I’ve been surf foiling for two years now, so I’d say I’m far from being a beginner now (but still.a lot to learn that’s for sure ).
I recently had the chance to see myself on video, and when I am pumping to I am high ( not so hight but ok) on my mast but I noticed that I generally ride quite low on the mast when surfing. This might be due to my background in regular surfing as I try to transfer my surf technique to my foil, but anyway it bothers me and I would like to be higher on my mast
So, my question is: how can I train myself to stay higher on the mast while surfing?
Do you have any exercises or tips that have helped you? I’m open to all suggestions!
I may not be the best to give you advice about it as I am not riding so high on my mast either but you could put a marker on your mast (an inscription/ part of the design, or even a small piece of tape) and ask one of your friends to tell you where you are in relation to that marker during your flights.
For exemple as I’d a Katana mast where it’s written UNIFOIL from top to bottom, my goal was to have all the UNIFOI out of the water to train to have my front wing the closest from the surface.
By generally riding higher, even between waves, you’ll get used to this sense of height as your new reference point and will start flying higher out of habit.
think about breaching your foil when you pump and try to do it, this worked for me. you probably won’t breach while pumping and if you do you’ll learn how high you can go before you do breach. focus on the pump and it will translate into your surfing. tail shimming helps but spending a few sessions attempting to ride as high as possible and let yourself breach a few times, you’ll find that max height and efficiency zone, it will teach you a lot
IMO riding and pumping low has more to do with (a lack of) balance. Riders lower their masts when they wobble to gain stability. It’s becomes an involuntary response, riders don’t even know that they’re doing it (like a reflex). It’s very difficult to overcome. Fatigue makes it worse.
Dillionaire I don’t have the video to share, but the problem isn’t on the pumping but mainly when I am surfing the wave, this is when I am not high on my mast.
But this is not coming from unstability, I am just use to be “this high”, and I need to train on changing this.
@Marveenv the tape isn’t a bad idea at all, thanks a lot I think I’ll try this
@Steve thanks, I was sure somebody will come up with this. Nobody like to breach but as you said I will have to go looking for the limit and breach a few time to find the sweet spot … !
Are you constantly hitting your board on the water?
I don’t mind flying low at times on the waves. It definitely helps keep the foil in the water during banked over turns. There will definitely be times as you travel up and down the face of a wave where you are low and loading and there will be other times where you are high and lifting.
Is it during your top turn? I find the top turn is the slowest part of my turn sequence because Ive bled speed and are working up the face and against the power of the wave - this is where I’m most likely to touch down. I then regain speed down the face of the wave and get higher on the mast. I think it is partly just adjusting timing so that you are reading your speed and getting to that top turn before speed is completely bled. You can either make the top turn earlier while you still have speed (easier said than done) or make the top turn less aggressive (more of a carving turn where you stay working with the wave power). Approaching it also depends on how much power the wave has.
Im kind of working through this myself, so take it with a grain of salt. I also notice a lot of top level riders (unlike myself) touching down or getting low on the mast at a similar point in the turn.
Not constantly, but most of the time for example when gliding / resting on a wave ( on the top part of the wave ) it happens that my tail touch the wave yes.
But sure during my turns there is moments where I am higher than others, but I am looking to get use of being higher on my mast in general.
I though a lot about it yesterday in my afternoon session, and it felt like it helped me turns too, I was able to give more inclination/angle on my turns and having more flow in general ( just a general feeling during the session )
I think during the turns it not happens a lot, may be sometime when I am at the bottom of the wave but this is because I put too much front foot or angle and I generally fall at that moment ! But I get what you are saying for the top turn !
But I am doing more carves than what I suppose you call top turns, if by top turn you mean a more radical turns, close from a “snap”
Using a foil drive makes you learn good height control to reduce pod strikes.
Obviously not an easy answer for many, but it does work.
The feeling of the pod dipping in is immediately noticeable and a great indicator of being too low.
I wonder if you could rig up a makeshift pod of sorts… something large enough to feel when it enters the water but small enough to not interfere with takeoffs too much…
Mount it at 10cm from the board.
It’s probably gonna suck for pumping by making it harder to dig out of a stall but it really will help if you can deal with it for a few sessions.
I think there are roughly three types of flying: 1) bottom and top turns - you can’t be too high or too low or else the foil tips breach too much or the board touches down. But in my opinion, you want to be modulating height throughout the turn for high performance riding. The turns feel like a pumping motion in 3D where you push into the turn just like the downward portion of a pump and you unweight and accelerate out of the turn just like the unweight of the pump. 2) gliding on a wave - you should be trying to ride as high as you can, just before the burbling/sucking breaching sound comes. 3) pumping - you should be trying to stay as high as possible for efficiency, just before the burbling/sucking breaching sound comes.
Anyway to the question, I don’t have a magic formula other than make yourself do it. Its the same with learning anything - you need to purposely try to do things differently than your habits or else you won’t progress
Thanks for sharing but I know the guy via social media, and for me this is more an influencer than anything else. But that’s true that we talked about the FD technique
If you use a long board leash around your ankle that hangs down about 3/4 of your mast length then it will drag and bother you if you are not high enough to keep it out. I found this out on accident.
When you already some speed built up after turning off a wave you can climb to higher mast height. Trust the efficiency that will come from being high on the mast. Here when the foil gets close to the surface you can get feel for this feed back from the surface tension of the water. It can almost hold off the breach cause you are slowly decelerating and there is a zone where you are so shallow you loose lift. This means only pumping with the smallest pitch changes to maintain the height. You’ll hear gurgling of the stab in the down wash of the foil just before breaching happens.
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