I found the true secret to pumping. Bigger wingspan. That’s it.
I could barely get a couple of waves with either my old ass 1350 cm^2/77 cm WS/4.8 AR foil, or my fast and carvy but barely pumpable 785 cm^2/80 cm WS/8 AR, and I just got a 1100cm^2/91cm/7.5 AR, and let me tell you, it’s a WORLD of difference.
I’ve only gotten one session with it yet, and still make lots of mistakes but oh boy! I’m suddenly pumping out the back and getting maybe one minute on foil total. I’ve really understood how this becomes a cardio game, and some of the nuances that have been talked about here.
Moving your back foot for pumping vs surfing, controlling the cadence, getting out of the “hole”. Suddently everything became more obvious. I’m sure a 100cm or bigger wingspan makes a huge difference too.
I did find that the bigger the foil, the slower it’s “natural cadence” seems to be. I feel that my small foil needs really fast pumps when approaching the stall speed, which is barely recoverable for me right now. And it NEEDS to go fast. You cannot pump if you don’t exit the wave with a lot of speed, meanwhile, the bigger new foil is “acceleratable” through pumping, so seem to be easier to correct.
This is a really cool analysis you did, can you say a few words on how you created this motion analysis? I have a few other examples of exemplary pumping videos I’d like to compare. I think there is a good one of Kane flat-water pumping that would be super interesting, given I would think of him as the gold standard.
you need to find the right clip, then stabilise it based on the hip position, then fix the some points to see what makes sense to minimise camera movement
I think the primary thing is, what does the circular shape that our feet do tell us? Lots of good stuff on the insta comments around it, this is a nice idea:
Which leads me to something along the lines of this image
here is another clip of James Casey paddle up, really interesting how circular the back foot motion is in the low speed paddle up, really powerful pumps
also playing around with reinforcement learning to see if i can replicate anything interesting (at the moment, not really)
Are the foot circles caused by the forward acceleration of the downward (downhill) pump followed by a slight stall in forward progress as you unweight and let the foil float up to the top (uphill)?
by my rough understanding (having just made the pictures and not thought too hard), yes
I’ve been interested in this since i saw this footage of a PNG1150, which seems to stop dead with zero water speed at the apex of the pump, so the sinusoid is much more whoopy than purely regular, and I guess there is something going on with the foot in a triangular circle to match it
I think the analysis might look different with someone else pumping a downwind or surf foil.
The James Casey pump has the feet going clockwise like i would expect but the first clip has them going anticlockwise like he is just pushing down more with the front foot and not unweighting.
The instagram clip has his feet going clockwise. The insta looks representative of what i would expect but the first analysis of the same clip has the feet going anti clockwise which seems counter intuitive to me. Something not right?
If i pin the hips, then the feet move clockwise relative to the hips
If nothing pinned, then they seem to make an anticlockwise. Not really sure what to make of that.
Ideally the footage would be perfectly stabilised within frame to not need to think of that, which is what I did with James Casey, so I’d take that is more likely to be representative of what is actually happening?
here is a version of the Insta with the foil attached, but this is unstabilised so it’s just following the feet
send these and I can do them, i’ll try get an app live that can do it too
Could the circles be caused by the fact the camera is moving but the feet are slowing down at that point in time. Could it be an illusion due to this and they aren’t actually circling?
Yes, I think that makes the most sense for the feet. It’s just acceleration on the down force, and deceleration on the up. If you put a point on the board, it would also make a circle, but it’s never actually moving “backwards”.
The points used as “fixed” (the hips) will be the ones making circles, as the circles are relative to the fixed points. I find it makes more sense to fix the hips relative to the rest of the body, but the attachement of the foil to the board could be an interesting pont to check too, to see how the weight distribution evolves in relation to the lever point @Matt
Just heard Kane on the generic foiling podcast talking about how you need to be fully centered over the board - knees , hips, shoulders- when pumping. No offset.
And pumps should be like jumping with 2 feet as you would jump to get up a step - almost simultaneously with both feet
I ride extremely offset and never changed that for pumping
Yes that was really good, also how you move your feet coming off the back of the wave. Lots of good stuff, it’s a pity they don’t share their interviews on youtube, no way to timestamp share it but it was an excellent conversation I thought.
Would the back foot or ideally the point where the mast enters the water not be a better fixed point? Then you’d be able to see board (feet) angle at different mast heights as well as rest of body/arms movement relative to the board/foil.
I have always been interested in tinkering with these types of scenarios but have never actually gotten around to setting one up. I just recently got access to a 5090. Any chance you think this would run on that?
