englishmanbo said..
Hi,
I am an old bloke with no experience board riding of any kind.
3 questions:
1. Should I start out wake boarding or surfing, I think yes so am off to wake park today.
2. Is flying a high powered stunt kite helpful or is it important to use a dedicated kitesurfing trainer with a bar?
3. I planned on taking lessons but have a friend who has offered to teach me and another mate. She has taught her own son and is lifelong into water sports. I feel like it is a big ask for someone to give so much time and am thinking I might do lessons anyway.

Do lessons mate - but also do your research to find a good teacher a lot of schools have back packer transient teachers who just want to churn you through - find a local guy who lives in your area who has his own business and who takes pride in the safety aspects - it could save you from horrible injuries.

I'm an old bloke too

1. Most kiters start out with little or no board sport experience. Board skills come. Kite skills are far more important. If you have access to a wake park by-all-means go there. It's a lot of fun as well as instructive.
2. The advantages of a dedicated trainer kite are many. The bar is similar to a regular kite bar. You learn to let go of the bar and flag the kite onto one line which is important. Discovering the wind window is important.
3. Get a couple of professional lessons and then use your friend for refinement.

cauncy said..
Dedicated as in foil or inflatable, imho foil is a waste of time and unrelated in handling , set up and similarity compared to a Le inflatable trainer

Thanks for the comments everybody. I will look into an inflatable trainer kite and do lessons. Some amazing tricks going on at the wake park.

Thanks for the suggestion, what size kite as a trainer and do I need a harness as well.

Thanks for the advice, I will get on it.

I'm an old bloke and I'm still a novice.

From my experience - once you've got through the safety and some flying the kite explanations stuff the instructor will get you trying to water start. The best way I can describe it is that from sitting in the water you dive the kite to generate the force to lift you onto the board and start riding. So you've got a few things going on and its easy to stuff up. Getting used to the feeling of transferring your weight onto the planing board by having a crack at a wake park is worth a go I think - if you can get your balance right you can focus on flying the kite - which takes a lot of focus.

In retrospect I wish I'd bought a small kite to play with between lessons - kite skills is where its at. I reckon my instructor got the board out way too soon for me. I'd been dicking about with water starts and short rides (in variable conditions) for about 5 lessons before we had one lesson in really low winds and I just flew the kite and a whole load of things about what you need to do to fly the kite suddenly became clear. Progress was rapid after that.

Hope this helps

englishmanbo said..
Hi,
I am an old bloke with no experience board riding of any kind.
3 questions:
1. Should I start out wake boarding or surfing, I think yes so am off to wake park today.
2. Is flying a high powered stunt kite helpful or is it important to use a dedicated kitesurfing trainer with a bar?
3. I planned on taking lessons but have a friend who has offered to teach me and another mate. She has taught her own son and is lifelong into water sports. I feel like it is a big ask for someone to give so much time and am thinking I might do lessons anyway.

My experience was that learning to kite meant that I had two things to worry about at the same time. Flying the kite, and coordinating the board.

The first times I had no board skills so once I got the board up and going, I didn't know what to do.

Afterwards I went to the cable park quite a bit, as it was easy to get to from work, and it changed my kiting completely.

Now, I only have to worry about the kite, as the board skills are there. Now, my legs know what they are doing, and my brain knows what to do with the board to get it to go where I want.

The waterstarts in the cable park are going to help you a lot with waterstarts on a kite board. It teaches you how to angle the board in order to get the lift you need. Get it wrong at the cable park and you crash and start again.

Contrary to what cbulota says, you do not have to be riding the board flat at the cable park. You can if you want to, but its pretty boring after a while. You need to edge the board in the turns at each end anyway, and if you can't make the turns, you need to learn.

Once you have turns mastered, you can pretty much do big carving turns on the straights as well. For me that's awesome fun, and certainly teaches you board skills. I almost never see anyone else do it, so you need to make this part of your session if your goal is to kite.

After that gets a bit boring you can try and ride switch. Doing 180 surface turns is going to teach you great board control and not to catch an edge. All without having to worry about where the power is coming from.

The disadvantage is that riding on a cable park takes a lot out of your arms until you build up the strength. The first couple of months I could only go around 3 or 4 laps before my arms fatigued. After a while your arms and shoulders build up a bit and you can go much longer.

One thing that I thought was cool was that an instructor pointed out that to make turns easy I can just change to riding switch, and then the turns are simple carving turns. I went from not being able to turn without sinking to being able to smoothly turn, all by applying the board skills from wakeboarding.

So, yes, if you want board control and its easy, go to a cable park. It will mean that when its windy you don't have two things to worry about and you can concentrate on learning the kite skills.

Wakeboarding at the cable park itself is not an easy learning experience, but it is simpler and not as weather dependent.

englishmanbo said..
Thanks FormulaNova, the wake park was not an instant success and as you say will not be an easy learning curve. In the training pond I found deep water starts ok and felt comfortable once standing, starting off the dock not natural yet, this is the very beginning. The thing I do really like about the wake park is getting wet instead of just thinking about it.

Yeah, its good that you can get wet, even when there is no wind. I enjoyed the wake park a lot on hot days when there was no wind, and during the week there was hardly anyone there.

At the wakepark I end up being the odd one out and turning up with a 'crossover' kiteboard/wakeboard with footstraps. The good thing about using footstraps is that if you catch an edge you come out. If I use my wakeboard with boots, catching an edge is more of a sudden stop and I don't think its good for my health long term.

The worst thing about the wakepark is that its packed on hot weekends, and if you are a beginner and are still sorting out your waterstarts, you can wait 10 minutes just to crash straight away.

Most helpful thing I found about the cable park was learning to water start in both directions. My most comfortable direction is goofy (right foot forward) but training the muscle memory doing water starts left foot forward at the cable park allowed me to focus on the kite when learning water starts in that direction and not worry about the board. I also switched my forward foot every lap at the cable park, doing huge carves down the straight and this got me used to riding both ways as well as learning to ride and stay upwind in both directions while riding toeside.