Golden rules for prone foiling

Technique
1

Some random thoughts from the chat that I thought to share

EDIT: updated this with some additions from the thread

Intermediates

Turning

You cannot turn if you stand too far forward

The only way to do proper turns is to roll the board first, and then push through your back foot. Like a fighter plane

Yaw/pivots are not turns, they are for corrections before or after turns

Go straight towards the beach to scrub speed, roll the foil and attack the face of the wave, way easier with less speed.

Going down the line = too fast

Your back arm needs to do more work that it’s currently doing, especially on backhand turns

Your turns should be able to slow you down, see if you can overpower the foil by turning so hard.

Moving feet:
1.In general, most people need to plant their front foot further back than they do, and make sure you know where that spot is when you dial in a setup
2. Your back foot should roam around between pump and turn mode.
3. For each setup the specifics might be different, and you need to shuffle around until it feels right. Make references on the board.

Foils

Centre your quiver around an ~800 surf foil (adjust up 900 down 700 for weight), and learn to turn that thing. Focus on how hard you can push it, try get as many turns as possible. Have sessions where you focus on turns not pumping.

Turning a bigger foil on smaller conditions will give you a lot more opportunities to put turns in, you can link more, more waves, more turns, repetition.

Change to smaller tail first before smaller foil

Position your foil and mast based both on where your feet land during pop up, and also so that your board trim is correct when paddling and doesn’t boost you when getting first push from the wave.

Pumping

Breath.

You cannot pump efficiently if you stand too far forward.

You are NOT too unfit, too old or lacking cardio. You ARE standing too far forward

Linking waves is infinitely easier in glassy offshore calm water. Backwash, rips, chop, whitewater all can make it almost impossible.

If the foil doesn’t feel firm when you pump, move your front foot back.

Get higher on the mast. Practice breaching deliberately. It’s longer than you think.

Timing is more important than effort.

Sometimes you need fast and aggressive to get it going

Also, don’t forget to move your back foot back from the pump stance before starting to turn.

You cannot ride a wave properly if your heart is going 180, so try catch your breath and slow the cadence to a glide before the link turn

Breaching

Mistake breaches are hard to catch, deliberate breaches are easy

Most breach falls happen on an unengaged foil. If you are in a turning stance, even if cruising, the chance of catching rogue breaches increases.

Foam

Bend legs when hitting foam.

Start small and deliberate. Don’t fuck around, just smash it to get over the fear

Imagine you’re just hitting a steep wave section, ignore the white water.

Most failures happen because you stop turning mid foam, carve it out

Fully commit to the turn towards the beach and you have more control.

Beginners

Safety

If the leash is pulling tight, the board is far from your head, otherwise brace lol

Sharp, heavy, unpredictable - take care

Approach
Time on foil is the most critical factor for progress, first catching waves, then it’s linking. Once linking 5x then consider downsizing to a smaller wing

Learning to prone is mostly a quest to find the slowest, mushiest, weakest wave you can get your hands on. It’s never slow enough, it’s Never weak enough.

99% of learning prone is learning to look at a wave and evaluate it as a foiler instead of as a surfer. If you’re paddling out at the wrong spot you’ve failed before you even touch the water

Don’t rely on ripping foilers for spots and techniques. They can chip on things that are impossible for a Beginner or someone with different equipment.

Gear

Don’t bother with the wrong gear

Your gear isn’t stiff enough - stiffness is the most Critical factor in gear.

Your gear is crap - $1000 for a used foil seems like a lot of money, but it can take whatever abuse you throw at it! Assume your foil looses %10 of its value every month

Ride the new hotness for a MONTH before selling the old busted - New gear is frequently disappointing - especially if you are buying some hype

19 Likes
2
2 Likes
3

If the OP changed his name to Butt Head this would be the most epic post…. still a great post.

3 Likes
4

Hell yea. Thanks for the tips. I’m going to look at them again before the next session.

1 Like
5

maybe. I think there could be a lot of reasons other than where you are standing - but I fully agree with the premise. I used to think I was too old and unfit. Now I realize that it has always actually been just because I suck. When I get pumping right, it feels like very little effort. Combination of high on the mast, maintaining speed, efficient body movements, working with the energy in the water not against it.

3 Likes
6

Gonna disagree a bit and say that you should get that smaller foil and ride it. Yes it’s not good for pumping and you won’t be flying as much but linking a few sharp turns will make your day

4 Likes
7

Yes for sure, there is a lot going on, a hundred ways to get it wrong, you need a stiff mast, clean waves etc, but the thing that I see everyone still getting wrong even when the conditions and setup is good is standing too far forward.

Will add something to that effect

yeah this is actually something I entirely agree with, so much so that I’m going to update the post above. Getting onto a small fast surf foil was a step change in my fun factor, and linking didn’t really matter

My addition which i’ll make concise above:
Centre your quiver around an ~800 surf foil, and learn to turn that thing. Don’t worry about pumping and linking on it, just see how hard you can push it. Ride waves and try get as many turns as possible. This is something I did wrong, riding 1100 surf foil for way too long because I wanted to link as many as possible, but never learned to turn.

1 Like
8

I would say that “standing too far forward” is a miss. For prone, where you end up on the board while popping up is a fixed quantity. It’s not a thing you can adjust. You end up where you end up and you tune mast position and shim to get the foil where it’s required in relation to where you consistently end up. Trying to catch a wave and end up someplace other than where you naturally end up is a recipe for failure. “I’m too far forward on this setup I need to pop up a 1 inch back” is not a thing.

this also misses wave selection. 99% of learning prone is learning to look at a wave and evaluate it as a foiler instead of as a surfer. If you’re paddling out at the wrong spot you’ve failed before you even touch the water. Especially in the beginning something an experienced foiler might be ripping on can be literally unrideable for a beginner so you might try to follow another foiler to the water and watch them take off over the horizon on the next wave and your sitting there stuck.

4 Likes
9

this is wrong, you can absolutely move your feet, and it’s only fixed relative to speed

If you stand further forward, you need to being going faster to provide more lift through the tail to keep you horizontal, this is what most people do, and especially wingers who are used to power

weight further back means the tail does less work which means you can go slower and have a more balanced setup, but too far back and it gets unstable.

prone, like surfing, is all about moving your feet.

yes it does you’re right

4 Likes
10

When you pop up down the face of a critical wave, there is no moving feet, at least during that initial drop.

Yeah you can shuffle feet once you have settled in, but better to have them in the right spot to start.

@TooMuchEpoxy Is making the point, but doesn’t fully state, that you have to setup foil and mast position based on where your feet land during pop up, but also where the mast and foil are position so that your board trim is correct when paddling and doesn’t boost you up or drag you down when getting first push from the wave.

Tiny wave prone surfing is a lot more forgiving. Dropping into head high and beyond starts to be more critical in my opinion.

11

As a prone newby, I super-so-agree with TooMuchEpoxy. As a surfer since 1980, my feet keep landing basically in the same spot (too far back) on my 4’10” prone board. So I adjusted my set-up (moved my mast all the back and even drilled holes in the baseplate to go another inch back). It was a game changer along with dropping from a 1090cm2 wing down to a 900cm2 wing (200lbs with rubber) to alleviate the takeoff-to-ollie-air syndrome. Game changer!……Im in the game now.

12

Yes ok so that relates to popup which is not where the problem is nor the point i was making. Do whatever you need to do to get onto foil, yes you need to setup your foil so that when you popup the place your feet go naturally is also the place that gives the correct “feeling” for trim and control.

That isn’t where the problem is, it’s when you try turn or pump (note the subheadings)

You think that your popup takeoff spot is the right spot, and for a big wave with lots of push it might be right to stay in control, going fast down big waves it might feel stable and controlled, but for tight fast rolling and controlled turns it’s not. It’s too far forward, for turns, and for effecient pumping.

The clue that people stand too far forward to pump is that when they are riding on wave, they are fine because they are going fast and so their weight is held by the lift force of the stab. As soon as they pop off the back, they start slowing down, and nose-dive because now the stab isn’t lifting as much as it was, so they drive the nose down when they try pump.

The clue that they are too far forward to turn is that when they roll the board over and try to push through the turn, they slow down and bog the nose.

Watch someone go extremely slowly on a foil, right until the moment it drops. The slower they go, the further back their weight needs to be. The point is that the closer to stall, the further back you need to be to stay on foil.

And what does a turn do?(or at least it should do for critical turns) It slows you down, so as you burn more speed through the turn, it becomes increasingly necessary to have your weight further back.

When anyone competent kicks off the back of the wave and start pumping, they will adjust their feet.

Look carefully at anyone approaching a wave and you’ll see they move their back foot back to get more leverage and push through the turn

1 Like
13

IMG_3350
IMG_33501920Ă—1440 549 KB
Ideal front traction setup. In winter boots I never have stray traction holding up my feet ruining my pop up by making me end up 2in back. Also I tailored my strap inserts(3d printed) to EXACTLY where my front foot goes after making the board so I’m not relying on where I think or hope or plan to have my feet in the shaping stage.

3 Likes
14

Need to do a video exchange because I can’t imagine that working at all well. Is that a wing board?

We clearly might have irreconcilable differences in approach :joy:

3 Likes
15

I’m not big on social media. Best I have is a video from 4 years ago!

3 Likes
16

OK so this begs the question…what size foil for a prone noob beginner with heavy surfing background, assuming average weight? I was set up with a 1500cm (AFS Flyer) front wing, which worked fine for a couple boat tows. But my immediate thought taking it into the surf for prone was generally it has too much lift to handle the immediate burst of speed that’s experienced when wave catching, even in the most mellow small wave conditions. I keep moving my mast back to adjust for the extreme leap out of the water, but I’m out there thinking that even though I’m a total beginner, I’d be better off on a 850cm or 900cm.

17

Describe the wave! Foiling is extremely dependent on your local geography and wave conditions. The better it is for short boarding the worse it is for Foiling!

1 Like
18

Here’s more details on conditions of my first 3 sessions: Outer Banks beach break, 1-3ft on the buoy at 8-10 second period - basically knee to waist high, weak and crumbly - other than only a very short window of breaking wave due to inside trough, pretty much ideal beginner foil waves I’d presume. I’m holding the nose down to the extreme, and getting to my feet but then struggling to keep it down through the popup even though my front foot is all the way fwd on the pad and back foot is fwd the mast.

19

8 to 10 seconds is a little long period but should be dooable provided you can find a spot where it’s running down the beach some and not closing out on the nose. Some 6sec wind swell with the wind at your back is ideal.

That foil is fine. forget the mast position from the boat. Slam it all the way back with the goal of making it impossible to get on foil. Catch a wave, get to your feet, surf for a second on the board then make an affirmative decision to get on foil. Pop some weight on the back foot. If it doesn’t come up at all move it forward in half inch increments until you find a spot where, with much back foot, it comes up on foil. Ride like that until you’re comfortable then move it a half inch again.

Move it forward in half inch increments

3 Likes
20

“Gonna disagree a bit and say that you should get that smaller foil and ride it. Yes it’s not good for pumping and you won’t be flying as much but linking a few sharp turns will make your day”

Let’s not make this into short boarding and have rules of what’s the way to go and what isn’t. Let’s just keep it open and let people do what the want. My favorite thing about skateboarding is all the diversity in equipment, styles, and types of riding. Hopefully foiling follows that path. Bashing lips is awesome… cruising around and flowing on a giant wing for an hour is awesome… :person_shrugging:

2 Likes