I was able to get some footage pump foiling today. Iʻm not sure if itʻs clear enough from the video, but I was hoping peopleʻd be willing to critique my technique.
First one with 1725s, small fuse, chopped 120r tail.
I use this wing a lot for exercise. I do ten 45 second runs with 2 min breaks. Iʻm trying to work my recovery time down to a minute and then increase distance.
Second one is the 960r, small fuse, chopped 120r tail.
Your timing and mast height are great, I’d work on getting both feet over the centerline of the board to improve energy transfer. Make sure to align your shoulders and hips, looking forward with your neck and head instead of twisting the core.
Play with tempo, especially off the start. This tempo looks good to go far, but you can probably extend your time on foil by slowing down speed and tempo a bit. It is easy to push too fast off the start while you’re still fresh.
Haha spot looks familiar! Got my gear on order I’ll see you out there soon.
This has been in the back of my head since your interview with the Generic boys. Prone will make you too comfortable riding in a staggered stance to get better turning leverage. Thanks for the tips!
Nice! Great spot. Wish I knew how to drop start for the smaller foils. Thereʻs a couple good take-offs for that. Iʻm getting a little anxiety running full bore and jumping over the cleats at the last second. Hit me up when youʻre stuff comes in!
“over the board centerline”
What do you mean by this Kane? I see most world-record-level flatwater pumpers riding with their back foot positioned slightly in front of the centerline of the mast, usually with the back edge of their foot at, or just forward of the mast centerline. That seems to be the most common position.
I’ve also seen a few riders who place the center of their back foot directly over the centerline of the mast. The least common placement appears to be with the back foot behind the centerline of the mast, although some riders have still made that work successfully.
About a year ago, I became fascinated by people who could flatwater pump for 20+ minutes. I wasn’t just interested in their technique, I would DM many of them to ask about their weekly training volume and how much time they were spending pumping each day.
I think he means keeping your feet in the center of the board, like standing on a tight rope. Not having a staggered stance with your toes and heels out by the rails of the board.
definitely can afford to slow it down a touch and take an extra second on the glide breaks to relax into it. breathing is a often overlooked factor, if you’re not already focusing on that. In high output scenarios I’ll find the sweet spot of getting my breath in sync with my pump cadence similar to how a metronome helps musicians control the tempo of a song. this slows everything down and can really help prevent over pumping and aid time on on foil
Yeah, the cadence felt fast, especially on the return because thereʻs some wind in my face. Iʻve been experimenting with trying to find out what is less fatiguing, constant tiny pumps or more spaced out larger pumps. Even when I do a pump, pump, glide, Iʻm conscious that if I loose too much mast height, it wasnʻt necessarily worth the rest.
Endurance wise, these little 45 second runs donʻt even have me breathing too hard and thereʻs minimal leg fatigue. Somewhere between 1:00 and 1:30 though, my wind will still be under control, but my legs just canʻt keep the technique up and I loose height on mast until I eventually come down. It usually happens before I even push my physical limits.
I donʻt consciously focus on breathing because Iʻm usually not winded. I have noticed that because of the stagger stance, Iʻm trying to put my heel over the mast and press through my heel which Iʻm pretty sure is bad technique no matter what peopleʻs opinions are on stance.
One of the things I definitely donʻt like is that if I take a break and glide, that first pump starting up again seems to drop my mast height a lot. Makes me question if itʻs even worth it sometimes.
I know this wasn’t really the point of your thread, and you didn’t mention any specific goals, but I always like to add this to pumping technique discussions because it’s something I wish I understood when I started down this rabbit hole five years ago. There isn’t a silver bullet to become a top tier pumper.
Technique absolutely matters. Foot position, cadence, body position, timing, all of it can add a few percent here and there.
But once you’re already pumping a medium-sized foil for over a minute, you’re probably a pretty solid pumper. Going from 1:10 to 1:45 for example, isn’t just another technique tweak. That’s a huge jump, and at that point endurance becomes the biggest factor.
It’s a lot like distance running. Better form helps, but the athletes at the highest level are doing huge amounts of volume because there’s no real substitute for building that engine. The same thing seems true in pumping. Downwinders and dock start guys who spend hours on the water daily develop an endurance base that’s hard to replicate any other way.
That’s also why you’ll occasionally see someone with less-than-perfect technique pumping for a very long time. They’ve built enough endurance through volume and consistency to overcome small inefficiencies.
If this is the case, itʻs actually a relief. Iʻve seen so much about technique optimization that Iʻm paranoid itʻs never good enough. Iʻm putting in the time, in and out of the water, and Iʻm steadily reducing my rest between runs every couple sessions.
Itʻs hard to gauge total time improvement due to headwind though. For every 5" I head out, I have 10" of headwind to come back against, so a small increase in distance is a big effort. Itʻs probably 10 knots on average. I could head straight out, but the paddle back would be insane. Reminds me of one of the old gym sayings though, if youʻre getting stronger, donʻt change anything.
this tells us a lot, it sounds like you’re just in the annoying stage of getting 1% better every day where you don’t really see the results as much. I would focus on foot positioning and really finding that the sweet spots of what works for you, then just keep getting the reps in. we’re all getting better with every session
One thing I’ll add to this discussion is just how perishable the skill is.
There was a summer where I was really focused on breaking an hour of linking waves. I kept coming up short, mostly because I’d eventually run into sea life (mostly small sharks), but I was consistently linking for 30–40 minutes, with a best of somewhere in the mid-40s. I also had many surf sessions where I pumped for at least 20 minutes. 20 mins was basically my minimum (bigger foil & small waves)
What was interesting was what happened afterward. I took the next ~4 months off from dedicated pumping and focused almost entirely on winging. I wasn’t going to the dock, and I wasn’t doing as much prone pumping either, just learning and progressing with the wing only.
When I came back to prone about four or five months later, the difference was shocking. My best efforts were only around 3-5 minutes (max) with the same setup in the same conditions. It really drove home how different this is from something like running and biking. The endurance and efficiency you build for long-duration pumping seem to be incredibly specific to the activity, and they fade surprisingly fast when you stop or slow training them.
So not only does it take a huge amount of volume and consistency to break through those duration ceilings, but you also have to keep at it. If you step away for an extended period, a lot of that hard-earned pump endurance and efficiency can erode pretty quickly.
Not the most encouraging thing to hear, but that was my experience.
Interesting. How long did it take you to get back to your pre-winging level?
Honestly I haven’t been able to, but I’m not putting in the same effort either. I had on run that was just over 10 minutes, but that’s been my best recently.
I have been working on mostly parawing and a little bit of downwind. I’m just starting to refocus on prone & pump endurance recently.
Also, when I was putting down all those daily marathon pump sessions, my lower back was hurting constantly. I drive a lot for work and was in agony sitting in my work car sometimes 
What is your goal for pumping with each wing?
I think your 960R pumping is looking quite good.
On the 1725S not so much though, it just looks a bit awkward the way you are trying to do tiny little taps. Your torso almost looks out of sync with your legs. I would focus on a 3-5x pump then glide cycle with the 1725S, especially as you are limiting your sessions to such short intervals. Also try and really hit that downward stroke hard then let it rise more slowly (you do this well on your 960R), fast down slower up.
The 1725S isn’t a great wing for endurance pumping, IMO the 1725S is really a surf foil first and if you aren’t surfing it’s not really worth it (it’s also good for beginners or freestyle tricks as well)
I think you’d have way more fun pumping a 1250R than the 1725S, and you could be doing longer runs as well. The 1250R isn’t much fun in waves though and a good bit harder to start.
For both I think you could be doing a bit more with your arms as well, you look very rigid, try and loosen up a bit and maybe a bit of arm swing to help stabilize your cadence (it seems to vary a fair amount).
The biggest thing that has helped my pumping is swapping to a 50 sqcm stab, it’s really amazing how much it dials in your pumps as it doesn’t tolerate sloppiness. I know you are on a chopped 120 which is almost as small as you can go with code but I would still say buy the 100 race tail or chop your 120 even more.
Your balance and take off looks really good. I suggest shimming the tail so the front of the tail is raised up some, this will reduce the drag on the tail and make the pumping more “even” where both the front and back leg pump more together at the same time. Its a bit more work to balance and get the hang of this setup, one has to initiate more of the up and down pump. With the front of the tail lower, the tail pushes down which “pushes up” the front wing so the foil will naturally lift upward and initiate the up pump on its own, when this happens one has to push down alot with the front foot, so one ends up having to push down with the front foot pretty hard and then a bit later push with the rear foot, this is inefficient. If you watch the video below you will see my board does not go up and down that much and if you watch my legs you will see they pump together almost at the same time. This is more efficient in my opinion. You will need very thin shims as the amount your lift the front of the tail up is very small to get it just right. Usually I add shims a bit at a time until it is hard to ride the board as it will start to feel “squirrelly” and then I back off a bit from there to get to the sweet spot. Cutting down the tail more or getting a smaller tail will help more too. Taping over the tail screws with clear shipping tape will help reduce drag too once you get everything where you want it. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/568Bl0VR_nE
My goal is to improve my technique for smaller wings, but also pump larger wings for distance.
Yeah, it was a pretty rude awakening using the 850s after a lot of time on the 1725s. I was onlly linking one to two waves with it, but the 1725 ruined my ability to pump it. I think it was because of the heavier downward strokes. I got the 960r in a trade and started dock starting it and it fixed my small wing pumping. I tried to apply that technique to the 1725s, but I donʻt think it carries over. It definitely looks uglier than on the 960r.
My sessions are fairly long actually. It do my intervals on the 1725s for my “exercise” portion for about a half hour and then I do another hour and a half of whatever I want, usually riding the 960r and experimenting with gear changes.
Yeah, when I started, I worked pretty hard to stop the flailing and shut my arms down. I should probably start bringing some arm motion back in.
Yeah, I have a stainless business card I can practice with. I was using it for a bit, but switched to gradually chopping my 120r. Itʻs probably time to start messing with it again.
Iʻll give it a try too. I have a full set of Code shims. I figured the tail chopping is having a similar effect, reduced tail lift. I can tell when I put my 150AR back on. Everything feels harder and the setup takes on a natural upward lift inclination.