Learn How to do Toeside Transitions
Toeside Transitions
I'm Jake and we're going to talk about transitions. The basic slide transition is one of the first kiteboarding tricks that you'll be learning after you're travelling in both directions. What you'll be doing is travelling in the left hand side. With your weight on your back foot, you'll start to edge upwind with the kite still, at about 45 degrees. Once you start pulling the power out of the kite, bring the kite back up by pulling on the right hand side of the bar. Bring it over to the right hand side of the kite and since you've pushed all the water in your board up on to the left, you'll be then positioned to go to the right. You'll steer your bar back down to the right side and away you go.
Although they're not too hard, transitions can be tricky. You do not want to send your kite back really fast. Two things could happen. You can start to boost, or you can actually pendulum yourself, where you'll send your kite too far over to the right hand side going left and you'll come out dangling until you and your kite hit the water about the same time. Those are the challenges with transitions, but as you do them, you'll become better and better. From slide transitions, you'll start to do some board repositioning in the air, so you'll actually jump over to toeside. Then you'll transition your kite through the air and run back around heelside and be heading in the opposite direction.
Those are two basic transition maneuvers- you'll be able to do them before you do any jumps or any other tricks, and just look stylish doing them. Give us a buzz with any questions- 800-622-4655.