ENHANCE YOUR STANCE
People come on my coaching clinics to nail targets like better gybes, tacking and jumping, wave ride smoothly or even learn to loop, but the main skills they learn on their first few trips are from my oft quoted ‘Trinity’ of skills – planing early, sailing fast and getting upwind. This month I will look at the top tips to improve these areas, with the aim of producing a better stance that is both effective and efficient. A good stance ensures you enjoy your ‘Effective time on the water’ more and are in the best position to improve in a huge range of moves, so let’s get started on enhancing your stance!
This is a hugely important skill in the ‘Trinity’ as it extends your wind range massively, i.e. the amount of time you can stay on a given board / sail size. If you plane earlier then you have more chances to get up to speed and get upwind, do all these and you’re winning at windsurfing!
PLANING - 3 WAYS
Before we kick off with the tips on early planing I will recap on the 3 different methods we can use to get into the straps / get planing. It is of utmost importance to get very good at all 3 so you can choose the most suitable one given a certain set of conditions. For example, in Moulay on my wave clinics I was reminded again how much my clients had to be able to get in the straps early, even before they were planing!
1 - Traditional: get hooked in and then into the straps. This is perhaps the easiest technique for lower ability sailors or more moderate winds.
2 - Active: from a dynamic low position get the board planing unhooked, then get in the straps and then hook in. This pays huge dividends for the future and will boost your fitness and ability to get planing gybes and improve quickly at wavesailing.
3 - New School: from a non-planing position get into the straps smoothly and then look to bear away and plane on a gust either before or after hooking in. Modern boards and wave boards prefer this as you can be more active and use your legs more to steer, unstick and almost lift the board onto the plane.
ADD SOME T’S Before you start planing please realise there are 2 areas where you can begin planing. One is on the water of course, but the less obvious one is on land by adding the ‘T’s’ below to your approach before you hit the water.
• Temperament – you actually believe you will get planing!
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