This clip of Dave is the opposite of the Erik clip. This clip is just using the wave power and some flow but technique is very ordinary.
Erik has amazing torque that is perfectly in sync with the absolute perfect timing of his weighting and unweighting relative to the wave. I never really watched the guy surf much but you can see the pro level surfing technique at play.
It also allows for a foil to be so much small than makes sense in the circumstances.
I’ve seen Brady Hurley on a Lift 120HA doing turns on small non breaking swell that looks just like Eric G’s turns. Brady got to his skill level by learning how to pump and link waves for 20 minutes at a time. Nowadays, Brady mostly post videos of himself doing airs, not carving turns.
Flite’s Instagram feed featured Erik riding the Flite707. I’m thinking that’s what we’re seeing in this video.
Age a smaller number of years
Definitely a smaller foil helps. Super different from sk8 950 to sk8 850…i want the sk8 750 now
Yes Eric is ridding a 4’0 with the Flux 707 that has an AR of 8.5 and a 125 stab. The foil has incredible low end making it easy to pump. You can ride a size or two smaller than what you usually ride allowing you to ride a foil with less span .
There is something interesting going on with super slow speed turns. Since the foil is out at the end of the mast, it is going through the water a decent bit faster than the board is going over the water which is moving faster than your center of gravity is.
At its limit, would be doing a turn where your upper body actually isn’t moving with much velocity at all, upper body is at the center of the circle you are carving, everything is leaned over and your legs and feet are moving through the rotation, and the foil which is a full 6ft away from your upper body is moving quickly through the water because it is at the outside of the circle.
Kind of like riding a pump-track bike through a tight banked turn. The bike is moving really fast but the body isn’t really moving fast at all. Same motion - you whip the bike through the turn - or you whip the board/foil through the turn generating speed at the foil.
Great explanation!
Like how a surf-skate torques it’s way up a hill.
I have another feeling. A turn on a foil is an opportunity to do a long, drawn out pump, where the turn part is the compression, and the snap roll is the unweighting. There is a weightless transition in a full rail to rail turn (watching this) , and to a lesser extent the clip above.
A turn is better than a pump.
Yes obviously
What I’m saying is that if you’re an intermediate, you may not realise that you should be pushing through a turn in low energy waves in a way that is not dissimilar to pumping, the same way that huntington hop is also a turn and weave
@JoshKu makes a good point below. The trick is to slow down as much as possible before the turn. To do that, you need to run it out flat, and then come back and hit it vertically, this way you get the foil as slow as possible before you do the turn.
I’ve been working on how to scrub speed, definitely going slower is the key to more controlled powerful turns
In the first wave on this clip of Adam Bennets he runs it to the flat and delays the bottom turn for a good second before laying into it