Jem Hall Technique

My technique pieces mainly reflect on how best to go about nailing a certain move or employing a strategy to ‘move on up’. This month however we help you identify the barriers to your improvement. The most important insight I have is you have to WANT IT! I will go onto identify the main areas that may not be maximising your potential and then look at the key moves and where I see frequent mistakes. I am drawing on my 25 years of coaching and also what I observe on many beaches around the world. Understanding much of this will help you become better at self-coaching, which is one of the key ways to improve and enjoy your windsurfing more.

“THE MOST IMPORTANT INSIGHT I HAVE IS YOU HAVE TO WANT IT!”

PHYSICAL

It has to start with this, windsurfing is physical and requires a high level of fitness. If you are fitter, and perhaps more importantly stronger and more dynamic you are able to sail with more power and for longer. In effect you become able to dominate your equipment and be a pilot and not a passenger. I am now training more effectively and harder and have noticed huge benefits in my sailing. My stronger and fitter clients improve the fastest, enough said!

MENTAL

The mental aspect also plays a huge part too. As I said you have to ‘want to improve,’ and in sports coaching this can be called your ‘need to achieve’ or ‘achievement motivation’, which boils down to your ‘motive to succeed’ (how much you want it) minus your ‘motive to avoid failure’ (how much you want to avoid crashing). So yes you have to want it, A LOT, and be willing to crash as part of your journey.

An area which can hold people back is our internal self-dialogue, “I can’t do this,.. I am scared, .. I will never achieve this or that.” If you can change this to “I shall or I will or I can”, then you are already on an upward curve.

I have also seen that visualisation can play a big part in how much we all improve. Some people can see how a whole move works, but visualising, understanding and working on key stages/parts of a move is more effective.

KIT

The main kit areas I see that limit our improvement are below.

Using or owning the wrong kit. It might be too big or too small, too fast or too slow, or just unsuitable for your level.

Wrong combinations. Sail too big on a small board or vice versa, sails and boards too close together in size.