It seems a simple concept, jumping, yet it requires a little bit more skill than what meets the eye.
It is often the reason a lot of you decided to try kiteboarding in the first place. Perhaps you saw some riders jumping at the local kite spot and thought to yourself “I want to try that. THAT looks fun.”.
You were right. It looks impressive and it is, quite simply, a lot of fun. Whether you are only jumping 1ft high or you are competing for a place on the WOO podium, you are having a good time.
In this video, Alex Pastor walks you through the important details you need to remember and practice to improve your jumping capabilities.
Content:
0:00 Intro
0:40 How to do a basic jump
2:09 Timing the pop with kite
2:30 The catapult effect
3:03 Jumping with kite low
3:42 Unhooked pop
4:34 Common mistakes
Alex Pastor says:
Jumping is the best part of kitesurfing, most people I know have started kiteboarding because they’ve seen people jump super high and it not only looks super fun, it is!
For jumping, the most important thing is to have good pop, and being able to optimize your pop will allow you to go much higher on your jumps.
The 2 important details on a kitesurfing jump or pop:
- Timing the pop with kite movement.
- The catapult effect for the pop.
Jumping without sending the kite or with the kite low
Now that we know how to jump while sending the kite, we can learn to jump without moving the kite. This is used for wake-style tricks and it’s a little bit harder even though we only have to focus on the board. The harder part is that the kite won’t pull us up that much but it will just send us just a little bit up and more downwind instead.
Unhooked pop or hooked in pop
Another variation is to jump unhooked. For this example, we’re gonna do an unhooked pop without sending the kite like we just saw. Unhooked pops are more useful for that kind of jump although you can also do unhooked jumps while sending the kite it’s a little more dangerous as you can fall from a bigger height.
Common mistakes:
- Jumping downwind
- This is when you do the kite movement but you don’t edge with your board, so you go downwind too much as soon as you leave the water, it’s also very hard to land as you will be getting back to the water super fast. Remember it’s super important to focus on edging properly with your board.
- Sending the kite back too early.
- It’s common that when you’re doing the process of jumping you only think about the steps to follow but don’t think so much about timing them.
So in this case, I’ve seen a lot of people sending the kite back to the front as soon as they gain some height.
- It’s common that when you’re doing the process of jumping you only think about the steps to follow but don’t think so much about timing them.
You can find more instrucitonal videos by Alex on his Youtube channel and his Instagram.
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Gear feaured in video:
Kites:
https://airush.com/kites/razor-kite/
Boards:
Bars:
