Intermediate Kiteboarding Guide
This intermediate kiteboarding guide is to provide direction for safe progression. There are an abundance of different tricks you can learn once you’re making basic transitions. You can do on-the-water tricks like riding toeside or begin catching some air. Once you learn how to stay upwind, it’s easy to progress fast. We’ll break this Intermediate Kiteboarding Guide into three categories:
- Kite Skills
- On The Water Tricks
- Air Tricks
Kite Skills
Drift Launch
Drift launching your kite in the water is a good skill to have. Some locations like Adventure Sports in Miami require you to drift launch your kite to start. This is good if you’re on a crowded beach or there is nobody on the beach to help you launch.
How To Water Relaunch In Light Winds
Ever been in a situation where the winds drop off ? In this situation it may be a struggle to get the kite back up. Here’s the technique we use for light wind water relaunches.
How To Self Land In Strong Winds
Say you get back to the beach, you’re overpowered and theres nobody there to land you. How do you land your kite? This is our recommended technique.
How To Self Land In Lighter Winds
This is a good technique for when you’re on the beach by yourself. You want to make sure to practice this in an open area and when the winds are light.
On The Water Tricks
Riding Toeside
Being able to ride toeside will unlock the door to many different styles of riding. One of the best is a transition out of toeside.
Hand Drags
Just dropping your front hand in the water is a cool way to ride and cruise, but let’s take the hand drag to the next level. In this hand drag variation you’ll extend the board out of the water and drag your hand across.
Downloop Transitions
The downloop transition is a nice progression from a basic transition. It requires a fundamental understanding of how to steer the control bar. You want to focus on pulling one side of the bar and push out on the other side.
Air Tricks
Load and Pop
The load and pop is essential for progression. This maneuver will teach you how to jump with control. When you control your jumps, you can begin learning new tricks. Check out how to load and pop here!
Boost
Once you learn how to load and pop without the board, a kiteboarding boost is adding the kite. A boost is all about timing. Timing between loading the board and sending the kite. We breakdown how to boost here.
Board Grabs
A fun way to add style to your boosts are to add board grabs. Check out the variation of different kiteboarding board grabs here.
Backroll
It is not too difficult to learn how to backroll. Once you get dialed in on how to pop and boost, the backroll is what we recommend learning next.
Backroll To Toeside
The progression after you learn how to backroll is to backroll to toeside. Theres a few key points to getting this trick dialed in.
Back Roll Transitions
The key with most jumping transitions is a kite that moves slow. The back roll transition is an easy one once you learn how to back roll and jump transition.
Front Roll
A fun and exciting trick. Harder than a backroll to learn. I requires commitment and a forward rotation. If you can do front rolls, then you’re doing well!
Front Roll Transition
Now that you know how to front roll, you can turn it into a transition. The key point here is kite control. You do not want a kite that is moving all over the place.
Front Roll Hand Drag
As your kite control gets better, you’ll be able to control your height on jumps. If you’re confident with front rotations, try a front roll with a hand drag.
