The elusive jibe...... for many, the thought alone causes a brain freeze that only a hope and a prayer can fix! Some people have 37 rules you have to remember, 18 do's and 23 don'ts.... No wonder it can be so complicated. The focus for these ladies was on 3 things. That's it. Just 3 things to think about. When these 3 things are actioned, success happens...... Check it out!
Like they say, Time fly's when your having fun and it has been a great last couple months. Getting back on the water after a nice long 9 months of injury was incredible. Going straight back to the scene of the crime and learning to wave ride with an amazing crew was the best way to get back in the rhythm! Punta San Carlos is the best place to hone your wave sailing skills. When it is good you can't find the words to describe it.... Our April Team scored- wind everyday and the crew were calling it a 10 out of 10! I called it a perfect week as well. There were the first days of 5.0 winds with head high waves, building through the week with double overhead sets driving us all down the line. Progress was HAPPENING! Hands were hurting but that didn't slow anyone down. The beautiful thing about these camps is the camaraderie that happens. We become a tight knit family for the week. We are a team, learning every day. We have fun. We eat like kings, sleep like babies ( or rocks as I know what babies do in their sleep). We live together, drink together and become friends. We create memories to last a lifetime. If Baja is on your list, make it happen one day- Here is a little video of the fun we had, edited by Joey Sanchez at SoloSports. Let's GO!
Jumping is so much fun, it takes practice and RHYTHM! I see a lot of people try to jump right before they hit the piece of chop and nothing happens. It is said, "timing is everything" and this very much applies to jumping. In order to get sent upward, it is nice to have a piece of chop or even better, a wave that will send you up up and away! Although neither are mandatory, if you don't have them you gotta learn "POP". Pop is also known as load and explode, or pushing down then pulling up. In flat water you can do an exercise to learn this- Start out by sliding your back hand back on your boom, unhook from your harness lines then push down with your front foot, then your back foot very quickly trying to push the board DOWN into the water so that it will explode back up. As you push down with your legs, pull in with your arms trying to use the sail to LIFT you up. Pull down, then upward on your booms. Try to suck your back leg up through your body and out your nose! The exercise here is to try it 3 or 4 times in a row to get into a RHYTHM and wham/bam you just learned POP. This is the start to your jumping game. You don't have to go high on your first attempts, just get the flow and learn the basics here and before you know it you will be sky bound!!!
Had a great session with iron man George the other day and asked him to share some notes...... figured you guys might want to think about what he got out of his lesson..... He sent over his top 10 take-aways, here they are-
1. Pull the back foot under you when jumping
2. Harness tighter and lower on my waist
3. Extend the front arm and reach back further on the boom with the back hand in general sailing as well as jumping
4. Don't be overpowered with sail size-it wasted my energy
5. Don't carve up wind when hitting the ramp
6. Snug foot straps to perfect fit
7. Sheet in on take off then extend the arms when I'm in the air- don't choke to rig, let it pull me up
8. Looping- Not so high or off big waves at first . I Can do loops off the breaking Whitewater- knee-high chops
9. In reviewing the pics, I have to look back! But man it's so counter intuitive
10. Having a world champion instructor makes its very easy to just let go and completely trust what needs to happen
That really helped me- So stoked Matt !
Had a great day with Nick from San Fran the other day- he called me up and said, "I want to learn to hit the lip! Never done it before but I have always wanted to"..... well on Day 3 the mission was accomplished. A skilled surgeon by trade, you could see this guy pays attention and knows how to LISTEN! Not just to listen, to transform the listening into ACTION! That is what it is all about! The most difficult thing about teaching is connecting with how each individual learns things. It is an art to figure this out, a challenge and sometimes you can get it right off the bat and sometimes it takes a couple session- Nick and I connected right away! Some of his take homes were to REACH way back (approx 10- 12" further than normal grip) on the boom before he dropped into the wave, allow the RIG to go more forward over the NOSE of the board to drive the front rail into the bottom turn, Roll back onto heels, CARVE off the lip with HEAD, HIPS and HEELS (Look with your head, Twist your hips back to the beach and weight your heels to push some SPRAY). Always remember your body follows your head and I say this a lot..... LOOK where you want to GO in all you do! Here are his results in the video! Nice job-
Filmed with GoPro Hero3 at 1080 60FPS
November has been a slow time for windsurfing over here on Maui so not much going on lately....... It is nice to have a break but after a few days, the craving to be back on the water still eats me up!
I got a quick question today via email asking about some forward loops techniques- so wanted to share it so anyone else out there might pick up a few tricks!
Question: With overpowered forwards and high forwards do you have the same control as those at 10-15 feet? I worry about getting blasted on the landing but assume you just shoot downwind and throw a more downwind rotation.
Answer: Yeah, well the higher you go the slower you need to rotate. As you are going up, you want to be stalling out and delaying your rotation so you don’t just over rotate and obliterate yourself….. i think you have more control the higher you go because you have so much room to rotate that you just fall into it. I don’t start my rotation till I reach the apex of a big jump over 10 feet! You don’t want to pull as hard with your back hand as you would when doing a quick one not that high off the water- or you might find yourself entering into a double forward- and let me tell you a 1.5 forward really wakes you up!
If you have never done a forward loop before but have that burning desire, here is a video to learn the steps in working up to your first one!
Check out the newest Starboard Futura Video.. Just to show 🙂
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