mecca for kite race training. With the world’s best heading there for the winter, I spent many hours riding alongside the GB kite girls who have been selected by the RYA on a training programme with coach Jonnie Hutchcroft. They have spent the whole winter there getting ready for a full race season kicking off in April, and getting their first glimpse of racing in the La Ventana classic where both 1st and 2nd place were taken by the Eleanor Aldridge and Jemima Crathorne in the women’s division with Connor Bainbridge taking the win in the men.

La Ventana Racing. Photo by Jonnie Hunchcroft ©

La Ventana’s set up has endless space for riding, with most sessions consisting of riding between 30-40 miles doing long tacks with others up and down the coast, which gets interesting when you head upwind 10 miles and have to get back down holding onto a 9m in 25+ knots, but that’s what makes for good training (and crashes). I’m quickly realising the amount of riding that is required to get faster, and with every few sessions I can feel gradual improvements in stance, manoeuvres and general speed, but in order to attempt to keep up with the fastest I have a long way to go which is going to come from hours and hours of efficient training on the water. Alongside this, knowing the equipment like the back of your hand is essential, the kites and foils require fine tuning and mm’s make all the difference – whether it’s tuning your bridles or ensuring your foil is set up correctly.

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With 3 weeks spent out in La Ventana, we got a really wide variety of conditions highlighting how many kites I was going to end up needing – 21m’s for the 6knt range all the way down to a 9m for 25knts until you can no longer hang on, with kite sizes in 2m intervals. This means lots of bars too! You ride foil kites on much shorter lines, I currently have my 15m and 11m on 15m lines and my 9m on 11m lines, but I’m sure this will change as I experiment with what feels the most comfortable for me. The days of just pumping up a 12m LEI kite and sticking 4 lines on with not much concern for bar length is in the past. What’s amazing is how the fine-tuning of race kit can highlight things in freeride kit that I’ve never thought to try, and I’m starting to ride my gear very differently to before, playing around with shorter lines on the Airush Ultra alongside tweaks on my Airush and AK foils.

I’m now having a break from race kit, back on freeride foils, kitesurfing and spending some time getting my surf-foiling dialled in.  I’ll be getting practice hours logged in around our kitefoiling camps which kick off with Soma Bay in  June. I’m learning more and more each session about foil kites, race foils and how to get faster and more efficient on the water. Which will all be filtered down into the way we coach, so if you’re keen to start racing we’ll be able to help you out during our camps. There’s a big push in the UK to run fun club racing events, and now with the RYA involved there will be an increasing amount of sailing clubs helping to get some good events up and running so why not get as fast as possible to show your mates up at the weekends?

Keep your eyes peeled on my journey into the race scene and if you’re keen to come blast around on some foil kites in the UK this summer, get in touch and look out local events happening around the UK.

The post Progression Blog – Kitesurfing Tips, Tricks, Equipment, Travel… first appeared on Progression Sports : Become a Better Kiteboarder / Kitesurfer / Kitefoiler.

Or here’s a summary for those who’d rather read…

1. Perseverance

So you can waterstart and foil around comfortably with straps, then you ditch the straps and spend all this time dicking around in the water when you could be foiling!? It’s easy to just give up and screw the straps back on and enjoy what you can already do but I promise you its a short learning curve that just requires a little perseverance over your first couple of sessions but it won’t take long to start waterstarting consistently and as soon as that starts happening you find you’ll get your confidence back and be less concerned about crash out at sea!

Also, you can make it easier on yourself – start your session with your straps, get warmed up and comfortable foiling then come back, lose the straps and you will be far more in tune with your kite, board and foil.

2. Avoid Lightwinds

Waterstarting strapless in lightwinds is a skill unto itself and if this is where you are starting out you may struggle. In very light winds (sub-12 knots) you will probably find you need to be paying far more attention to your kite and the kite will move far slower, making it hard to keep the board in the right position before the kites power kicks in. So I’m not saying you can’t learn in lighter winds but your first attempts will be easier with a little more blow.

3. Be Gentle with the Kite

Now just because we want a little more wind and a more responsive kite doesn’t mean we want to throw it around all over the place. That lack of a front strap means a bit to much power can easily lose you control of the board, sending you flying off.

To start with you want to drive the kite enough so it generates just enough power to get you up onto the board, and allows you to get stead riding off the foil. Once you feel balanced rise up and start foiling. You may find riding with a slightly smaller kite can help until you get your muscle memory dialled into riding strapless.

4. Low Volume Boards

This one may split opinion but I’ve found that in general people find the strapless waterstart easier with a low volume board (typically the ABS/Tiwntip style construction). The reason why this may help you is that a low volume board, when sat on its side will partially submerge, sitting lower and can be easier to then keep on its side.

This can also be true for lighter weight and more floaty foils, that will more naturally sit on the surface of the water, again making it easier to keep the board on its side.

5. Board on its side

OK, this isn’t a new point, I take about it repeatedly in the main Waterstarts – Strapless video but its so important I’m just gonna say it one more time! Having the board on its side and keeping it there right up until the moment you get pulled up by the kite is vital and you just have to do whatever it takes to make that happen.

One last thing related to this – in the videos I talk about keeping the board perpendicular to the wind. Someone picked me up on this and asked what perpendicular means! Sorry, that is the mathematics major in me trying to get back out – a bad choice of words particular for those for whom English is not their first language. Perpendicular means “at right angles to”, what I should have said is the board should be pointing across the wind and there should be a wind arrow graphic! I’m adding this to an update of the main video in the near future.

End of maths lesson and hopefully a little more insight into the strapless waterstart. I’d love to hear how you are finding riding strapless? Did the videos help, any additional tips and are you tempted back to your straps?

The Waterstart – Strapless video is available to buy and watch now on the Progression Player website, though if you already own the Kitefoiling Volume 1 Collection its been adding to your library for free. You can also download it through the Progression Player App for iOS and Android.

The post Progression Blog – Kitesurfing Tips, Tricks, Equipment, Travel… first appeared on Progression Sports : Become a Better Kiteboarder / Kitesurfer / Kitefoiler.

This was my second trip to the town of Viana do Castelo, and again I was reluctant to leave. There are few places I’ve travelled to with kiting that could tempt me away from my home near Brighton, but Viana is somewhere I feel I could actually move to. Cape Town is another, both thanks to their awesome conditions and great off the water activities.

We arrived in Viana late on the Monday afternoon in our VW camper, having driven up there from Obidos. The 1986 VW California isn’t built for speed and the drive took us a couple of hours, but within an hour we were out on the water, eager to stretch our legs after the journey from the UK. We took 12’s as it seemed relatively light, but within half an hour we were fully powered up. We were kiting right up to the inside wall, which offers a mirror-like glassy flat section; the perfect backdrop for a shoot.

That evening the wind dropped off, leaving a vast space just for us to enjoy, although there’s endless space here anyway no matter how many riders are on the water. We headed downwind to find a few small waves rolling in that we could play on with the foils whilst the summer sunset slowly behind us. Excited for what the next morning was going to bring we headed back to camp for a few bottles of Sagres and a slightly cramped night’s sleep in the camper.

We awoke to a heavy fog outside the windows. It was light 9m weather, with an eerie feeling in the air, but conditions on the water were sublime. Without a doubt these were the glassiest waters I’ve ever been foiling in; you could literally see your reflection flying along in the water below the foil. With nobody else around, the backdrop created some pretty spectacular scenes for the shoot.

Feeling satisfied with the shots that we’d taken, it was time to move on with our Cosmic Quest down the coast in search of more of these magic spots.

There’s still one place available on our Portugal Foiling camp, come join us if you fancy experiencing this amazing spot whilst jumpstarting your foiling progression.

We also are booking up our October camp in Dakhla, Morocco – this renowned flat water location is the perfect place to practice your gybes and tack or simply get to grips with your foiling technique. Book your place today.

The post Progression Blog – Kitesurfing Tips, Tricks, Equipment, Travel… first appeared on Progression Sports : Become a Better Kiteboarder / Kitesurfer / Kitefoiler.

Why is this Video Important?

For a long time, kiters have been a little lost as to the best way to learn to kitefoil and understandably as there is a lot to consider:

1. Am I a good enough kiteboarder?
2. What equipment do I need?
3. What are the best conditions to learn in?
4. What should I learn first?
5. Do I just try and get up straight onto the foil?
6. I end up a long way upwind, how do I get back downwind?
7. What about turning around?

Do some of these sound familiar? If they do then this videos is going to show you the correct path for learning to Kitefoil. It’s not going to teach you how but it will point you in the right direction and keep you heading that way, with clear goals to achieve at each stage.

Each Stage gives you an overview of what you will need to master and then 3-4 Aims which you need to be able to perform before you should move on to the next stage. This is particularly important for “Stages 1 – Off the Foil” and “Stage 2 – Rise and Glide”, both of which set the groundwork for everything you will do in foiling and if you have patience, work through these in order, you will learn faster overall.

The Progression Kitefoiling Volume 1 Collection then offers you the actual instruction you need to learn all these skills, covering everything across these 5 stages:

* The Riding 7 Control and First Gybes videos are due for release in July 2018

You can watch the first three minutes below to get a taster but the 5 key stages are in the full video exclusive to the Progression website and app.

Keep coming back to the Stages of Learning to Hydrofoil video to ensure you are not missing any skills and learning in the fastest and safest way possible.

As always if you have any questions please let me know in the comments or email me on hello@progression.me.

The post Progression Blog – Kitesurfing Tips, Tricks, Equipment, Travel… first appeared on Progression Sports : Become a Better Kiteboarder / Kitesurfer / Kitefoiler.

The Kitesurfing Volume 1 Collection will be the ultimate resource for anyone looking to learn to kitefoil. No longer do you need to fumble around trying to piece together knowledge on equipment and techniques, and I’m happy to say that the days of kitefoiling being a dangerous sport to learn or only for the more experienced kiteboarders, are in the past. That’s not to say learning to kitefoil isn’t a challenge, but it is achievable. You just need the right equipment, the right instruction, some patience, and you will be well on your way to a whole heap of fun!

Learn to Kitefoil Today

Not every video is available today, this is just the start of the release plan, with further videos being released every 10-14 days. For that reason, I’m offering a 20% discount for anyone who purchases the Kitefoiling Volume 1 Collection, here on the Progression website, before the last of this collections videos are released. See the release schedule below to see what you’ll get today and in the future.

Kitefoiling Volume 1 Collection videos:

This collection is made up of 8 videos:

• Introduction
• Stages of Learning to Hydrofoil
• Equipment & Terminology
• Key Concepts for Hydrofoiling with a Kite
• Getting out on the Water
• Waterstarts
• Riding & Control
• First Gybes – Off the Foil

The easiest way to get an overview of what is included in each video is to watch the free Introduction video.

Introduction, Key Concepts, Getting on the Water and Waterstarts

Today we are releasing these four videos – Introduction, Key Concepts, Getting on the Water and Waterstarts. I have decided to release the videos now, rather than waiting for the full collection to be finished, as I know there are many people waiting to learn to kitefoil and these first videos will get you started.

The Stages of Learning to Hydrofoil and Equipment & Terminology

Both these videos will be free to view and are very close to being finished, just needing a few shots which I’m filming today! They will be released next Friday, 8th June. So not long to wait on those!

Riding & Control

This probably the most important section as it will go through the various progressions which allow you to actually learn to ride along on the foil as quickly and safely as possible. This video will be broken up into four progressions:

• Off the foil
• Rise and Glide
• Upwind Foiling
• Downwinding Foiling

My plan is to release this as a subcollection of shorter videos. That way I can release each of these progressions separately as soon as they are ready, getting them out to you quicker. Expect the first by mid-June, with the others following out by the end of July.

First Gybes

When you’re first learning to foil, just riding back and forth on the foil can be hard enough, so trying to go around the corners is a real challenge. There is a lot to master for the foiling gybe so this video takes a step back and teaches you the steps required off the foil, which is more difficult than you might imagine. This video will be the final piece of the Kitefoiling Volume 1 Collection released in August.

What about Foiling Gybes and Tacks?

I know a lot of existing kitefoilers struggle to get smooth foiling gybes and tacks, and it is these videos that they are waiting for. The gybing videos are all planned out and filmed so I’ll be editing these as soon as the Volume 1 Collection is completed. I’ll have more to share with you on foiling gybes, carves, toeside riding and the foot change, in the coming weeks. For anyone desperate to get these mastered now, check out Progression Live Coaching clinics.

Tacking is a little further off, definitely on the cards but we need some further footage to get this completed. Look for this later in 2018.

Start Learning to Kitefoil Today

Truly, any kiteboarder can get started learning to foil today with the discounted Kitefoiling Volume 1 Collection. If you have any question about any aspect of learning to kite foil, post in the comments below or feel free to drop me an email: hello@progression.me

Learn to Kitefoil Today

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So here are 7 kiting vlogs which I think are worth a watch in 2018 – subscribe to those you like to show your support and find out when the next episode is released.

Jake Kelsick

15.2K subscribers / 52 Vlogs

If you want to see some slick edits from the beautiful island of Antigua then Jake has you covered. He’s done a pretty amazing job in the last year moving from being a Pro-wakestyle rider to kiteboarding’s vlogging poster child. Regular weekly vlogs sharing his laid-back Caribbean vibes, super stylish riding and tips for kiting and camera tech. Definitely top of the subscription list.

Jake Kelsick’s YouTube Channel

Kevin Langeree

14.4 subscribers / 44 Vlogs

Freestyle world champ, 2x Red Bull King of the Air winner and all round kiter extraordinaire, Kev gives you a varied look into the life of a pro kiter. His vlogs are a bit more sporadic but when they come they are always something original to get your amped for kiting.

Kevin Langeree’s YouTube Channel

Benjamin Beholz

3.1K subscribers / 20 Vlogs

Ben may be a new face to many in the kiteboarding world but he’s been slowly building an audience with weekly vlogs, high production values combined with loads of energy and enthusiasm for the sport. Also, check out his Kiteloop in 3 days series for an innovative way of getting starting with kiteloops.

Ben Beholz’s YouTube Channel

Ride with Blake

4.2K subscribers / 42 Vlogs

Blake’s series of videos are probably more technique videos that strict vlog’s but he covers a wide range of topics, leading us through these videos in a personal, fun way. Currently on hiatus but there is a healthy back catalogue to get you started.

Ride with Blake Youtube Playlist

Kai Lenny

9.2K Subscribers / 10 Vlogs

Kai just started vlogging this year but for the new-wave leader of watermen, he’s already racking up some great episode showcasing his love of the ocean. There is lots of foiling on various craft (no surprise seeing as he seems to have launch sup and surf foiling into the wider consciousness) and kiting pops up from time to time but really it’s all about seeing the beauty of Hawaiian waves through the eyes of a super talented waterman.

Kai Lenny’s YouTube Channel

Lewis Crathern

1K Subscribers / 6 vlogs

Another new vlogger for 2018 but Lewis has a varied life to show us – a big air specialist, the best kite competition commentator out there and an exceptional coach. So except a wide variety of topics and locations to be covered over the year as Lewis finds his feet in vlogging and speaks his mind on his vision for kiteboarding.

Lewis Crathern’s YouTube Channel

Also check out his podcast: On the Air with Lewis Crathern

Jalou Langeree

1.2K subscribers / 22 vlogs

There aren’t enough girls vlogging but the exceptional pro wave kitesurfer Jalou Langeree is leading the way with her somewhat sporadic episodes following her life travelling and competing around the world.

Jalou Langeree’s YouTube Channel

Others we hope to see more of in the future:

• Megan Grant: Jake’s other half started vlogging last year but stopped soon after. Hopefully she’ll start again soon.
• Aaron Hadlow – Aaron Airs – The multiple world champ is getting into the Vlog game but only one episode so far.

I’ve got some ideas for a Progression vlog of sorts but no time to start making them yet – for now don’t forget we have loads of great free videos on our Progression YouTube channel, in fact, it’s the most viewed kitesurfing YouTube Channel with over 10 Million video views.

Have I missed any of your favourite kitesurfing vloggers? Let me know in the comments…

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1. Body Weight & Height

First, something that is worth understanding – body weight & your height plays a big role in foiling setup. Control of a foil is dependant on very small changes in weight distributions. So for lighter weight riders, this can mean bigger movements and for the heavier boned, small tweaks. Height also needs to be factored in – a foil will be most stable when your centre of mass is as low as possible and close to the actual wings. So the taller you are more chance you have to get your weight out of place.

So unintentional changes can have a bigger impact for those with a bit more meat on their bones or head in the clouds!

What does this mean? Finding the right foil for you is a personal thing and may well be different from your mate, who swears their foil is the best things ever! Having said that it might also just mean that you need to change the setup of the foil to make it work for you, compared to your friend.

Myself and Danny, different sizes, different setups

A good example. I’m 6’6” and 105kg, whereas my mate is 5’9” and 75kg. He loves his Levitaz Exo with Cruser wing. I tried it and it was a tough beast to tame. But all it needed was to move the mount forward 3cm, ditch the straps so I could place my feet exactly where I wanted and bam it was feeling peachy. So be prepared to experiment with the mast mount position, the placement of your footstraps and feet positions (some foils like a wide stance, other more narrow) and tweak the rear wing stabilizer, if it has the option too. If you’re less experience get a friend with more hours on a foil to help you get it adjusted correctly.

2. The Front Wing

You can learn on either of these front wings but the top one will make your first few sessions so much easier

Not all front wings are made equal. Having tried quite a few, it’s my opinion that for your first few session you will learn significantly faster if you use a front wing which generates lift at lower speeds AND the lift comes on slowly and drops off slowly. Basically, you want something slow! This greatly reduces the nasty surprises that many of us experienced when learning to foil previously, on intermediate and advanced wings (all that were available at the time).

I touched on this in my last post but for the friend I taught recently – it was amazing to see the difference this gentle style of foil makes when learning:

• A kiter can ride with less power, giving them time to focus on the new stance and weight distribution compared to twintip or surfboard riding
• If you accidentally pop up on the foil, it happens slowly and gives time for them (or me whispering in their ear, thanks to BBTalkin) to learn the techniques to take back control and slowly bring the foil back down and the board back on the water.
• The number of violent crashes is reduced and in this case, he avoided any heavy landings
• In two hours he was able to learn riding off the foil, practice coming up and down and eventually ride for short distances constantly on the foil.

So if you really want to learn to foil as quickly as possible, start slow with the right foil, set up correctly for you and you’ll cut out a whole load of crashes!

Can I use a Surf/SUP wing?

The Go Foil surf wing is an amazing bit of kit but not for learning to kite hydrofoil

Also be slightly wary of learning using one of the newer dedicated surf/sup foil. They are amazing foils but not for beginner kite foilers. These front wings do offer some of what you want – lift at slow speeds but it can be too much lift, too quickly. They also can offer lots of directional stability, necessary when trying to pop up on a surfboard but the extra sideways pull of our kite can make it hard for the novice kite foiler to easily direct the board on their first runs, so you find you get repeatedly pinged off sideways.

Feel free to ask any specific comments below if you’d like advice on specific foils you are considering buying or troubles you are having getting the basics learnt.

In the new Kitefoiling videos we’ll cover how to structure this first session to learn all the correct techniques as quickly as possible. For those wanting to make it even easier grab a coaching session with us (or one of the growing number of foiling coaches around the world), get the perfect equipment for that first session before you start out on your own kit.

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First up let’s be clear, I’ve been to Lefkada for one 2-week trip, in May 2017. I’m no expert on the location and realistically this was slightly outside the main season (June-August is when it really works). But after kiting and filming 14 days straight, I can safely say I fell in love with the place, the people, and can’t wait to go back. But other than my friends at AlwaysWindy, it was tough to find out much info on kiting in Lefkada so I hope this blog post will give some help to anyone thinking of venturing there in the future.

UPDATE:

Shot video with some clips from our trip that will hopefully give you an idea of the spots and conditions:

Location

Lefkada is Greek Island, known to windsurfers due to Vasiliki in the south and its strong blustery winds. Thankfully for us kiteboarders, the wind in the north of the island is not quite so strong (15-25 knots) and far more smooth. And just to confuse us all the whole island is called Lefkada but the town in the north of the island near to where you will kite is also called Lefkada!

We stayed in the village of Agios Nikolaos which is about a 10-minute drive from Lefkada town and 15 minutes from the airport (Aktion International Airport / PVK). So it’s a quick transfer with direct flights from the UK and many European countries.

Agios Nikolaos is a village with several restaurants, hotels and villas but importantly it’s a few minutes drive to the beach.

Wind and Kiting Spots

The wind is thermal and most of the time comes from the NW, though early and late in the season you may get wind from the SW which can be gustier. You wake most mornings to a calm sea but like clockwork, the wind will start to fill in around midday and by 2 pm you are on the water, with the wind starting to drop an hour before dark.

We were there in May and kited every day – partly due to having hydrofoils – in winds from 10-20 knots but we’re told that from June the wind is far more reliable, stronger and July/August is super consistent with 20-25 knots every day.

We kited at two main spots – both of which have a few different spots within them:

Kite Beach and Lagoon

This is at Agios Nikolaos and the kite beach is a big long sandy beach with cross-onshore wind. It’s waist deep for 30m and a large open area with an outer reef a mile out to sea, which keeps it pretty flat with at most, small chop. It’s great for twintip riding, surfboard practice and hydrofoils (you just have to walk out the first 15m or so). There’s a beach bar and several kite schools offering lessons.

Ollie enjoying the flat water perfection in the lagoon off Agios Nikolaos.

But kite beach is effectively one big sand spit so there is a lagoon on the other side which offers some amazing flat water. You can either kite round from kite beach or park and launch from the other side of the spit. In close, the water is only 50-100cm deep but that makes for some butter flat water and perfect twintip riding. The wind is directly offshore but there is a large lagoon downwind and in the worst case you will simply end up on the far shore.

If you want some deeper water, you can kite in the whole lagoon which is where we spent many a day hydrofoiling. Its plenty deep enough, just watch out for the one shallow area of seaweed! You can easily foil round from the main beach or just walk out to deep water.

Wooden Bridge and the Church

This spot is amazing! A short drive from Agios Nikolaos towards Lefkada town. You park about 400m back from the sand dunes and get to the beach by means of a long wooden bridge – you see what they did there ;-) What makes this place so amazing is that the reef that protects kite beach actually starts here and that means you are just inside the reef and the water is super flat. It a perfect twintip location with waist to chest deep water for about 1km and at the end is The Church – it’s an actual church on a small island but here the water is shallow which makes it even flatter and like some tropical paradise.

Now we did foil at Wooden Bridge but I’m not sure I could really recommend it as there are several spots where its less than 90cm deep! It may be ok for your first tries on a shorter mast but head down a little to avoid the shallow rocks which aren’t foiling friendly, but not too close to the church.

There is nothing here so bring water and snacks if you plan to stay for the day – though Lefkada is only a few minutes away if you want a quick gyros.

There are other spots in the area, the main one being Agios Ioannis beach which is closest to Lefkada town. We never kited there but you can find out more info on the Always Windy site.

Accommodation

We stayed at Villa Pefkakia, which sits up on the hill looking down onto the main lagoon and main kite beach of Agios Nikolaos. Straight up, when I go back to Lefkada then I will be staying here again! It’s so good for so many reasons.

Location – you literally get up walk out of your room and are looking at the kite spot. You can chill at the house and see the wind coming from Lefkada and the first kites popping up on the beach. You can even see Wooden Bridge and the church from the villa. It is set out of town away from any other buildings so it’s peaceful and relaxing. Its a few minute drive to the beach or the village.

Your hosts – the villa is owned and run by a French expat family who are so friendly and welcoming but never overbearing. Lovely people who all kite and know the area so can give you any advice needed.

The rooms – the rooms are simple, clean and comfortable and each one looks out over that lagoon.

The view from Villa Pefkakia. You can even see the Wooden Bridge in the distance.

Every morning walk down to the outdoor kitchen and get an amazing continental breakfast – the homemade apricot jam is delicious! We never left hungry for the beach!!

Also be aware that is an EcoVilla – they are off the grid and completely self-sufficient. It doesn’t really affect your stay but it’s good to know you are having less of an impact on the location. Of course, when you are there to film kiteboarding instructional videos and have 22 different batteries (or devices with batteries in them) that need charging every night, you do feel like you are taking more than your fair share of solar power but we seemed to get through ok :-)

There are lots of other options for accommodation but we only stayed at one place so its all I can recommend. Again Always Windy can help you with other options.

Food and Entertainment

We kited every day and I worked the boys hard, filming from the minute the wind filled in until the sunset, so it didn’t leave much time for evening activities, other than the need for food! And on that front we couldn’t complain, we eat very well indeed but I’ll be honest we ended up eating at the same place 8 out of the 14 nights. You might think us boring but when you find a place you like, your exhausted and hungry, why not go with what you know?

For us, that was Pontiako – located on the main street in Agios Nikolaos and run by Vangelis, the most friendly and welcoming owner and chef, He serves traditional Greek food, primarily off the charcoal grill and everything we had was so simple, tasty and very reasonably priced. €5 would get you a big plate of grilled meat or fish, potatoes and salad along with a beer or wine (the chilled red wine become a firm favourite of mine). They make their own bread and all the greek dips are outstanding as are the desserts. Its one of those places that looks basic but is full of locals and just has an amazing authentic atmosphere. Many days we’d ended up getting food made by his mother who lived upstairs or ending up drinking Ouzo with him before we passed out (from tiredness, not the booze) ready for another day of wind.

Obviously, there are lots of other places to eat. In season Agios Nikolaos has several other restaurants and Lefkada has loads of great places serving all styles of cuisine. We eat at Margarita in Lefkada near the start of our trip and then became our second, and only other, dinner location (great pasta for those with an appetite). Supposedly the nightlife is also pretty good in town if you have the energy – and you can be guaranteed a lie in as the wind won’t arrive until noon the next day.

Anything else?

Overall, all I can say is that I can’t wait to head back to Lefkada. It’s a great spot for all kiteboarding – twintips are the obvious option, not a bad place for surfboard practice or strapless freestyle and great for foiling if you avoid the couple of shallow areas.

Danny testing out the Peter Lynn Aero foil kite

Summary / Helpful links:

• Speak to Mark at Always Windy if you need any advice on the area or you want some coaching
• Villa Pefkakia is a great place to say and the eldest son Baptiste is also the man to see about kite lessons. They have lots of great info on their website too.
• Season: May to September – July/August has the strongest wind
• Airport: Aktio Preveka (PVK)
• Money: Euro – it’s a quiet part of Greece so everything is cheaper than the big cities or tourist areas.
• Car hire – you really need a car to get to the different spots – €25-40 a day.
• Wind forecasts: Windguru, Windfinder, Poseidon, Live Weather
• iKSURFMAG have a good report on Lefkada

Have you been to Lefkada? If you have any food tip or recommendations for accommodation, restaurants or nightlife, please let us know in the comments below.

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It’s been amazing the amount of insight that has come from making these videos and all the discussion I’ve had with Danny Morrice (my partner in crime in Progression Live Coaching, more on that later) as we drove the long boring road from Cape Town to Langebaan last month.

Foiling is coming for everyone! It’s getting easier to learn all the time and I think Progression will have its part to play with clear concise coaching, illustrating the easiest ways to progress.

But as I complete the videos, and from some recent private coaching, a few areas stand out as real stumbling blocks when people are learning to kitefoil or improve their technique. So over the next few weeks, I’m going to pull out a few highlights from the new videos. Insight into specific areas that might help you now, and hopefully showcase the work we’ve been doing to ensure these new videos really offer a clearer understanding of how best to improve at hydrofoiling,

First up I’m going to start with an easy one for the complete newbie but not to be forgotten by any foiler wanting to learn new techniques the quickest way possible…

Riding Off the Foil

I’ve discussed this before in my 3 tips for your day on a hydrofoil but as I work on the new videos, teach new people to foil and watch others learning on their own, it’s obvious how important, but often overlooked, this vital stage of learning is for everyone.

The key – riding off the foil is your go-to whenever you want to learn a new technique. The kites power allows you to still keep riding along, you still get to experience the lift from the foil but without the extra skills need to balance on the foil above the water. So here are a few observations for beginners…

I can’t stress this enough, for at least your first hour your mission is to keep the board on the water, the foil fully submerged all the time. If the foil raises out of the water you are on failing, you are doing something wrong. To succeed, your priority is understanding how to get the foil back down under the water (ie. sheet out, bend your legs and get your shoulders over your front leg).

You will learn a lot of skills during this process, all vital when it comes to riding on the foil. Rushing to pop up and foil is what leads to nasty crashes and seething frustration!

I recently taught a friend who spent his first hour getting used to water starting and riding along, and every time he inadvertently came up on the foil I told him what to do to get it back down (we were using BBTalkin headsets). I was strict but he listened and followed the plan. After that first hour he’d had a few pretty gentle crashes and was riding back and forth holding his ground. At this point, we started experimenting with popping up onto the foil and riding for short periods and then choosing to drop back down off the foil. At the end of the two hours, he was riding on the foil, in both directions for 20m or so and had very few crashes.

His comments afterwards “I never would have spent so long riding off the foil if you hadn’t kept forcing me to do it, I’d still be struggling to simply ride along if I don’t this on my own”.

Now I don’t mean to boast about my coaching skills (but if you want a session, you can check out our Live Coaching courses) but instead, please take away from this the importance of that initial focus – nothing else matters – ride off the foil!

There is no shame in riding off the foil, ignore your ego and eagerness to give riding the foil ago, and it will speed up your progression in the long run.

If you want to be the first to know when the new foiling videos are released, sign up for the foil launch mailing list.and look out for another Road to Release diary post next week.

Have you got any experiences of learning to foil or specific techniques using the off the foil option? If so let us know in the comments.

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