Latest News, Blog & Videos
Big Air Kiteboarding Basics, Episode 1: Learning and Perfecting Your Kiteloop
David is kicking off a new series focusing on big air. He's not an expert in big air, but rather an experienced kiteboarder who's ready to progress his skills. If you're ready to delve into big air yourself, come along for the ride as David shares any tricks, tips, and lessons learned along the way.Kiteloops: The Foundation of Big AirBig air builds on your kiteloops. If you're just getting into kiteloops, Blake has a great intro. Here, I'm going to share what I've learned about kiteloops
…
27th Dec 2023
Kiteboarding | How to Go Upwind Through Technique and Understanding
Kiteboarding is an exhilarating sport that combines aspects of wakeboarding, snowboarding, windsurfing, surfing, paragliding, skateboarding, and sailing into one high-octane activity. One key skill that every kiteboarder needs to master is the ability to go upwind.
While going downwind is straightforward, moving against the wind presents a unique challenge. This blog will guide you through the fundamental steps to successfully kiteboarding upwind.Understanding the Concept of Upwind
Upwind
…
22nd Jun 2023
Kitesurfing Lesson: 5 Tips to Ride Upwind
This is Blake from MACkite here with 5 tips to help you ride upwind.Tip 1 - Twist Your Body UpwindTwist your shoulders and lean back over your back foot. This weights your back foot rather than both of your knees. This lets you get a stronger and harder edge.Twist and lean back, looking upwind. Twist with your shoulders and your hips, with your feet, and even point your toes upwind, and all of those little things together will make it so much easier for you. If you instead close your s
…
9th May 2023
Why a Wing Board and a Kite is Awesome for the Lightest Winds
Welcome back to Wing Wednesdays, or Foil Fridays... whatever we're going to call this one. This is Tucker with MACkite, and today I'm going to talk to you about my new fascination. We're going to maximize our light wind fun, maximize our time on the water, and maximize the gear we already own. I can guarantee you'll get a lot more time in the water, have a lot more fun, and use your equipment more effectively.Ride in Almost Any WindLet's talk about how kite wing foiling can maximize ou
…
9th May 2023
The Most Important Part of Kiteboarding: How to Fall
Blake from MACkite here. It's good to be back! I'm recovering from a torn ACL surgery, and just being able to walk is so incredible. So I figured... why not teach you one of the most important things in kiteboarding, which in my opinion is how to fall.Get StrongI have a lot of experience in falling; I've been injured a lot. Throughout the years of teaching myself how to kiteboard and do all of my own tricks, I have had to learn how to fall through trial and error. Now I've got it down
…
3rd May 2023
The Benefits of Learning to Kiteboard in Lighter vs. Moderate Winds
Welcome back to MACkite. This is Jake, and today we are talking about whether it's better to learn in lighter winds or heavier winds. Of course, this is just my personal experience and, being here in Michigan, we probably experience more light winds than heavy winds, so that's going to impact my answer slightly.My personal thought is that light wind is a better environment for learning to kite. I think it's probably easier to learn in heavier winds, but that doesn't necessarily translate
…
21st Feb 2023
Get Ready To Ride! Learn The Essential Steps For a Smooth Kiteboarding Water Start
This blog post provides an in-depth look at the five key steps necessary to learn how to water start when kiteboarding or kitesurfing. The first step is to get comfortable with the kite, learning how to launch and land it, as well as understanding its wind window. The second step involves compressing your body into a smaller package, which involves using the power of the kite to pull you through the water and upwind. Step three is getting onto the board, where you will need to carefully
…
29th Dec 2022
Learn How to Kiteboard Upwind With These 5 Beginner Tips
Kiteboarding Upwind Is Your First Beginner Milestone
If you’re a beginner kiteboarder, going upwind means not walking back up the beach after each ride. If you’re jumping, you need to march upwind easily because every flight takes you downwind fast.
Back in the stone age, with 2-line kites, riders would pressure their back foot edging hard to slow their board speed allowing the kite to move to the edge of the window so they could ride upwind. We even used the pickle fork tail like ski brak
…
30th Aug 2022
How to Master the Kiteboarding Front Roll Tail Grab
The Front Roll is usually the second trick everyone wants to learn right after the Back Roll. It's a simple trick that always looks good, especially if you add a grab to it. The easiest grab to start with is the tail grab.
This is one of my go-to tricks every session because it just feels so good.
For this video, I'll break down the freestyle pop technique. This can be done hooked in, and you can actually do this with a sent jump. This technique will help give more power to your p
…
23rd Mar 2021
Kiteboarding Tricks: Half Loaded Tail Grab With Chris Bobryk
We're kicking off a fresh series of trick tips with Chris Bobryk and myself. We'll be covering the lost art of kite low line tension tricks. In an era of sent jumps and big air, it seems many have forgotten all the other aspects of the sport that make it unique. Kite low line tension tricks are the friendlier version of unhooked freestyle. We actually covered a lot of line tension tricks in our Ride with Blake series, but we never put the emphasis on keeping the kite low and not s
…
10th Feb 2021
Front Roll better
This one is for those of you that know how to do basic front roll but want to take it to the next level. This is going to be a shorter one, but we'll cover a lot of ground.
So first things first: you should know how to do a basic front roll. This can be with a sent jump or with the load and pop method. Once you are airborne, look over your back shoulder and pull your front knee into your chest. As you come around for the roll, pay attention to the axis of your rotation. Are you doin
…
9th Jul 2020
3 Tips for Better Kiteboard control
This is part two of the master your kite and board videos. Last week, I covered a new angle on how to control your kite with the edge of your board. I’m going to expand on this now, and help you really get control of your board and riding position.
Kiteboarding is funny because unlike other board sports we have a lot more going on with controlling the kite. The thing is, It seems like a lot of kiteboarders never learn how to ride a board properly and it actually holds b
…
20th May 2020
Kiteloop Front Roll: Ride with Blake
Today we are going to go over how to do a Kiteloop Front Roll.
This trick is a fun one. People call it a front roll kiteloop and Ruben Lenten coined this trick as a Boogie loop. I would call a massive mega loop front roll a boogie and an average one a front roll kiteloop. It doesn’t really matter what it’s called because it’s the same thing so call it what you like. This trick feels strange at first because you and the kite are rotating in opposite directions. However once you get
…
17th Jun 2019
Freestyle Kiting With Christophe Tack - Sessions with Rygo EP 10
Last time on Sessions we explored Key West and the Canary Islands with our team rider Blake Olsen. We were filming for our
kiteloop playlist and just enjoying the islands with good friends. It was so much fun visiting what has become one of my favorite cities for kiteboarding in the USA. The only downside was that I had just injured my knee snowboarding and I had to sit out on most of the riding on both of these trips!
Testing the Liquid Force NV V9
Getting bac
…
28th May 2019
Kiteloop Back Roll - Ride with Blake
Today we're covering one of the most sought-after tricks in kiteboarding: the backroll kiteloop, also known as the F-16. This doesn’t have to be a scary trick. Actually, most people accidentally do backroll kiteloops as they are learning their first backrolls because it is natural to pull in on your back hand as you throw the rotation.
The only thing that makes this trick scary is when you don’t know what you are doing and it gets out of control. If you can follow
…
20th May 2019