Getting an Online Wing Foil Lesson - Vlog #2

Yo, what's up guys? Rygo here. So, Round Two. It's a bit more brisk today. Wind's a little bit up and down, kind of on the lighter side, but there is some wind so I want to see if I can get up on the foil. Kristen's going to join me and we're going to see if we can make some action happen. I have no expectations for this session; I just want to go back and forth, get a feel for the wing, get a feel for everything, and then I think in a session or two we'll be up on foil and hopefully have some fun.

All right, so that's a wrap. It got a bit colder and the wind totally tanked on us so now we're just walking around, but we're in beautiful nature, beautiful day, and I'm still feeling really good. I feel like I learned a lot today. If I had two more knots I think I could have got up on foil, and Kristen's actually winged before, so if she just had maybe three more knots she probably would have got up on the foil. But it was a really good learning experience and, just like Tucker said, once I got going and standing up, it started to feel a bit more intuitive. I really did feel like if I could just get a bit more speed I could have pumped this foil up, and I will say that I'm actually vibing with this inflatable Fanatic board. Check this out: it's got these ridges here for the straps, but without having to look down I could feel where my feet were in order to be in the proper place, and that was really helpful.

Today I tried practicing some transitions and just going back and forth on my knees, and then I worked on standing up because there was really no hope for me to get on the foil today. But I still had a lot of fun; it was a good day. Did you have fun, Kristen?

Yeah, I had fun getting out there today, but I just missed the wind. It's a little frustrating when you don't quite have enough wind to get up on foil. I feel like if there were a few more knots I definitely would have been able to make it work. I've gotten up on foil before, but I just don't have the technique yet to get up in a light wind. So it was a little bit too light for me, but all in all, still a fun day.

All right, so I'm back in the RV and I'm reviewing the footage from yesterday's session. I was chatting with the crew at the shop, and somebody suggested sending the footage to Tucker for video coaching. I thought it might be kind of fun to patch him in and put this video lesson live and share what he's teaching me, what I'm learning, and then I will add my own feedback on what I got out of this session. We're also experimenting with some new 360 footage. I did a terrible job with it: bad lighting and I forgot to get the pole out of the shot, but we're getting better at this and the next episode is going to be even better. We're going to start answering some more of your questions and talk about my experience as I'm going through what you might be asking and bringing a little more value to these vlogs. But for now, it's a bit more just my experience, and we'll expand and grow this series as it goes. So we'll see what Tucker has to say.

Hey Rygo, good to see you on video, my dude. Stoked to see you out there on the wing, giving it a try. Thanks for sending that video. We're going to give you a quick a couple of tips here on it. All right, here you can see you're getting on from the side of the board, but your hands are really far offset. I would put the board a little bit more downwind, put your hands on the rails, and get up facing forward with the board pointing downwind. That way it won't throw you around so much. You can tell you're a kiteboarder because you get on the board sideways. You want to point the nose of the board downwind and have your knees facing forwards and backwards on the board rather than sideways. Because of the way your body works, you can go side-to-side really easily and adjust your body, but front-to-back is is a little harder to do, so you're putting the the hardest-to-adjust part of your body reacting to the least stable part of the board, which is that side-to-side tipping. If you point the board downwind and put your knees forward and backwards, that will give you a little bit more agility side-to-side to react to the board and how it moves. In the waves, the board lengthwise obviously is very stable, so you don't need to worry about that too much.

All right, you can tell you're moving a little bit here, there's some wind in the sail, you're doing the thing... it doesn't look like you're super powered, so it's probably a bit light for learning today. If you knew what you were doing and really had some good technique and efficiency, you could probably get moving. So you're a little bit light you're holding the sail a little low to the water as a result of trying to catch more power in the canopy. You don't want to hold it too high because there's not as much power up there, but there's really just no power, period, so that's the issue here, obviously. You can tell you've got your wingtip too low, caught it on the water and ran it over, so you're going to have difficulties there. Hold the wing a little higher in the sky, kind of at a 45-degree angle up into the sky, and that way when you have enough power it's going to create not only some momentum, but also lift, and allow you to pull up on the wing and lift your body weight off the board to create that foil flight.

But you're just not moving very fast, super light, so on a day like this you either need a bigger wing, like an 8 meter, or to just wait till it gets a little windier. That's not to say that it's useless to go on a day like today; you're learning a lot and getting the muscle memory down, kind of figuring out how to handle the wing, how to point the board, how to balance. All that stuff is really valuable, especially for people that haven't had any winging experience, but on a day like today it's kind of fruitless to try to foil. It's just not enough wind to get you flying, especially with the 5 meter sail.

He gets the on water transition... heads in the other direction... very nice. Once you do have enough wind in your sail on a windier day, you'll want to point your board a little bit more downwind. You don't want to round up into the wind until you get foiling because you're just burning speed and drifting downwind a bit more sideways. Rather than do that, build speed, maybe 10-15 degrees downwind, maybe even 20 degrees downwind, until you get flying and then round the board up into the wind to start riding upwind and gain some more speed shearing the wind.

Good job, Rygo. Looking comfortable out there, my man. I think the biggest thing is you just need a lot more wind to learn, get the basics, and build some efficiency so you can go ride more easily on these lighter days. Good job, man. Keep it up.

All right, so that was actually super helpful for me. I learned a lot from Tucker's little video lesson. There are a lot of mistakes that I made, and hopefully some new wingers out there also found that helpful just watching somebody else go through the process and make the common mistakes that you might make if you didn't take a lesson. That is one of the cool things about the sport, is that you don't necessarily need a lesson to get into it. I think a bit of foil experience definitely helps, but it also feels safe enough to go out on an inflatable board like that and just start practicing and getting used to the wing, which makes this a very unique animal. But I've always been a big believer in going to people who are better than you and asking questions, learning, and it's kind of fun doing these video lessons with Tucker, so I'm going to have him keep coaching me. Click Here to Learn More About Our Watersports Lessons

In the meantime, let me know what you want to know and learn about winging, and as I get better and up my knowledge level I'll start answering more questions and working with the other wing guys and putting out more valuable content that answers whatever you want to know, so keep me posted. If you guys found this video helpful, give it a thumbs up, hit the subscribe button, and I'll catch you later.