I’m a beginner DW SUP foiler who finally realized about shifting my front foot and overall stance further back than I thought, and finally I can feel my front quad engage. I have been doing runs with my back quad on fire while I’m pumping and praying for a bump to form. I read about continuing to move my mast forward, but my back leg would continue to do all the work.
I still have work to do on my stance and mast placement, but the feeling of having my front leg finally engage is hopefully going to help me progress.
Yesterday for the first time (I think I started attempting DW sends 3 years ago?!) I finally did 3.5 miles on foil.
Moving the front foot back was a huge part of that, as was advice from a local hammer - he had an analogy that when your stance is in the right spot, the foil feels like a gimbal - easy to go in all directions.
Further, he said if you were to record the pitch of the board (nose up, nose down and level) over a run, you’d actually see a lot of pitch up, where he’s just using a little bit of momentum to climb high on the mast and get down close to the stall speed of the foil to allow the bump to come under, then just nose down a little bit once the bump is under to pick back up.
I’ve used this now often when I misjudged what I thought was going to happen - that the bump in front was going to stretch away opening up room to go straight and rest, but instead, it got closer, so now I’m in the trough heading for the uphill… hard bank while also nosing up, to get back to the top of the bump I was on plus some mast height, then a little nose down to not stall, then hard yaw turn left and back right to deal with the bump being too slow/close to the one in front - and at this point either the bump has opened back up again (one in front is moving away opening space in front of me), or I have now the mast height to pump off to the one behind.
All this is so much easier with a narrow stance that is further back… the other clue I got from him is - these DW foils should glide like really far. If you are not getting glide because you lose mast height quickly, chances are you have too much weight in your front foot. It’s pushing the foil down.
There is quite a bit more time spent with board level and just hanging out at the top of a bump vs sup foiling where it’s all about going top to bottom, or figure 8 - both usually being a lot of nose down as soon as you catch the wave… in DW you can rest just keeping the downhill in front of you by keeping the board level, with little nose down movements here and there to modulate the speed. Plus if you are high on the mast, high on the bump and it’s not one you can keep up with, you are more ready to redirect and catch the one behind.
Glad to hear it’s clicking. This is something I have been banging on about a bit here.
Also this below is a very good point and applies really to all foils. The key to know if you are standing in the right place is that your foil rears up like a horse as it stalls. If the nose touches down first then you were too far forward
While I understand why moving your front foot back might have helped its not great advice.
Its more about adjusting your posture to ensure you are climbing height on the mast when possible and adjusting to try and conserve that height as much as possible. This means your natural feet position need to allow adjustment between climbing, leveling and keeping the foil in the water when in high energy position. I find my feet moving a lot through the different sections as i travel DW and particularly when carving on a bump and transitioning to pumping a little.
it’s very obviously (and very evidently) useful advice because it’s one simple thing that transitions someone from your typical lead footed 20knot or broke winger approach to the understanding that that moving your feet does something and that your foil is not the problem. Your suggestion is pure greek to a beginner