I think Jeremy is a great rider who is a beast of a human. Anything that he does on a foil does not equate to what I can do on the foil.
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I think his stance looks wide because he is a large human on a tiny board but
he does look like he is very evenly weighted on his feet.
Most beginners with wide stances seem to see-saw their board
Over the years of studying learning, specifically in the surf space, Iāve discovered a few general principles that seems to apply across disciplines.
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Itās better to study the person who is doing something at a high level without being a natural talent/superhuman athlete. The best can cheat and get away with it. Tim Ferriss taught me this. Iām more excited technically by the 200lb guy in his 40 or 50ās whoās pumping for minutes than an Oskar or James, who are phenom athletes. When I look at who to break down I say, whoās doing this who shouldnāt be able to.
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When youāre looking for mental models you need to consider your style and body type. If youāre built like Occy, but studying Mikey February, itās probably not going to translate 100%. I canāt pump the same way my son can as heās 140lbs, his technique is straight stallsville for me, but if youāre 140, heād be a great model.
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I like to ātry onā styles and technique. When I was discovering my natural style, Iād take a few weeks to foil like Kane or Scotty orā¦ Youāre never going to get it 100 percent, but as get close youāll start to unlock certain feels. Youāre after the feels, not the style or technique. Like when I was modeling Kane, there was a moment I learned you can fly the foil with your ankles, stand tall, and the knowledge you donāt get from just watching is the force you can hold through a turn since your quads arenāt loadedā¦ Little things like that catch you and once youāve felt it you always know itās there. You can then integrate that feel back into your style.
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Look for trends in the top performers. While the best can get away with a lot the average guy canāt, theyāre also directionally accurate. So if you look at Kane, Adam, Nathan, James, all very different styles, but see trends popping up, thatās the meat of it. So in pumping they all have different arm movements, but body position and drive is very similar. Infection points similar. I think the trend is the secret sauce.
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Do you know any fat or above 200lbs foilers that i could watch/youtube Eric?
Im new to all this and i dont see an hall of fame for the Big Boy Foil Club 
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Heās mainly winging now, but still out pumps me with a replaced knee and quite a few years on me. Go through his page.
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Dylan Bez has the world record for pumping around in the surf at 3 hrs.
He ONLY swings his arms back.
When Iāve done dry land pump practice comparing arms forward and arms back, Iāve felt the following:
- Arms swing forward (like box jump) I feel more pressure on my back foot. This could cause too high angle of attack, leading to stalls.
- Arms swing back, I feel more pressure on front foot. I think this gives the foil more forward projection and will be less likely to stall the foil. Iāve been trying to change my style to mainly swinging arms back.
At the end of the podcast he has some good tips on pumping They also make fun of LiftJournal for throwing his hands forward when pumping around. Dylan thinks the tail stabilizer on LiftJournalās Unifoil is contributing to his pump style.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0tWYW4pBGeHZQe6J3VCe5C?si=a2uJAZgRTpS57Sf-PhkeMw
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Iām starting to feel that thereās a very precise and very short short burst movement you can do when flying high that translates extremely efficiently to forward speed and makes the foil feel like itās on solid ground. I think it has to do with timing subtle pitch changes with the burst when at just the right speed. Might be related to the frequency of foil wings/mast flexing and rebounding almost like a bird wing flapping slightly in a super efficient position when loaded up with power. Maybe when your pump burst is the same length of time as your foil wingās vibration period at a given speed so that the foil flexes back right as your burst finishes?
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Depends on the foil, but yes. I think it has to do with the inflection from positive to negative angle. You canāt do it at slower speeds, close to stall as youāll push through the foil, but once you get to cruising speed I find it most efficient on newer foils. Youāre not going to be able to do it on the older surf foils like NP, or Lift gen 1. Those foils need big swoops.
That feeling where the foil feels really solid underfoot happens to me every once in a while I think when I land my feet just right. Not too far back so Iām struggling to hold it down, not too far forward so it feels mushy. I keep forgetting to try to feel for it when winging or something, and the boat is out of the water.
Is having a very staggered stance good for pumping. Or should I try to center my feet for pump then stagger for turns?
I find an offset stance is more about having more control of larger span wings through turning because you have more leverage on them. This is because your feet are offset of the centerline of the board.
Pumping just gets more efficient the closer your feet are together because you focus more energy into the foil vs wobbling or pitching up or down.
I donāt think it matters a ton about how offset your feet are for pumping. However the general idea of shifting your feet closer together pumping could still apply so naturally you would be less offset for pumping.
If you have an offset stance or too offset of a stance pumping you probably risk loosing more energy to mast flexing etc. also vs having your feet more in line with the stiffer axis of the gear.
Another benefit of a less offset stance pumping is your body is more aerodynamic 
may sound nuts but I feel a difference pumping into a headwind with my body facing more perpendicular to the wind vs more open shoulders to it
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Is there a video example of someone shifting from a very offset stance to a less-offset stands for a pumping
I think itās easy to overthink it. If it feels good, and it works. It probably is good.
Iām not sure thereās a video of it, but an extreme example would be somebody like Austin Tovey riding straps and takes their back foot out of the back strap and moves it in front of it for pumping out
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moving your back foot forward is for a maintenance style pump. Keeping your back foot back is for height generation or recovery pump right? obviously back foot back is for carves too.
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I struggle with this too. I found when I catch a wave I move my foot back to get the height I want and then exit the wave and then I can move my back foot forward a tiny tiny bit to feel like Iām going faster forward more but really what Iām doing is Iām sinking the board slowly down as I continue my pumps but itās the fastest way I found to increase my speed which Iām probably doing completely wrong
Even more so when I find that when im jumping up and down besides getting exhausted, if my back foot stays back it stalls
I can speak as someone that learned to pump last summer weighing 195, and I am over 50 years old.
I was fed up with the prone guys getting all the 2:1ās 2 years ago. So I made my own boards, got on Axis 1300 (AR=10), and 1201 (AR=11) and started getting 4, 5, 6, 7 and up to 8 waves per catch. I can last ~ 30 seconds pumping which at 10 mph, 15 feet per second, gives me a 150 yard outbound range.
Key takeaways:
- Get the latest High Aspect Gear. Aspect Ratio >>10+. High Aspect IS more efficient.
- Make sure that your equipment is LIGHT. I had to build my own boards to get my SUPs under 11 lbs.
- Keep your feet shoulder width apart. As Oscar Johansson said āthink of how you would stand if you were jumping onto a box. You would have your feet together, not wide.ā Work on balancing the load between your 2 feet. For me this meant bringing my front foot BACK significantly. I use straps so I have a very long front strap that gives me 6ā of leeway which is āa lotā.
- Rest on the wave before the pump out. I learned to catch, then lock out my legs and arch my back. Pump out using as much ankle flex as possible. Minimize the barrel pumping. High aspect foils help with the more vertical pumping technique.
Next objective āLose the weight and try harder.ā
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This is my first post. I have been following for some time though.
I recently had the opportunity to ride a bunch of different newer foils over a week period so I thought I would throw my two cents in.
The example videos being used show a lot of apples and oranges. I think this may be a negative with regards to help. Everything foiling is relative. Foil size and aspect ratio vs speed and rider weight etc.
Until recently, most of my foiling had been on various Axis wings. Almost all of them pump very well and are forgiving with regard to technique.
When watching someone riding a large surface area Axis wing, donāt campare it to a small high aspect wing. They donāt compare. Instead, try watching someone efficiently pumping a wing very similar to what you are riding. Then, as @Erik said, ātry onā that style of pumping. Try to make it work for you and your body will create muscle memory of what works.
When jumping onto a smaller surface area wing such as F-One Sk8, New Armstrong HAās, AFS Sill, my technique had to change dramatically to be efficient in pumping. I was able to pump all of them, at least to a degree, but no two were just alike in regards to speed and cadence.
Dock starting on all of my wings has probably been the single best practice I have gotten. Startng big and work my way smaller has really helped me.
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saying how your technique changed would be interesting 2c
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Yes I should have touched on that. I believe the technique descriptions so far have been great. My main observation was the comparison of different riders on substantially different front wings.
When jumping on these faster foils, I could not be lazy. Grave digging just doesnāt work well. When you dropto the stall speeds, it was like a switch was flipped, no recovery.
The speed/frequency was faster, and I had to keep the foil close to the surface and keep speed up.
I was foiling waves bigger than I am used to, so my back foot was already forward of my normal pumping stance. I believe this to help prevent a steep seesaw type pump that some of the bigger, slower wings tolerate. Instead, the rise was shallow and the fall was shallow.
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Yeah this is my experience too. Though a counter to that is watching some of the pros who do manage to recover, but totally agree for most of us it is impossible once you drop below a certain point