Now that JohnO has completed his beginner lesson, he needs more time on the kite to get comfortable handling more power.  John also needs to improve his light [...]]]> Below is a video of JohnO after his initial 2-3 hour beginner kite lesson.  He has great speed and form for only kiting about 10 minutes in his life.

Now that JohnO has completed his beginner lesson, he needs more time on the kite to get comfortable handling more power.  John also needs to improve his light wind kite flying.  In light winds, technique plays a big factor in keeping the kite up.  John was flying a 5 meter Naish Helix (4 line SLE Kite with 100% depower).  Don Altmeyer, an excellent kiter was kiting with a 12 meter Naish Helix at the same time.  On soft water John would not have enough power to get up and go, but Don with the 12 meter would have had enough power to get up and even jump.

After the beginner lesson one needs to put another 15 – 20 hours on the kite to build on their skills so they can handle the power required to get up on soft water.  One can shorten that time with another lesson or two.

The Winter is more than half over so don’t procrastinate if you want to kite this summer.  GET OUT and RIDE!

The Winter ice has many advantages:

The human being is born with instinctive reactions for windsurfing.  I say “We are born with a windsurfing program in our brain.  It’s [...]]]> Most People know by now that Windsurfing can be difficult to learn.  There is also a misconception that it takes a lot of upper body strength to learn.  Well let’s discuss some facts.

The human being is born with instinctive reactions for windsurfing.  I say “We are born with a windsurfing program in our brain.  It’s a poor program like Windows 98.  It causes you to crash a lot!”  The windsurfing Instructor’s job is to make you aware of the instinctive problems and teach you the proper techniques so you have good balance while windsurfing.  The instructor will teach you the proper reactions.  Repeated use of the proper reaction will build muscle memory and eventually the poor instinctive reaction will change to the proper reaction and balance will improve, windsurfing will be easy and fun with no swimming involved.

For instance, most beginners fall backwards quite often.  Why?  Because their instinct has them not standing on the centerline of the board but to the windward side of the board and they tend to put too much weight on their heels.  That stance along the instinctive reaction of hugging the sail (bending the elbows) after up-hauling leads to an in-balance to the windward side of the board and the result is falling in backwards.

Windsurfing has many, many different balances and the instructor will teach the student how to be aware and feel the balance points.  Our instincts make it difficult to find and feel the balance points.  An Instructor should have what I call the Instructor’s Eye.  The instructor will see the reason for imbalance or the cause of a fall and they will inform you how correct the move and work on muscle memory.

The misconception that windsurfing takes a lot of upper body strength is correct when one uses poor technique.  Learning the proper technique of keeping your arms straight and relaxed, thumbs on top of the boom, back straight with a sitting posture transfers all the pull from the sail into your legs instead of using hand, arm and back muscles.  There is no need to, and using those muscles just wears one out in no time.

A good Instructor teaching the proper techniques with a seasoned Instructors Eye, will make your 1^st time learning experience fun, easy and successful.  Oh and a lot drier!

Advanced Windsurfing Instruction is equally important because again of the Bad Instinctive Reactions.  They seem to appear at all levels of this great sport.

Don’t waste precious time, you only live once! Put forth the effort to find a good Windsurfing School and learn to master the great sport of windsurfing quickly.  Put yourself on a fast learning curve, it will be your Best Investment in Windsurfing!

If you are interested in learning kitesurfing (aka ‘kiting’) and want to take a lesson at Wind Power, the best time is during the Winter season. There are so many advanatges learning on frozen Lake Winnebago, but most of all, you will learn to control & safely fly a [...]]]> Do you want to learn to Kitesurf?

If you are interested in learning kitesurfing (aka ‘kiting’) and want to take a lesson at Wind Power, the best time is during the Winter season. There are so many advanatges learning on frozen Lake Winnebago, but most of all, you will learn to control & safely fly a kite before you add swimming and a water take-off to the process. Please see the Wind Power Kitesurfing winter lesson information at our Lesson page.

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