Category: Kitesurf Academy

Riding upwind is in many ways the Holy Grail of kitesurfing. The ability to leave the beach and come back at the same point, avoiding the Walk of Shame in the process is what marks out those who can sit in the pub and proudly announce to potential romantic interests, “I kitesurf,” from those who are still learning and sit there quietly for fear of being found out the next day at the beach if they speak up.

It is in many ways a very natural process.

As you become comfortable with your first rides and start extending the distance you are riding you will naturally start to transfer your weight to your back foot. This is a natural process as you’ll naturally want to engage the edge to give the board some more stability and, once achieved, it is a much more comfortable riding position.

The big problem here is that as you still don’t quite have the balance/counter balance of the kite worked out you will often transfer too much weight on to the back foot, which engages the heel side edge too much, causing the board to screw upwind, braking it and leaving you sinking.

Or you don’t engage the edge enough or engage it at the wrong angle and end up skidding off down wind totally out of control until an amused Neptune takes you out of you misery and provides a nice wave for you to trip over and come crashing down in a splash.

Embrace the suck and learn to love it, this is an essential part of learning to ride upwind.

As you start to learn how much power is coming through the kite you will start to transfer that power through your back heel into the board in a controlled manner and that will start to turn the board upwind avoiding the pitfalls mentioned above.

Aside from just letting nature take its course there are (of course) some things we can do to help the process along the way.

The first one is to…

Look Where You Are Going.

To start with your attention will be focused entirely on the kite, that’s natural. As soon as you feel you are able, start to transfer your attention and your eyes away from the kite and look upwind at the point you want to arrive at. As soon as you can do this with any sort of consistency you’ll start to notice results.

By looking at your destination you start to open up your shoulders and hips, transferring your weight correctly automatically, much like on a snowboard.

Try it now, stand up now with your legs spread shoulder width apart, shoulders facing forward. Now turn your head 90 degrees to the right and let your shoulders follow, notice where the weight is transferred to.

If you’ve done it correctly and opened up your shoulders and hips you should notice that your left heel is now much more firmly planted on the ground and the weight has transferred from your right foot into this left heel.

This is exactly the effect we are looking for in our kitesurfing. To transfer enough weight onto that back heel thereby engaging the edge and starting to drive ourselves up wind.

The key to this is to think in terms of what your shoulders (and hips) are doing and not what your feet are doing. i.e. don’t try and drive more weight through your heel, let your stance do the work for you.

Get The Bar Out

For many people as soon as they are riding the first thing they do is pull the bar all the way in for security…it feels good to have some thing to hold on to tight! By doing this you are effectively choking the kite. It won’t want to return to 12 o’clock and even if it feels like it’s riding ok (in stronger winds for example) it will be sitting very far back in the window which means it will be pulling you off down wind.

Let the bar out and the kite will steer easier, but more importantly it will fly forwards in the window thus reducing the angle between your intended direction of travel and the pull from the kite. Thus making it easier to ride upwind (for more on this see the section below on Go SLOW).

Shag Don’t Shit

The other thing we need to start thinking about at this stage is pushing forward with the hips.

This is where you may want to start considering riding in a waist harness.

Seat harnesses are great while you are learning as they keep the spreader bar down and well away from your rib cage and give you plenty of de power on the kite which is exactly what we want as beginners.

As we start to ride however, seat harnesses allow you to sit down to attempt to control the power of the kite by adopting the classic “Shitting Position,” this is counter-productive at this point.

What we want is for you to push your hips forward and throw your head backwards off the back of the board in a shagging position. With a waist harness if you drop into the shitting position the harness will rise up under your armpits and be very uncomfortable and more importantly look very uncool (Wonder Bra effect anyone?).

For that reason a waist harness provides a great yardstick by which to regulate your riding style. If you feel it rise up round your armpits you know you’re doing it wrong. You should be pushing your hips forward to the point where the kite is almost pulling the waist harness down when it’s flown at 45 degrees.

Go S L O W

Riding up wind is only attained by riding slowly.

Why?

You need the kite to be as far far forward in the wind window as possible so that the kites direction of pull and your direction of travel are as close as possible. If you are screaming along at 1000 miles an hour the kites angle of pull compared to your direction of travel will be much more obtuse and you are almost certainly going downwind. Look where you’re going, engage your heel edge and the kite will shoot forward in the window, you will slow down and start to ride up wind.

Don’t understand the physics of this? Recap this lesson.

One Handed Superstylin’

If you think about removing your front hand from the bar and trailing it in the water behind you as you ride you’ll find that from this position it’s almost impossible to ride in any direction but up wind. Your hips will be fully thrust forward your body leaning right back against the pull of the kite, your heel edge will, be engaged fully and you will shoot upwind.

Even if at the moment this actual position is unattainable – start to visualise the position in your head as you ride and get as close to it as possible to get a feel for what we’re talking about.

Start getting your strut ready for the “Walk of Fame.”

Once you are comfortable with your 1st rides what will happen naturally is that you start to transfer weight to your back foot. This is a natural process as people naturally want to engage the edge to give the board some more stability and it is in fact a much more comfortable riding position. If you are doing this and constantly stalling i.e. sinking back into the water it means you simply don’t have enough power in the kite at that moment as you engage the edge and so are braking the board too much and stalling. Play with this this is something that will come naturally rather than thinking about it. As you learn how much power is coming through the kite you will naturally start to transfer that power through your back heels into the board and that will start to turn the board up wind. There are however some things we can do to help the process along the way.

The 1st one is to really start looking where you are going. To start with you will be focused entirely on the kite but as soon as you feel you are able start to transfer your attention away from the kite and look upwind at the point you want to arrive at you’ll start to nice results. By looking at our destination what happens is you start to open up your shoulders and hips, much like on a snowboard. 

Try it now, stand up now in front of the computer with your legs spread shoulder width apart shoulders facing forward. Now turn your head to the right and let your shoulders follow, notice where the weight is transferred to. If you’ve done it correctly and opened up your shoulders and hips you should notice that your left heel is now much more firmly planted on the ground and the weight has transferred from your right foot into this left heel. This is exactly the effect we are looking for by looking for. To transfer enough weight onto that backheel thereby engaging the edge and starting to drive ourselves up wind.

Shag don’t Shit

The other thing we need to start thinking about at this stage is pushing forward with the hips. This is where you may want to start considering riding in a waist harness. Seat harnesses are great while you are learning as they keep the spreader bar down and well away from your rib cage which is exactly what we want. As we start to ride seat harnesses  tend to allow you to sit down in the seat harness to hold down the power of the kite adopting the classic “Shitting Position,” this is counter-productive at this point. 

What we want is for you to push your hips forward and throw your head backwards off the back of the board in a shagging position. With a waist harness if you drop into this shitting position the harness will rise up under your armpits and be very uncomfortable (and more importantly look very uncool). For that reason I would recommend you to invest in a waist harness which will regulate your riding style, in that if you feel the waist high rise up round your armpits you know you’re doing it wrong. You should be pushing your hips forward to the point where the kite is almost pulling the waist harness down but certainly keeping in position around your waist.

The last thing we want to start thinking about at this point is dealing with waves. Waves are a bugger to the beginner. Especially the white water which is just a wall of water intent on sweeping your board out from under your ferret and dumping you unceremoniously back on the beach.  

If at all possible aim for the green, unbroken wave as is much easier to navigate and its worth losing a bit of ground downwind to find a nice unbroken patch of water to cross at. This I appreciate is not always possible or easy. 

If you have to cross the white water the best way to do it is as directly as possible. Angle your board to point directly into the wave if possible. As you approach the white water raise the kite and raise your foot and leg to accept the wave, let the white water pass under your board and as you exit the wave drop the kite hard and point the board slightly downwind again. The exit from the wave is as important as the entrance. 

All that white foamy water behind the wave is heavily aerated. This means it doesn’t have much buoyancy and you often feel yourself being sucked down behind the wave. We need to get off this water as quickly as possible so drop the kite and get out there ASAP!

Another top tip when dealing with waves is to keep your knees bent as much as possible that way you can absorb as much of the power of the way through your legs as you can.

Okay, so you’re just about getting up on the board and starting to ride for at least a second or 2 what we need to do now is start consolidating this into longer rides.

There are probably several errors you’re making at this stage. The first is not pointing the board far enough downwind. The second is pulling the bar in as you rise out of the water and thus stalling the kite at the bottom of the window. To alleviate these problems we need to look at the power stroke itself. If you look at guys who are good riders as they rise from the water during the waterstart they do so slowly and very gracefully barely moving their actual body as they do. 

Most people when they start to learn to water start send the kite rapidly through the window and come up like they’ve been shot out of a canon. What we need to do here is make the power stroke deeper, slower and smoother. Have a look at how these better riders fly the kite when the water starting and translate that into your own riding.

Once you get to grips with this slower power stroke you will find you have an awful lot more time to think about what is going on as you’re coming out of the water. Use this time to ensure your board is pointing at the kite (ie straight down the line made by the lines). That way the kite lines, the board and the kite should all be aligned and the pull all travelling in the same direction.

Most people will naturally at this point, want to put weight on the back foot and start to edge the board. At this stage of riding this will lead to the board starting to skid under you as you attempt to engage the edge without sufficient control of the kite and its power. Doing this with your body in the incorrect position means that the edge does not engage sufficiently to start driving you upwind. 

To counteract this we need to keep a little bit of weight on the front foot to keep the board pointed downwind…I would suggest at least 45°. This will be an uncomfortable position I’m afraid. By not engaging the rail and riding the board flat you will feel every little lump and bump on the water but you need to get comfortable with the power from the kite and the control of the board before we start to in play with the edge and look at riding upwind.

The easiest way of maintaining this downwind riding is to keep your knees bent. That way your legs act as shock absorbers as you ride out the waves. This also keeps your centre of gravity much lower so you are better able to deal with gusts of wind and waves on the water.

The other main mistake people make at this point is pulling the bar in too much and holding it there as they rise out of the water. Once the kite reaches the bottom of the power stroke if the bar is held in it will simply stall the kite in this position and the rider will fall back into the water. 

What we need to do here is to send the kite back up to the top of the window and then bring it back down again to create that forward momentum. To achieve this as the kite reaches the bottom of the window squeeze the bar out (think clutch on a car for this squeeze) and steer the kite upwards making sure you don’t go too high. If the kite reaches the zenith (or the 12 o’clock position) you will be pulled upwards onto your toes and generally over the front of the board. If not enough power has been generated you’ll simply drop back into the water. So keep the kite on the side of the window in the direction that you want to travel.

The best way to think of what you do with the bar once you actually out of the water and trying to maintain you riding is as kung fu rather than boxing. Many people when they first rise out of the water frantically work the bar left and right in what looks like a series of very quick jab motions. Think instead of doing slow but controlled kung fu punches just like Bruce Lee. That way the kite will move slowly down in a nice large sine wave pattern and you will find it much easier to control your speed and direction.