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 !