0:00 We receive a lot of videos from customers and followers asking for advice when it comes to their technique, especially pump foiling technique, [music] which as you probably know is one of the most difficult things to learn when it comes to pump foiling. So, I decided to put this video together where I review a bunch of these videos from different people at different levels with different setups so that you, hopefully, can find yourself in one of these videos. And by analyzing their techniques, you can also learn something and improve. The first person that I want to analyze is Carlo from Italy. And I like to watch the video without even knowing the setup and then I will going to go over the setup and see if there is something that's he can maybe change in the setup as well. But, what we can see straight away is that the start is fairly sharp. He is able to generate speed quickly.
0:48 And then I can immediately see, and you can also probably notice that he's overloading his back leg. I'm assuming that his back leg is going to start burning >> [music] >> before his front leg. And then if we play it at normal speed Yeah, >> [music] >> I think the cadence is too quick. And you can also see that when he come closer you can clearly see that he presses when the board is still going up. Could you see that? The board is the board still wants to rise and he's already going down. And also because he's quite stiff and because he's overloading
1:34 the back leg he's preventing the board from rising fully. He's relieving his weight but he's never extending his knees fully and for long enough to let the board rise. And he's not loose enough with his legs to let the board and the foil rise [music] enough. And that's why after a while he's just going to stall, exactly. Because he gain height, but he's he's not generating speed because his cadence is too high and because even when he generates height, he's not smooth in the transition between um hopping and um loading the next hop and that's what [music] uh prevent him from uh pumping efficiently for longer. When it comes to the setup, it looks pretty balanced. The
2:19 board is not super short, but um the mast is fairly forward and there is not too much nose and there is not a lot of scoop, so um nothing to say and also it looks like um it's got glide and it doesn't have a stab that's too big. The mast looks stiff, so um nothing to say about the setup. Um but we've got another another video. Let's see. Still from Carlo. Um This time it's a slow motion. Let's see if we can spot the same mistakes that we spotted in the first video. >> [music] >> Yeah, that's pretty much the same. As you can see, he's still um He's got too much weight on the on the back leg. If we compare it
3:04 with one of my videos, right? We can immediately see >> [music] >> um how my hips and my shoulders are more shifted towards the front foot when I'm hopping, right? See here, I'm relieving my weight. >> [music] >> My knees are fully extended. I'm more relaxed. And look at my shoulders and my hips, >> [music] >> right? My center of mass is pretty much on the center here of the board, meaning more towards the nose. And if we check his video, especially the other one where he comes closer, right. This is spot-on. Look at this. Look where my weight is and where his weight is. This is the exact same phase
3:50 of the flight, but look at the difference. Okay? And I know it's hard at the beginning because it's a bit uncomfortable to throw your weight in front like that. You need to really trust the foil. And that's one of the things that um it's probably like the most important thing when it comes to pump foiling and any foiling discipline in general, like the most important thing is just time on foil, time on your feet in general. And if you are only dock starting, it's going to be very hard to um to accumulate enough time on foil to progress fast. That's why I always recommend to get into more um disciplines when it when like foiling disciplines. Um so you're going to get more time on foil, you're going to improve your feeling for the foil, and you you're going to just
4:36 speed up the the process by a lot. And think about it, like why do you think is >> [music] >> um most really good surf foilers can get the dock start at literally their first trial? It's simply because they've spent so much time on foil that it's second nature for them. So pumping is very easy, getting on the board, it's easy, finding their feet placement, it's easy. Um but if you're just dock dock starting and pumping, and you've never done anything else like wing foiling or um wake foiling or anything at all or even e-foiling, it's hard because you don't have enough foil control to trust the foil and really pump it um as it's supposed to be pumped, right? Um but yeah, let's see what setup he's got. Scott, he's on Axis
5:23 um Axis 1350, so I guess the firewall, um skin 35, a stabilizer, eight um H2 mast, um it's probably like the the high modulus one. Um and he's usually using a Gong board 80, and he was trying um a board from a friend. Yeah. He's trying to achieve 30 minutes with uh this setup, and I think it's 100% achievable simply by um tweaking these things and just accumulating more time on the foil. Right, let's get into the next person. Next person is David. Um we've got a different setup here. He's probably more at the beginning. The front wing is um lower aspect, is bigger. Um he's going for a static start.
6:09 Wow. That foil has a lot of lift. I can't see really what it is, but it's got a lot of lift because as you can see it doesn't have speed, but he's still able to um to get on foil and start pumping. Okay. As you can see he's struggling gaining height on the mast. And he's struggling pointing the board down. And it's probably because he's also got a massive stab. He's got a very lifted front wing, a very big stab, and he's probably not the heaviest rider. So he's really struggling with pitching the board down. And he's also he's also got a Yeah, cadence that's pretty much too high, and he's also very very
6:54 >> [music] >> uh with a center of mass on the on the back foot, and that prevents the foil from rising and then uh pitching on the way down. >> [music] >> Um so pretty much the same mistakes. Um you know, >> [music] >> I'm not a super huge fan to be honest um of these like super super easy foils uh from from these cheaper brands that they're coming out because yes, they are easy to dock start because they literally it's literally like jumping on uh on something super stable, but because they're so stable, then they're not really good for pumping, and they're not efficient, they don't have glide, um they push water, and the the pumping movement is is not smooth because you really have to apply sort of pressure on
7:40 your on your front foot to to put this thing down. Um so, another thing that, you know, he could probably try because the foil is so lifty, he could probably try to um shift his feet placement further forward. Um the mast, I think, is all all already all the way to the back, yeah. Uh but he if he if he would just switch his feet placement a bit further forward, um especially the back foot, that would probably help because this way he's got more weight to the front, so it's going to be easier to, again, pitch the the foil down. Let's see if he mentioned something about his setup. Um yeah, it's a Gong XL and he's 78. Um he's a Gong Trail V3. Um I've tried
8:25 that foil. I didn't I didn't like I I found the dock start in in unbelievably simple, uh but it's too simple and then >> [clears throat] >> um the rest, like the the pumping, is is quite >> [music] >> um difficult to get right. Then we got Free. That's probably not his name, but that was the um the the handle. All right, look at his back foot. His back foot is pretty much on the mast. Now, again, I don't know yet what foil he's riding, um but it looks something very lifty. So, um first thing I would do is I would narrow the stance and I would keep pretty much the front foot where it is and I would just bring the back foot further forward because again, he's able to gain height,
9:13 but he's rushing the movement a little bit. The cadence is too high. And as you can see, again, he's not the the board is never pointing down because the cadence is too high and because um he's got a lot of weight on his back leg. All right, so let's analyze let's compare him at the bottom of the pump, which is here, and me. See how at the bottom of the pump, right? The board is pointing down, whereas here it's flat. All right? And that is what allows the foil to generate speed, which you need to get the flight, right? And if you play my video at normal
9:59 speed, by the way, in this video I'm riding an AFS 900 Ultra, you can clearly see that my cadence is slower despite I'm riding a foil that's much smaller. He's riding a uh Takuma 1900. Also very, very lifty foil. Not a huge fan of ultra big foils. In my opinion, for most people around 75 to 85 kg, 1600 are are enough. I would go bigger only if you're really looking for super like ultra long distance, uh and you already have some experience, or uh if you're a heavy rider like 90 kg. He doesn't look very um heavy. And also
10:45 even here, I think that the stab is pretty generous, and that doesn't really help. Like it helps with stability, which is good at the beginning, but then once you can pump for like 30, 40 seconds, you can pretty much only benefit from downsizing your stab because it's going to allow you to um use less energy to pitch the board down because it's going to make it a bit more pitch unstable, which is good when you're just pumping into flat water. Next, we've got Jill. All right. Looking at the board angle, I'm guessing he's going to go for a drop start. So, let's see his drop start technique first, and then we can analyze Oh, it's a slow motion. And then we can analyze the pumping. Wow.
11:30 At first glance, he's very he's quite late. Like normally like a split second after the board gets in the water, he should be already um landing on it pretty much. Like at this point, he should be landing on it. He's quite far still. Um but the throw was perfect. Like look how smooth how smoothly the board gets in the water and starts gliding. Um which is great. But what I see is that >> [music] >> he's using the normal drop start. And the issue with the normal drop start, I'm going to show you the kind of drop start that I do in a second. The issue with the normal drop start is that as you can see [music] the jump is quite like it's very it's quite hard to not jump too high and land softly on the board. And in fact as you
12:16 can see when he lands quite abruptly, he loses um pretty much half mast height. And he's also not super stable. And it's also going to be harder to nail the foot placement. Instead, what I recommend when it comes to the um drop start is let me see if I can find it. I think it's this one right here. Yes. As you can see >> [music] >> even though um goofy I start on the dock with my left foot forward so easy as if I was a regular and then I throw the board. And as I throw like look, I'm jumping before the board has even entered the water. And then as you can see, I do this kind
13:03 of rotation. And this allows to make the the jump smoother. Like the landing is much softer because the because you have to jump less high. Right? Because [music] uh the back foot needs to travel less. Right? If you have your front foot forward [music] and then you jump, then both feet have to travel a lot of distance before they land on the board. And that makes it um hard to be gentle. Right? Boom. Whereas if you do this, it's much easier to be gentle because yes, the back foot needs to travel a a lot, but really the time you're spending in the air is much less. Now, my fifth placement was pretty bad,
13:50 but despite that I was still able to yes, recover it. Um but yeah, if you're doing a drop start, I recommend highly this technique. So, let's see his pumping. All right. I can immediately see that he is angling the board up and down a lot, perhaps yeah, too much. He's relieving his weight. And he's also sort of shifting it in front as you can see. >> [music] >> His hips and shoulders are fairly in front. But there is too much delay between front leg and back leg. If we have a look at my video, you can probably see that it's very even. [music] It's almost like a squat. Right?
14:35 And the board is much flatter. The flatter the foil, the more efficient it is. So, the flatter you keep it, the less energy you use. To all these people that um we've reviewed so far, one of the best things that they could do right now besides spending more time on foil is the pump and glide drill. So, instead of just trying to go as far as possible, also most of them, if not all of them, they need to reduce their cadence. They should try to just glide and then hope. And then feel really the board rising um underneath like when you hit their feet and and then generate that speed. Right? So, like [music] three, four pumps and then glide. Three, four pumps and then glide. That's going to really allow you to understand how to generate that speed, how to feel um the
15:22 foil getting height and getting speed and also being efficient when gliding. Because especially when you're at the beginning you don't even know how to glide. And if you don't know how to glide, how can you pump? Right? It's like you try to run and you you can't even you can't even walk, right? So that's also something that it's going to help a lot of people. Next we got Matthias. All right, we got a drop start and as you can [music] see he's doing the reverse like the inverse inverted I don't know how how you want to call it drop start. In fact, it's probably smoother. As I mentioned at the beginning of the problems like the mistakes are very very similar. You can also already probably spot as we
16:08 already mentioned that his back foot is probably too far back. He's like on the mast if not behind the mast. He's probably angling No, the board is pretty flat, but he's struggling pitching it [music] down and he's got Yeah, he's quite stiff. So even though he's hoping he's not relieving his weight fully he's not extending his knees fully. He's quite stiff, quite um tense and that's why the board cannot really rise. >> [music] >> So he would also benefit from just like giving three four pumps and then gliding. Three four pumps and then gliding because that really teaches you to gain that height that you lost gliding. And I know that it's not going to be fun at the beginning because you [music] it's going to look like it's going to
16:53 feel in practice you actually make less less distance that >> [music] >> then you would probably normally do, but really it's beneficial because instead of just trying to go as far as possible you actually >> [music] >> feel and understand and learn, right? It's the same thing as I don't know when you are swimming, right? And you want to improve your swimming technique Um, don't just try to go as far as possible, because then you're just developing bad habits. What you do instead is you slow down and you do some drills to improve your technique until you become more efficient and then you you can go further and you can increase your the distance of your reps. It's the same thing with pump foiling. You should do some drills first and unfortunately
17:40 there are not many drills if not foil as much as possible whatever foiling is and then the pumping light drill. Unfortunately there is not there are not there are no other shortcuts. I'm pretty sure that him just like Jill I'm pretty sure that when they hope they feel like the board is soft. But what you want to do is what you want to try to achieve is you want to achieve that point where your loading your pump and when you spring up the board feels super hard like like concrete, right? Which is, you know, if we have a look at some of the videos you can clearly see how I can spring super hard because the board is I can spring super high because the board is is hard, right?
18:29 Look, on the way down I'm loading and then when the board is flat I'm I spring actually yeah. Even before [music] the board is flat I'm you just spring up. Boom and I'm relaxing the board rises. And then again push down, spring up. Spring up. Load. Spring. Right? Here the cadence is fairly high simply because I was on a fairly small fuselage and I was riding upwind so I had to to give it a little bit. I couldn't chill too much. Um, I you can probably see now that I'm going to slow down my cadence as I turn down and I'm also going to try to glide
19:15 and ride some little bumps. You need to really try to feel the board and foil below your feet. So that you can you can find that spot where the board really feels stiff below your feet so that you can spring comfortably high. And that's also why speed is important. The foil is going to feel hard below your feet when it's got speed. Like the more speed you have the more stiff it's going to feel below your feet. If you are always on the edge of stalling then it's going to be very hard to to actually [music] feel that you know, to to make it click. It's it's going to click when when you feel the board hard below your feet then it's going to start clicking. But until you learn how to generate
20:01 speed it's never going to click because you're never going to feel that feeling, right? And that's why the pumping like drill is so important because it teaches you how to generate height and speed, how to accelerate. And then last but not least we got Pete, this is a video from California. He's using a tow boogie which is a great tool just like full drive to get you up on foil without the the struggle of the dock start. You can immediately see how he springs but he doesn't extend his legs fully. And he's already pressing down [music] when the board is still rising. Look how abrupt the transition [music] is. He goes from board pointing up to board pointing down >> [music] >> super quickly.
20:46 And that's inefficient and that's probably going to make the foil stall. Look how smooth the transition is. Boom. Right? And I extend my legs fully pretty much. Whereas he's rushing movement and he doesn't give the the board the the foil time to rise. In fact, then he just stalls. Another drill that you should practice if you cannot do the pumping light drill just yet because you don't even reach that moment where you have enough speed is just glide and
21:32 then hope and then glide and then hope again. So at least you learn first how to relieve your weight properly and remain loose with your legs so that after you relieve your weight and you go weightless, the board can actually rise because if you can't even do that, then you cannot do the pumping light drill. I hope you found this video valuable. If you learned something, don't forget to subscribe and if you need any gear because you now know that your foil isn't necessarily the best one for you for pump foiling or for whatever discipline you're into, then check out kitewarshop.com. There is a section linked in the description below specifically for pump foils and we can sort you out. If I have to recommend a foil for pump foiling for most riders beginners and intermediates alike, I would highly recommend the Enduro GLT 1600 from AFS. So the foil designed in
22:20 collaboration with Gwen Le Tutour. The reason why I like that foil so much is because it's stable when when you land on it and that's because it's got a bit of a sweep so it's more stable than other foils while still remaining efficient because it's fairly flat. But at the same time, despite being stable for the dock start, it doesn't feel too locked in when you're pumping [music] which allows you to again pitch the board up and down effortlessly. And also the aspect ratio is around 10 11, I think. And there is a sweet spot because at the beginning especially, you don't want something ultra high aspect because you think it's permissive but it actually does the opposite and if you have a super spinny, super lifty foil, you land on it and if you're not super precise
23:06 with your [music] feet placement, the board is going to start rolling and it's going to be almost impossible to recover it because it's got such a big span and um the tips carry so much load. Let us know in the comments if you have any questions when it comes to pump foiling and let us also know if you want us to analyze other things, for example, tacks or jibes or downwinding, maybe bump reading and these kind of things so we can help you out directly with your techniques. And if you're wondering where you should place your mast for pump foiling or for wing foiling or for sub foiling, >> [music] >> check out this video right here. Thank you for watching and I'll see you in the next one.
