quote:
Originally posted by garynoel
Just read the article in the boarders mag on forward loops.
Apart from sheeting in can the 'loopers' here give any more tips? I'm going to have a crack (wrong word maybe) at forwards this weekend and could do with all the help you can give.
Gaz
Hi Gary. I'm definately no expert as I have just got the hang of them myself, and i'm only getting them in one direction and haven't landed one on the board yet. Most are back slappers.
This stuff helped me alot.
1.
Practice on the beach just with the sail. Move the boom up to between nipple and shoulder height. Hang on as if you were sailing cross wind (so the sail is full of wind when you do this), put your front hand right next to your front harness line, put your back hand about 60 cm further back down the boom so you have about a 1 metre or more wide grip. Put your front foot next to the bottom of the mast. Push the rig forward and across your body, almost as if you're trying to point the tip of the mast onto the wind, not down wind. As you do this, lean onto your front foot and roll you body around with the sail as it pulls you around. Sheet in with your back hand as if you are tring to touch your forehead with your back hand (you won't but it will get close). You end up basically doing a judo roll across the surface of the sand and to a back spin almost all the way around to waterstart position. This is painless and gives you a close feel for what goes on
2.
Once you can do this, try it on the water by doing a really tight gybe when you are only just on the plane. Once you get halfway through the gybe, with both feet in straps, do exactly the same as you did on the beach (throwing mast tip towards the outside of the turn). Don't try to jump the board, just let the sail pull you around in slow motion. Your feet will come out of the straps and you'll go around the front across the surface of the water. If you've got a board shorter than 270cm don't worry, you'll miss hitting anything. Once again after a few attempts you'll almost end up in the waterstart position.
3.
Try the whole thing after doing a little jump (15cm chop even) but try to do it off chop that you can hit relatively face on when you are sailing slightly down wind. Doing this seems to make a huge difference between ending up going around, or just catapulting onto your side. Get onto the plane, but you don't need to be going very fast. Just enough so you can be standing upright and not hanging outwards (as if you were about to enter a gybe). Chophop (feet in straps), do all the things you practiced on the beach including rolling your body, plus try and pull legs up to bum. If your like me, right after jumping I can see the nose of the board skim across the surface of the water, then i tend to look through the sail panel for the rest of the action until i land. Your first few goes you probably won't pull your feet up to your bum enough, but most times you will still rotate board and all surprisingly.
After this, i think its just a case of tweaking the whole thing.
I know this sounds cliche', but you will get a sore back, I have. I got a block of closed cell soft foam i shove under my rashy, then put the waste harness on. This seems to keep everything in place and cushions the slap somewhat. Back of the head seems to cop it as well, but not as bad as between the shoulderblades. While learning, it seems finding chop downwind (if at all possible) is the key to better landings. Taking off into the wind appears to require having to jump higher and spinning faster, and bigger back slaps if you get around. I've also had the gear get ripped out of my hand a few times when I tried jumping into the wind too much.
Hope you get something out of it. It took me a long time to get this far coz i wanted to try to learn it safely. If you got thaballz you could probably do the "just go for it" technique and skip some of these steps

Anyway, I think I take the award for longest post in history.
H