Hi All

Im looking for a board that is going to help me improve my board skills and riding quicker and help me get a bit more confident riding. Im definitely a beginner when it comes to board skills (i come from a snowboarding background and am having a lot of trouble transferring my skills to kiteboarding). As far as kite skills go i think i would be intermediate, i have flown foil kites for around 5 years and used to landboard, made the switch to the liquid stuff at the start of last summer.

Im currently riding an 2008 slingshot misfit 136. On flat water it seems to be fine, a bit shifty at speed, but find it hard to stay up wind and i struggle with it in the surf (getting over waves etc). I have rode my mates xenon rayo on the weekend and found it was much more buoyant, better at getting over waves and easier to stay up wind.

The question i guess i would like your opinion on is
- is there a better board out there that will make it easier for me to progress and give me a bit more confidence while riding?
- is there something i can do to my current board to help with my issues (binding stance, bigger fins etc) ?
- or should i suck it up, grow a set and just get out there and ride more?

The latter.. You answered your own question.. with a question.

I started in a Cab prodigy board and found it hard to progress. I then got a shinn monk and from the get go had a way better feeling for the board, stayed upwind, edged way better etc etc.

Now i absolutely love it and wouldn't really want anything else besides maybe the odd shinn monk upgrade

i was told 10% gear 90% pilot ;)

instructor could prolly watch you ride and suggest fix

trial and error:

take note of kite pos forward in window and your weight over board affects the upwinding edge you can hold, just right board works less hard to keep you up so can do more work upwind

my board has rocker so someone suggested try vary weight and twist hips on front foot helped me keep more edge rather than just back quarter of board, i noticed the waterline moved forward and seemed to help, also sorted footstraps after much trial error on board screw pos choices! allowed my weight over center of board as in between rails, helped find better edge too

all this helped now i'm happy enough to get upwind. other thing is picking a path thru sets of waves takes time to learn, i still get it wrong all the time, this costs heaps of ground upwind, more than you realise!

good luck! :) ask around, try a few things and let us know

I was having the same issue as you however going from kiting to snowboarding. For the life of me I couldn't work it out etc etc.

The biggest thing I found once it all clicked is in snowboarding your weight is mostly on the front foot. It's the opposite in kiting. Keep your front leg straight and keep the weight on your back foot.

Yeah thats it. Like you said try to keep your weight on your back foot and keep your front leg straight. It feels like your front knee is going to buckle or jar when starting off but it becomes natural after awhile.

If your ever up in Sydney or South NSW give us a yell and you can have a go at my boards. Got an old underground and a new Cardboard.

Maxiy said...
You are right Initially in snowboarding you will predominately have your weight on your front foot, and use your back foot to help carve, as you progress the weighs distribution becomes more even. In Powder riding it is a whole different story it is much more like riding a kiteboard, weight on the back so you can keep the nose out of the powder.

I think where i'm struggling to make the transition is not so much the weight distribution bit but where the power is coming from and my general stance on the board, i have found/be comment to by my mate, that i bend my knees alot, tend to get down low, and crouch over the board quite alot(which is what you do when snowboarding)
as i understand it you should have rear leg bent, be relatively straight through the torso, lean back against the pull of the kite and push your weight on your rear foot to get your edge into the water and achieve a solid carve.

is this correct ????

Maxiy, I was given this bit of advice by a Dutch dude - he said to me:

Imagine that the hottest girl/guy (whatever your preference) you can think of is up on your kite. Now, to stay upwind, point your d!ck towards the kite, and keep your leading leg straight!

Worked for me.

snoopy said...
I was having the same issue as you however going from kiting to snowboarding. For the life of me I couldn't work it out etc etc.

The biggest thing I found once it all clicked is in snowboarding your weight is mostly on the front foot. It's the opposite in kiting. Keep your front leg straight and keep the weight on your back foot.

What snoopy said

snoopy said...
Yeah thats it. Like you said try to keep your weight on your back foot and keep your front leg straight. ...

Snoopy's advice is not really accurate. Boards work best when the rail is properly engaged. *Most* of the time that means loading your *front* foot. If you load your back foot you will stall the board.

You do load the back foot when you are well powered up but that is often momentary. If you load the back foot for too hard and too long you will force the kite out of the power zone and depower everything.

Ideally you would load up the front foot then trim your weight and edging through pressure on the back foot. The trimming is quite dynamic and you are moving a fair bit in response to the waves and wind.

Stance is very important in the longer term. Poo man stance is bad but not fatal when you're a newb. Once you get the basic skills together you want to get your stance right.

Correct stance is:
- front leg mostly straight
- back leg quite bent
- hips fairly forward
- back straight
- arms straight

Naturally you bend and flex everything as you ride but this is the correct basic stance. Visualise a point about the middle of the board, slightly towards the middle of the rail. That is where you want the bulk of the force to be concentrated.
Raise and lower your body to apply more weight to the edge (be careful not to body slam the chop).

Steer mostly from the shoulders.

The correct stance means you can ride much more efficiently and go upwind better. It also keeps the harness planted on your hips and is much more comfortable.