Wing jibes are great. Some talented wingers learn to foil through their jibes within 10 sessions, and soon after foil through virtually all of their jibes. I recently saw a picture from a session where a winger foiled through 400 jibes in a row - his playground was less than 100 meters wide, so he had to jibe several times a minute. Many "average" wingers learn wing jibes in about 50 sessions, or in their first season winging.
But there are also quite a few wingers who struggle with the jibe. Unfortunately, I am in this group - after close to 100 wing sessions, the majority of my jibe attempts still end up with a crash. It is not for lack of trying - you have to turn around at some point, anyway, so I've probably crashed a couple of thousand jibe tries by now. Something new is needed.
A wing jibe lecture by Andy Brandt at the recent ABK camp in Hyannis gave me a few pointers of what to change, and there were a few small improvements when trying to implement his tips. But one problem I have is that his lecture was about 30 minutes long, and that there are many things that I should be doing differently within the 10 or 15 seconds that a jibe takes. Major brain overload alert! After a crash, I'm now better at diagnosing what I did wrong - but I still crash.
In search of a quick fix for my problems on Youtube, I discovered a new-to-me video that gave me a few new ideas. Here it is (with most of what interests me in the first few minutes):
What rang a bell for me was to divide the jibe into different parts, and the suggestion of specific drills for the different parts. The jibe parts are:
- Preparation
- Carving 180 degrees
- Hand switch
- Sailing toeside
- Foot switch
If you watched the video above, you may notice that I added the first and the last point. The first point, preparation, is quite trivial, but in the past, I had quite a few wrong ideas about this which I'll explain below. The last part, the foot switch, may seem optional to wingers who come from kiting or prone surfing, but it is something that most windsurfers will want to do.
The video suggests to do drills for individual parts of the jibe separately, and that is what I want to expand on here. In every other sport that I have done in my life, a complex new move pattern was always broken down into parts, and the parts were taught and learned individually, and then put together. One example are katas in karate - you learn one piece, and move on to the next piece once you have the first piece down; typically, it takes a few lessons to learn a new kata.
Another element that comes into play is what skills are needed for a given step. For example, to learn a helicopter tack in windsurfing, you first need to learn leeside sailing, and then positioning and slicing the sail for a sail flip. For a nicely controlled heli tack, you should also have mastered clew-first sailing, so that you can arrest the move before the final flip. In the words of ABK's Coach Ned, you need to have the "basics" down. So we'll look at what skills we need for the different parts of a wing jibe, and what drills can help us to learn these skills.
1. Preparation
In the windsurf jibe, preparation is quite important, and the chance of planing through a jibe without proper preparation is low. But for winging, things are easier: you basically need to foil in control, and at a reasonable speed and height - things we do most of the time, anyway. The only thing that is required before starting the turn is that the front hand is switched to an under grip (assuming you used a regular grip before).
Moving the feet before the jibe is typically not necessary. It can help to put the feet a bit closer together, since this can make it easier to switch the feet at the end of the jibe, without disturbing the flight by taking large steps. So a useful skill to practice is to sail with the feet closer together.
If you are coming from windsurfing or windfoiling, it is important to realize that you do not need to step to the leeside of the board with your back foot for the carve - actually, stepping to the edge of the board can be quite a bad idea. Here is why: if you place the back foot to the outside, and your front foot is near the centerline, then your board will start to turn downwind even if you have similar weight on both feet. As your board turns, the centrifugal force from the turn will want to through you off the board. At the start of the turn, when you still have power in the wing, you may not notice this - but soon after you let go of the back hand, you will be off balance, and then fall to the back. Those can be fun crashes, with the board shooting out of the water as you topple backwards - but they are still crashes.
2. Turning (carving) 180 degrees
Changing direction by 180 degrees is what the jibe is really about - everything else, like hand and foot switches, is just stuff we need to do as a consequence. So it makes perfect sense to practice just turning 180 degrees in isolation. When you learn jibes, you will fall, anyway, so why not plan to fall after turning 180 degrees? Lemons to lemonade - we are turning a frustrating jibe crash into a successfully completed drill!
There are a number of skills that we are working on in this drill:
- carving by bending the knees and leaning into the turn
- maintaining an even turn radius
- foiling with a flagged wing - let go of the back handle and ignore the wing completely
- regulating flight height in the turn, without wing pressure
- staying oriented during the turn
- looking to where we are turning
What happens when the turn is completed does not matter. Regardless of whether the board touches down, you fall off, you jump off, or you turn back, you were working on multiple skills needed for the wing jibe. It's may even be a good idea to keep turning further to see how far you can turn before running out of speed.
One very important thing, though, is that you are absolutely not allowed to look for the handles, or try to grab the back handle again before you have completed the turn. One of the common beginner mistakes is that they want to minimize time without power in the wing, and turn to look where the handles to grab are. The "180 carve drill" teaches to instead look where you are going, and stay in control without the crutch of wing power.
One real fun way to practice 180 degree turns is to play with swell or chop, turning downwind to go down a swell, and using the energy of the wave to stay foiling. This can be tons of fun and really help with getting the jibe quickly, but there is one caveat: you should turn far enough, well past downwind. If you're a crash-averse winger (I am), you may be tempted to go down the swell just a bit, and the quickly turn back and grab the back handle again to get that nice stabilizing wing power again. But if you do that, you're actually practicing bad habits: to rely on the wing for balance, and to be way too eager to grab the handles again as soon as possible. So turn further, and forget about the wing!
3. The hand switch
The tutorial video above has some great examples of jibes done by experts, advanced wingers, and jibe beginners. If you look at the differences between the jibe beginners and the better jibers, a few things stand out: experts typically complete the turn before they hold on with both hands again, and never look for the handles; in contrast, the beginners try to get both hands back onto the wing as quickly as possible, and often look for where the handles (or booms) are, which causes all kinds of wobbling. Furthermore, the beginners often end up with the wing high above their heads, held with an extended front arm pointing straight up. Most wingers in the video bend their knees a lot for the turn, but one the experts maintain this throughout the turn; the beginners often end up with straight legs at the end, and it almost looks like the wing is pulling them up and stretching them out. If you are a struggling want-to-be wing jiber like me, you know this feeling, and you also know that it is often followed by a dismount to the back.
As the video suggests, a great drill to practice the hand work (and the next step, sailing toeside) is to do so on the beach. In the span of 10 minutes, you can practice the hand switch many times on both sides, whereas on the water, you'd likely crash and have to restart, and get just a few tries in.
For the hand switch drill, we now pick up at the end of the previous drill: we have turned 180 degrees, so that our body (and toes) is now pointing to the wind, and are holding the wing near the front with our previous front hand, with the arm to the side and a little to the back. Now:
- Look in the direction that you want to sail to (right angle to the wind)
- With your free hand, point into the direction you want to sail to
- Move the hand that is holding the wing to the other hand. Keep looking where you are going, do not look for the handles (or boom)!
- Grab the front handle with your new front hand, and let go of the old front hand.
- DO NOT LOOK FOR THE BACK HANDLE! If you're tried jibes before, it is quite likely that you developed the habit to do this - but that just increases the changes of messing up your jibe. Instead, keep looking where you are going.
- Take your new back hand (the hand that just let go of the front handle) and put it behind your back. Leave it there for a few seconds, while you double-check that you look where you are going.
- Now put grab the back handle, without looking for it.
- Make sure your front arm is extended in the direction you want to go, and that your front hand is at about eye to forehead level. Sheet in with your back arm to get some power in the wing, with the back elbow pointing up. The power in the wing should pull you forward, onto your front foot. If you find yourself getting pushed onto your heels, check the height of your front hand (forehead level) and your back elbow (pulled up).
- Play around with the power in the wing for a short while. Then switch hands on the front handle, and start over. Repeat at least 10 times.
Step 6 in the list above is optional - it is only there to break the desperate desire to grab the back handle as quickly as possible. So you can leave it out after the first few tries, when you are sure that you don't turn your head to look for it.
4. Sailing toeside (switch)
After turning 180 degrees without switching our feet, we are now standing with our toes pointing to the wind - toeside in kiter jargon, or switch in windsurfer terms. Many kiters are used to never switching their feet, so they keep this stance after a jibe until the next turn, and some windsurfers do the same, since they find it easier that switching the feet. But even wingers who prefer to switch their feet after a jibe need to learn how to wing in toeside stance, staying in control for at least long enough to adjust ride height and find a good spot to switch their feet.
This is also something that can easily be practiced on land, and actually is the last step in the hand switch drill described above. If you're at a flat water spot and have a stable wing board, you can also practice this with the board on the water (taxiing).
The first attempts to wing in switch stance after a jibe will likely end in a crash after a few seconds. Practice makes perfect! One way to get more time to practice switch is to let the board touch down gently, then switch the feet (see next section), and keep going with the board on the water or after popping back up on the foil. Again, this is easier with on flat water and with a stable board.
5. The foot switch
Switching the feet to get back to a regular (heel side) stance while foiling can be a bit scary and crash prone. Most expert wingers will switch feet by first stepping forward with the back foot, and then stepping back with the old front foot. But windsurfers have the opposite pattern deeply engrained in their muscle memory: stepping back with the old front foot first, then stepping forward. For winging, this creates a problem: with the entire body weight on the back of the board, the nose shoots up, and the foil wants to pop out of the water, leading to a certain crash. To avoid the overfoiling when stepping back with the front foot, Andy Brandt teaches a couple of modifications: taking half steps, and stepping by "collapsing" rather than pushing off - an entirely new skill.
There is a third option for the foot switch: switching both feet at the same time by hopping around. Some wing jibe tutorial suggest that this is easiest for many beginner, and I did indeed find this easy. But the drawback is that it is harder to place the feet correctly, and misplaced feet often cause a crash. One thing that reduced this problem is to have the feet closer together before the hop - something already mentioned as a drill in the "preparation" step. Winging in a narrower stance can also make the two other foot switch options easier, since the resulting smaller steps affect the board trim and height less.
After a number of sessions, I finally managed to break my old habit of stepping back with old front foot first, and instead first stepped forward with the old back foot, and then back with the old front foot. The "back foot first" stepping fits the "chicken" approach of letting the board touch down onto the water during the foot switch quite well, and one could possibly see this as a drill on the way to a proper foiling foot switch. To foil through, advanced wingers typically have the foil come up high out of the water before stepping forward, which drives the foil down, and then stepping back with the old front foot, which brings the foil back up.
The foot switch is also something that can be practiced on land, for example at the end of the drill described for the hand switch. This should support "automating" the wing handling during the step: first moving the wing high (into "coasting" position), and then sheeting in slightly to put some body weight onto the wing. Having less weight on the board makes the steps lighter and reduces the effect on board trim and height, similar to what we also try to accomplish be putting the feet closer together.
Drill summary
Here's a list of the drills for particular jibe parts and skills from the sections above:
- Wing with your feet close together, and equal weight on both feet.
- Carve 180 degrees (or more), flagging and ignoring the wing but managing height and carving evenly. Crash and call it a success, or turn back.
- Carve S-turns, flagging the wing and turning past downwind.
- Practice the hand switch on land. Focus on moving the wing without looking at it.
- Practice toe side wing handling on land.
- Toe side taxiing (flat water, big board).
- Touch down gently, switch feel, continue toe side (taxiing or foiling).
- Practice the foot switch on land (and after taxiing, drill #5).
How to learn the wing jibe in 10 sessions
One thing that has puzzled me for a long time is why my lovely wife managed to learn wing jibes in about 10 sessions, while I am still struggling after almost 100 sessions. Sure, she is a bit talented and learns faster, but that usually means she learns stuff twice or three times faster than I do, not 10 or ore times. But looking at the skills and drills described above sheds some light on this. In the first or second session that she got on the foil with a wing, she started playing with swell, flagging the wing, and having a blast doing S-turns. Having a wing that was relatively large for her, but well match with the swell speed, may have helped. After doing this for a few sessions, turning 180 degrees was no big deal. All that flagging the wing, and not grabbing it again until there were no more waves to play with, was good practice for the hand switch.
For the next parts, sailing switch and switching the feet, the planing and non-planing freestyle she had done in previous years paid off. She often practiced on her 89 l board, even in light wind, which requires precise stepping and weight distribution, and good balance. So she ended up practicing skills required for the wing foil jibe years before winging even became a thing - and was rewarded by very quickly getting amazing at wing foiling. I don't think I have a chance of ever getting close to her level - but I'd be perfectly happy just to get good at foiling jibes, and hopefully, the drills above will help.
