I just had one of my most progressive sessions so far even on foil toeside jibes.
What about you?
Two days and no constructive or motivational input is not satisfactory.

I removed a heap of ceramic floor tiles on both my healside and toeside.

I've moved my foil mounting forward on my board and increased my stance to 65cm width. Havent tried it yet. Will see how it goes.

I've had a very productive 2 - 3 weeks on my foil. I spent this time focussing on doing much shorter runs of 50m - 100m in order to practice transitions more frequently. So lots of carving from heel to toe side, riding toe side for a short distance, then carving back around to heel side. Also full gybes with foot swaps either before making the turn (right foot forward) or after completing the turn (left foot forward). I'm still bringing the board down onto the water to swap feet, but my transitions are all on the fly. I have managed to do 2 foot swaps while on the foil, so this is my next focus.

I'm now making over 90 percent of these transitions which I put down to the extra practice. I now easily spend 2 to 4 hours foiling without a break due to being less fatigued by constant crashes and water starts. Being strapless makes the foot swapping so much easier as well.

Gliding through a smooth turn is my favourite part of foiling right now.

I have had a couple of advances in recent weeks.

One is riding in "skiing position" with both feet together (more or less). This means I can do foiling foot swaps with fairly high reliability. It's also fun to ride around slowly and cruise in this position. If you watch Greg Drexler's videos he does a lot of riding with feet very close together and just doobing around having fun. Here's a link. www.google.com.au/search?q=greg+drexler&source=lnms&tbm=vid&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjKoq-8-K3YAhUMybwKHfQHDKYQ_AUIDCgD&biw=1440&bih=776

I can't do the Greg Drexler stuff, but I feel like I can. ;-) I get to doob around and play and that is great.

What this has lead to is that I am finally making progress on 360's. My foil really likes to glide tight and slow through transitions with my back foot on top of the foil, and most of my weight on the back foot. This means I can do super tight carving transitions, and I have managed to pull off a couple of dry foiling 360's. It's way unstable in this position, but that's the point. It turns and carves and that's a thing of joy.

PS We tend to either start or finish each session with a 4km upwinder. You ride out a bit, point the board upwind, then charge for about 20 minutes. On the return run we either carve lots of turns, or go as fast as possible downwind. It's a hoot.

It might be a little counterintuitive, but sometimes practicing transition after transition can be less productive. You crash a lot and don't learn a lot. Doing really long reaches gives you heaps of riding time with a lot less crashes. It's quite rewarding and you are doing heaps to develop your muscle memory for foiling. Intersperse that with focussed practice and the fun level is a lot higher.

Breeze just coming up here and the last few post will help my motivation.
Removing ceramic tiles sounded depressing.
I also need to do shorter runs to force transition practice.

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It might be a little counterintuitive, but sometimes practicing transition after transition can be less productive. You crash a lot and don't learn a lot. Doing really long reaches gives you heaps of riding time with a lot less crashes. It's quite rewarding and you are doing heaps to develop your muscle memory for foiling. Intersperse that with focussed practice and the fun level is a lot higher.

Yeah maybe for you, but for me, it's really improved my foiling as I'm not crashing much now. You only don't learn much if you keep making the same mistake over and over again. I tend to analyse my errors and make adjustments so can progress quite a bit in a short time with mindful practice. Plus transitions are currently my favourite part of foiling. In saying that, I have done lots of long foiling runs upwind and downwind. That's fun too - especially the downwind legs.

I like to read these posts while it's 2c air, 4c water and like 4hrs of light outside... That's progression for ya..

I'm working on my foiling jybes too. Man I suck!.... But have pulled of a few now so I can see the light. All be it a very distant light!

Also really enjoying adventure foiling. Treking up and down the coast line. It's so much more adventurous that mowing a lawn next to the launch site.

We have always done coastal run of several km. Originally with TT, then surfboards, then freeride raceboards. Power upwind, then carve the swells, sandbars and reefs back to the start.

With the foils we can do our regular run in a single beat. I have the intention of going a lot further, but the wind always seems to back off when we get to the decision point. We blast back to the start and either play with tacks and 360's, or do another lap of the coast run.

I am curious about people having trouble doing foiling gybes. That was the first thing we did after learning to foil. Carving gybes between heelside and toeside is surprisingly easy. Swapping feet while foiling, or during the gybe was the hard part. Is that what you are referring to?

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Gorgo said..
We have always done coastal run of several km. Originally with TT, then surfboards, then freeride raceboards. Power upwind, then carve the swells, sandbars and reefs back to the start.

With the foils we can do our regular run in a single beat. I have the intention of going a lot further, but the wind always seems to back off when we get to the decision point. We blast back to the start and either play with tacks and 360's, or do another lap of the coast run.

I am curious about people having trouble doing foiling gybes. That was the first thing we did after learning to foil. Carving gybes between heelside and toeside is surprisingly easy. Swapping feet while foiling, or during the gybe was the hard part. Is that what you are referring to?

Yep. It's the foiling footswitch that's hard for me. Made harder by the fact i've set my stab aoa shallow for a more responsive ride. I'm at a wave location with chop in swell which makes the foot switch even harder.

For me riding in skiing stance was the breakthrough. There were several "ooooh that's wobbly" attempts, but I finally committed to trying it and it is quite easy. It is almost exactly the same as swapping feet on a surfboard. Your feet go to the balance point just in front of the mast.

The switch is a two-step move rather than the one step move you see in the videos. Back foot to middle. Front foot to middle. Old back foot to front. Adjust new back foot and away you go. At first it's a little tippy-tappy with the feet. With a little practice it becomes quite fluid and positive.

My suspicion is that the guys in the videos are riding more powered up, and/or using foil kites, and/or more agile than some of us. I've done a few classic foot swaps using a very big kite quite powered up. They are very easy to do, but I could never repeat them with any reliability.

In terms of maintaining speed and direction I get a better result from doing an instantaneous touch down. Back foot forward. Touch. Old back foot back. The does a nice little swoop and you hear the slightest tap as it hits the water with no loss of speed or change of direction.

Cool gorgo! Good explanation. I will try as soon as go on holiday..

Cheers gorgo. That makes sense. Side note. I was riding a mutant prior to this so had to learn jybe footd switch from scratch on my low volume pocket board..... It's been fricken hard to learn with that set up. Non the less that's what I've got and ill make it work.