Kite Hydrofoiling- The Most Important Skill (Beginner)

Welcome back to the OK Kiteboarder. In today's episode we are going to address the most important foundational skill to becoming a successful kite foiler. Now I know this is a very subjective statement and if you have a history of being a wave surfer, a wind surfer, or a kite surfer, then this episode may be of little benefit for you. However, if you're like me, an inland lake kiter who has spent a majority of his kiteboarding time riding a twin tip board, then this episode may be of benefit if you're currently a foiler or you have a present or future interest in maybe becoming a kite foiler. I hope you enjoy this episode. I've mentioned briefly in past episodes what I believe is the absolute importance to be able to connect your feet to the deck of the board and I never knew exactly how important this skill was until my very first kite foil lesson. After a few minutes I took off on my initial water start and all I did was careen upwind completely out of control and not be able to do anything else but go upwind. I wasn't able to break over the top of the board and break that fulcrum. In this episode I want to address those historical twin tippers that have bad habits and teach you a way to retrain your body to develop this specific skill for kite foiling. I hope everyone understands that to be a successful kite foiler you have to be able to keep your feet connected and be able to gently apply pressure through the heels of your feet and the toes and balls of your feet. For the training progression in this episode I've broken it into three phases. The first phase is your twin tip phase. The second phase is your surfboard or unidirectional strapless board phase and the third is on the foil board phase for progression. Beginning on your twin tip board start riding your board in both directions trying to alternate heel and toe pressure as quickly as you can and really more reactively. So what you're doing here is you're going to start riding in s curves. As you get more and more comfortable make these s curves look something more like z curves that are really more aggressive. Again the key here is to be reactive in keeping your feet flat on the deck and applying toe and heel pressure with your movements. As you get more and more comfortable with this activity then start being even more reactive in such that maybe you're catching a roller and taking that roller downwind and getting over on your toe side quickly or maybe getting very aggressive on riding your twin tip board in a downwind direction. So a downwinder is a really good skill for this as well. Even in this training video you can see that I'm much more competent and much more aggressively skilled riding to my goofy to the right side than I am to my left and this sure enough carries over to me on a foil. I'm much more competent riding to the goofy side than I am to the regular side. So making this training video brought that to the surface for me also that I need to improve in becoming more proficient riding to the regular side and taking the skills that we're discussing today. The second phase is your strapless unidirectional board. Just start with getting comfortable with riding this board because it's really hard to cheat when you're riding a strapless board. You have to keep your feet connected to the board. As you get more and more comfortable just cruising along with the surfboard with no straps performing small s curves and then progress to where you're actually able to put some weight over your toes and work on transitions in this fashion as well. The third phase is now you're up on your foil board you're going to know immediately whether or not you have made a lot of progress because right from the beginning the water start on the foil board you're going to know if you're going to be able to break that fulcrum and get on top of the board. Now that you're riding on your board and the water start was successful are you able to do anything besides go upwind? After going upwind and getting comfortable with it you need to now start to be able to ride the foil board downwind. This is performed in a number of different ways but really I believe the solid foundational skill here is to be able to keep your feet flat and connected to the board and apply gently heel and toe pressure through the board. So when going downwind you need to apply more toe and pressure through the balls of your feet so that you can attain this. When I say you want to apply pressure through the balls and toes of your feet and the heels of your feet this isn't just with your front foot you want to apply this through both of your feet whether it's on the water start or whether you're up and cruising. As you get more and more comfortable on your foil board and you're able to go downwind now start working on those very same s curves that we were working on with the twin tip and this will carry over to reaching the goals that we need to develop this foundational skill. Just to recap the foundational skill that I think is most important to being a successful foil kiter is keeping your feet connected to the board and being able to apply pressure through the balls and toes of your feet in a precise fashion. Progress with your twin tip being able to ride in multiple situations and getting very aggressive with s turns then go to a unidirectional strapless board and get comfortable riding that and then progress into small s curves with the unidirectional strapless board and then finally getting on that foil board and applying the very same fundamentals that you just progressed with on your twin tip and your surfboard. Also an extra point for those that are stuck in for a cold winter and they'd like some dry land training. I recently had one of my good friends call me up and say hey I just bought this one wheel and he's currently commuting to work in downtown Tulsa using the one wheel. He said you've got to try this out. So I went over tried the one wheel out and even though I'm very far from being proficient on the one wheel I noticed almost immediately that this replicates the feeling of riding a foil. You have to keep your feet connected to the board you're applying gentle toe and heel pressure as you're riding it with s curves and am I saying you should go out and spend eighteen hundred dollars on a glorified electric skateboard? No I'm not saying that but am I saying if somebody put one in my garage that I would throw it out in the trash? Probably not. Thanks for joining me on this episode. I hope that it was of some benefit to your progression as a kite foiler. Please subscribe to my channel below and also look in the description for our ongoing giveaway and sign up for that as well. I hope to see you next time on the OK Kite Boarder.