Kitesurfing is an extreme water sport that must be understood with so many technicalities as it requires a compounding skill set of kite and board skills. It will be much easier for beginners to get the hang of it if one has previous experience with kite flying, snowkiting, surfboarding, or even wakeboarding.
Kite Skills:
Are kite surfing lessons important? Yes! Learning this sport is actually never-ending since every spot and wind condition is different every day and kitesurfing equipment or gears might not be maintained perfectly every use. No one mastered kiteboarding in a day or a week. However, one of the basic requirements in this sport is your skills in kiting and wind understanding.
Whether it is your first time or you’ve been doing kite control before, it is important to learn to fly your kite surfing kite inflatable or foil kites with professional instructors and that you should be using a proper kite size suitable for the conditions. Here’s a few essential kitesurfing skills to point out when flying your kite:
• Know and familiarize your choice of the kite and learn to control it first before starting with the board on the water.
• Determine the current wind speed as it is the most important element for you kitesurfing session in Dubai and understand properly the wind window.• Focus on flying the kite as steady as possible at 45’s on either left or right of your wind window. Keeping the kite steady in one fixed position is as important as moving the kite in the wind window.
• Remember to loosen a bit and relax on your grip on the bar as much as possible to maintain a stable and safe flying. Pulling the kite bar down is what usually causes the kite to generate power and this is anotehr important skill to master (Release the Bar)
• Know the effects of handgrip positions on your bar. Wider grip makes the kite moves faster and closer grip makes the kite move slower this is due to the different leverage based on the hands position on the kite bar.
• Lean back to start using your own body as a counterweight against the pull of your kite. This allows you to have more tension on the power lines and in return gives a better response from the kite itself.
• The power strokes are one of the most important skills to practice when body dragging inside the water in down wind and gives a perfect feeling of the power generated by the kite.
• It is an efficient skill to fly with one hand gripping the bar while the other is trimming the kite or carrying your board and switching from time to time. The above skills will be for sure learned during your kite surf lessons in Dubai.
Board Skills:
If we follow the rule of thumb, the second step in kitesurfing is choosing the board that is ideal for the wind and sea conditions. However, a directional board can be very challenging unlike a twintip or a bi-directional board (commonly used in kitesurfing) which as the name suggests, allows you to move and surf freely in the water in both directions of your board. If you want to know the most efficient board to use, you must go in depths and learn the importance of a board’s thickness, width, length, rocker, flex, concave, outline, and even its material construction.
Here’s a few essential kitesurfing skills to point out in riding your twintip board:
• Keep your stance calm and be mindful to adjust the weight on your feet.
• Evaluate surf conditions so you will know which board to use
• Learn how to understand board size importance based on the wind speed.
• Know when is the right timing to pop up
• Master the ways of trimming and carving turns to develop advanced maneuvers
• Nothing is perfect even in kitesurfing, so to become a well-rounded kitesurfer, one must muster a positive attitude full of patience and determination.
