With more calm days in Sept/Oct, I finally decided to work on dockstarts and pumpfoiling at the Frog Pond in HR…great community and support there and lots and lots of reps have me regularly getting over 30 pumps at a go (80 is my record)…while my plan is to just keep at it and let my body figure out what works, I have a few burning questions:
How do you figure out the cadence for a particular foil setup?
What are your strategies for putting more ‘hop’ into your pumping (I have great examples and general explanations from Gwen L. - link below, but am struggling to do it in practice).
I don’t want to focus on gear, BUT - if there are changes you made to your setup that made a big difference in breaking through to longer rounds of pumping, it would be great to hear about it
Any particularly great instructional vid’s? I have a few linked below, but more might help…
See you at the dock!!!
Context: I’m 59yo, 64kg, on the OG Sab Leviathan 1350 (1870sqcm, 9.75AR), 663 fuse, chopped 380 gullwing tail and a Cedrus forged AL mast (74cm, ~80cm with adapter,) and a Kluber 95 board.
Something that only recently clicked for me is that it gets 10x better if you pull your legs up after a pump. Think of it like frog jumping up stairs, you need to compress after the launch.
I recently noticed that I can focus on my head rising on the up pump. It gives me a more effortless pump. Before I was doing porpoise pumps too much like a chicken, where my head didn’t move and I was moving the rest of my body a lot. Sucking legs up etc.
When I focus on the up pump, gain height, reset stage of the pump. It let’s the foil breathe and keeps the cadence a better speed.
Get footage of yourself and post it here. We’ll dissect what we see for you. We can all learn together.
faster smaller cadence than you think. I was watching a beginner foiler on a 1201 and it’s too slow and ponderous, with all the effort going into the arms. Arms are for timing, legs are for pumping. Big pumps when you are slow, small pumps when you are fast. Fast is easier so stick with fast small pumps, grave digging is hard if your technique is bad
move your front foot back, if you feel like you aren’t hopping then it’s because you are too far forward and trying to hop off your front foot makes the foil sink
stabs are like training wheels I think, can slowly reduce and go HA but only if you are comfortably shuffling your feet around
I ran into some trouble when I was pumping only big wings and not doing prone often. I lost a lot of ground going back to pumping small wings. I think something around 1100-1300cm2 might be the sweet spot to practice on if you want to improve your pump on all types of wings. If you don’t care, don’t worry about it.
One skill I’m still working on even as an intermediate pump foiler is regaining mast height in an energy efficient way. It’s easier on some foils than others, but gently controlling your trim angle while you pump to gain a little height each pump (like a ratchet) is what I shoot for.
Another thing that helped was I would end my pump with a short glide and experiment at holding different pitch angles for the glide. You start to become aware how slightly different angles can gain you lots of height, some will give you lots of glide, and others will give you more speed.
And as always, back foot over center mast or leading edge of mast. Bring your front foot back as far as you can until it feels terrible, and then shift it up as little as you can to stop feeling terrible.
There are a few key scenarios that you have to get good at. Conscious practice at each will pay dividends.
plenty of speed, plenty of mast height - work on staying in this mode with good efficiency
plenty of speed, low on the mast - its a pretty simple job to regain height in one or two pumps, but it is a feel thing about unweighting and “ollieing up”
low speed, high on the mast - sort of part of #1 - recovering back to mode 1, a couple of quick hard pumps can get the speed back
low speed, low on the mast - gotta dig out, this is the hardest of the 4. I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts on whether to work towards mode 3 first, then mode 1 - OR - work towards mode 2 first, then mode 1.
Do you think there is a point when you can be pumping a wing that is just too big for your weight, so becomes less efficient/harder than a smaller one? I prone surf/foildrive so there is always some wind or water movement/turbulence going on, but I don’t feel I get much difference in my pump distance or stamina between the uni evo 155 vs the 175. If anything the 155 feels easier (both cadence wise and not getting launched if I wobble). The 175 is certainly longer glide in small swell energy, but turning off the wave I don’t think I see much more benefit in the pump. I’m about 73kg dry weight.
This is the kind of thing I probably need to hear at this point…laying out the next chapter of work to be done and skills to gain, rather than a particular key technique/hack/gear change to get past N pumps (not that those can’t help too).
Along those lines, I’m now thinking about my starts and how they can not only be more consistent, but lay the groundwork for different launches/conditions/setups - so essentially a rock start
I have a couple big wings that I pump occasionally. The 1725s is a slow wing. I can pump it for a few minutes, but I can do almost the same with a 1300s and Iʻll cover more ground because of the speed difference.
For technique, if I go to a big wing, I always go smaller on the fuse or itʻs a pain to pump. I also go smallest tail possible or start chopping. Itʻs still going to be a big wing, but the pump will loosen up as it it were smaller.
For efficiency, for sure thereʻs diminishing returns. If you go up a little in size, youʻll get slower. If you go really big youʻll also have to deal with a more laborious pump unless youʻre on a 10+ AR wing thatʻs going to suck in the surf.
Prone has very specific challenges too that punish big wings. Letʻs say your pump technique is dialed on all your wings. In decent sized long period surf with strong winds and some texture on the water (what I deal with daily), I think around 1000cm2 and AR 10 is my most efficient prone foil to pump around (77kg). I can still turn it, so I can get plenty of speed and move around the wave easily. The span isnʻt so huge that Iʻm making mistakes and getting shook from random ocean energy. Itʻs big enough to dig out of a hole a little at a time so Iʻm not using too much energy at any given time. Also the speed is going to be pretty efficient for itʻs size.
If I go up to the next size, something like a 1130 - 1300cm2 around 10AR, Iʻm a little slower, turns are still fine, but more careful, but much more forgiveness from increased bottom end. If thereʻs any energy or chop in the surf though, I start incurring penalties. Youʻll really feel any backwash and get pushed around more. All that low end becomes something I have to manage a little unless Iʻm in the hole. If Iʻm in smaller, clean surf, this is probably my most efficient to pump prone.
Anything bigger and you start paying a huge price in efficiency loss and dealing with span. Also, prone has those waves rolling through and little ripples you can get big boosts in mast height and speed from if your pump technique in the waves is good. For me Iʻd rather be on a smaller wing to really drive over those. Itʻs more nimble and easy to get the benefit. On a bigger wing I have more low end and I have to glide over them more often because Iʻll blow up if I take a good push, so not as helpful.
Just came to drop this one. Edoʻs been killing it lately with really well made instruction videos. The guyʻs YT page went from empty to gold in a couple weeks.
This one is not specific to pumping, but carefully controlling pitch to stay high on mast. Pumping is added to the topic around halfway through. I struggled with this for a long time. Lot of good tips on body positioning in the video.
I think this is a tough one because controlling pitch is a pretty subtle challenge even just riding. Itʻs obvious Eganʻs focusing hard this whole video.
When youʻre pumping you still need to be careful what pitch angle youʻre starting at in the beginning of youʻre pump, the end of your pump, and during any glide you have between pumps. If youʻre not in control of this youʻll be loosing mast height constantly, which forces you to keep pumping to maintain height, and the cycle repeats until youʻre fried. I was doing this for a long time. I started noticing an improvement by just experimenting with my between pump glides, finding the perfect angle to get the longest glide, comparing that to one that will glide well but gain me more height, etc. Itʻs much easier to notice pumping on flat water.
But as pieces start coming together, new questions always emerge…including:
What adjustments do you make going into the wind vs with it?
Just 3-5kts has been making a real difference both with and against it. I seem to be able to get higher on my mast going into the wind, and struggle more doing that with it (reminds me of my early winging on a big board, where I really noticed the windage). Not sure how to adjust…
FULL extension is this week’s theme and making a difference…I was finally getting to the point where I felt way less stable because I was both high(er) on the mast and barely touching the board…freaked me out at first, but now thinking that is a good sign…thoughts?
Wind makes a huge difference, even a small amount of wind.
How I counter wind depends on the size of the waves you are pumping over, as if there is a headwind then you are probably going in to waves. If you stay high on the mast and time your pumps to the upward slopes of the waves you get all sorts of lift for free and it makes for easy pumping.
If I can’t get free lift from the water then I change my technique and pump really hard and keep a faster speed than normal. Of course this only lasts about 90 seconds before I gas out but it will get you quite far in to the headwind in that time.
im similarly pump-challenged but in my experience:
1 - get younger.
2 -well done! Going to full leg extension and super light on the board lets it rise.
Also: scooting. Not like your dog!Thats just disturbing. Scooting the board forward with your feet like on a Jeremy Riggs paddle-up tutorial. Get used to doing it with just your legs and then blend in the backwards arm swing to get more thrust (ahem).
I did try a Roam 1700 recently, but it’s lower AR and huge. That seemed like a regression but the tail on it was far too big and it’s lower AR.
Getting the foil big enough to allow one to be in aerobic region is important for long duration runs. You see a very nonlinear relationship between power level and time one can maintain that power. Thus I think giving up some efficiency for lower power may be beneficial.
yes this is great advice, the low speed recovery pump becomes much closer to an “ollie on eggshells” where you are trying to get your foil as high as possible on the mast as quickly as possible, without stalling it by breaking laminar flow. So you need to ollie it, without stalling it. It’s hard to describe, but definitely like jumping without pushing down too hard. Bringing your body up using your arms. Very distinct feeling (i don’t think this is relevant on pump foils tbh, mostly a surf foil downwind foil thing?).
Some additional thoughts
I think a worthwhile way to find another gear in pumping is when you’re absolutely exhausted. Obviously technique gets harder, but seeing what it takes to stay on foil once you are beyond your limits.
High on mast should always be priority, high means you can accelerate, you can catch your breath, so ollie to get high if you are slow, and a few hard taps if fast and low to get high
Front leg overextending: I saw this, funnily enough despite it being an explainer, the front foot is too far forward, overextending locking out front foot, which is inefficient. Watch how the front leg locks out before the back leg is properly extended.
Yes my pumping does not vary much when dock starting on the pump foils, though in special circumstances dockstarting such as right after a turn, where I may get lower on the mast than desired and then head upwind I’ll find myself occasionally getting aggressive with throwing my arms back to gain height against the wind. Oh, and similar when launching smaller foils off dock/static start and getting them up to speed
