Are there fellow OMBE members here, anyone familar with Clayton Nienaber’s surf training website?
Clayton has this absolutely genius online surf coaching platform that helped me finally improving my surfing after plateauing for at least a decade. The swiss wavegarden also helped😉
Basically their approach is mostly out of the water training on a surfskate, cardboard pieces etc. in order to simulate movements, get lots of repetitions and memorise triggerwords to then be able to apply it in the water…Would be interesting to adapt that to foiling…
He also has some very interesting psychology modules along the lines of ‘embrace the suck’, as in you have to eventually suck at something to then push through and get better…etc…interesting stuff…
Maybe someone for a podcast episode?
As Erik used to coach surfing and now makes foiling clinics, I guess it might be interesting to hear their thoughts…
I found the cardboard slide both the most bizarre thing and genuinely useful for improving generating down the line speed. Maybe it would be relevant for pumping. I think it seems plausible. I tried to do it but I think the motion is slightly different.
I still have reservations about the course as a whole being particularly useful, I’ve yet to see any compelling before and after footage? But it definitely seems to be keeping older surfers entertained!
Agree that these drills are useful, and I sometimes think about the coffee cup… even when foiling.
there you go, cardboard slide training on the ground beforehand…i guess we ombe guys have an advantage here haha…
I know what you mean about your reservations regarding the whole course…i had that for a while too…there’s so much info and with all the changes on the platform it wasn’t always structured perfectly…i guess it takes time to find what is useful to you individually…also the course is mostly about the basics as a foundation, so it might take time to change those and see actual results…but i absolutely hate longterm goaled training of any sorts and this got me motivated anyway, so that in itself is a feat…
E.g. for me, while surfing for a long time and being quite an ok and experienced surfer, for a swiss guy that is, i always had some issues with my takeoff confidence in hollower and bigger waves, but not as bad to not be ignored…but then in the pool they got accentuated to a point i had absolute shocker sessions, nosediving like 10times in a row …i sucked so much at things i could do ok in the ocean, got so angry, i was then finally able to find the problem. it was a looking and angling issue (i have to angle straighaway first paddle stroke in the pool not turn/knife in only when getting up like i used to do in the ocean) suddenly i maybe fell on every 10th takeoff only… then when i started also using triggerwords to raise my backarm in fs topturns, i actually finally was able to implement did that in my topturns and suddenly they got soo much easier, what a revelation… was so stoked…so i guess it is very helpful, but you might have to push through quite some obstacles on the way and maybe you need to either analytically or intuitively adapt and apply ito your personal needs?
Ha I did not expect that so soon! Well there you go, slides it is.
Also helped me: leaning on bottom turn and twist on top turn was a revelation. Applies to foiling.
I didn’t sign up for the course, just lurked during lockdown in the group and then applied some things when I went home to surf, and it genuinely helped, but possibly more than anything was the impulse to pull together all the footage I had, some analysis on what wasn’t working and then some drills. Pulling apart the potential value from the course from the deliberate analytical practice is tricky but I imagine committing money makes it psychologically likely to stick with it.
Surfing progress is so severely limited by access to waves that progress is almost certainly going to be massively expensive. I’ve met a few guys at the UK artificial wave that are spending a fortune, which I understand but if only they would try foil…
I would imagine someone analytical and with time could pull together some equivalent for foiling quickly. The component parts are all there across Riggs, Casey (and Omb to some extent). I think possibly the thing missing is surf foiling specific skill drills. Maybe this is in Casey club.
lean and twist absolutely, but you have to find a way to trick your body into actually doing it…just saying you are gonna do itor thinking about it won’t be enough, for most people that stuff goes out of the window as soon as you are up on your feet…hence repititions on land and triggerwords…
thing with ombe is, there is way more stuff behind the payment barrier, so it might be worth it. it certainly was for me. but i was lucky enough to sign up before some price changes took place so i got the lifelong membership for an ok cost, if i’m not wrong it’s yearly now?
…what also helps me a lot is putting screenshots or links from ombe or other how to’s in onenote, adding my own notes and tricggerwords etc, then printing them out or look at them on my cellphone (finally got it to work there too)…
The main thing in my mind is to get video of yourself. You may think you’re following the coaching correctly. Until you get video of yourself you’ll never know though.
