Technique revelation on jibing and for bottom to top turn

[jingebritsen]

top 3 pic's look like either step gibes, or maybe a tricky jump/pop for freestyle. bottom turns, sail stays inside with side off conditions.

the PWA pic is an onshore bottom turn. things are quite a bit trickier there.

late sail flips and straight, stiff stances are the most common problems with gibing or wave rides. benda the knees lots in either situation.

[coachg]

And what leads to the straight legs & late sail flip? A poor jibe initiation in what I call reigning in the horse. They initiate the jibe with all their weight on the back foot while pulling hard against the wind with their front (bent) arm. This poor initiation is usually caused by a rushed/poor setup. The domino effect.

Coachg

[westender]

It's very difficult to put into words what it is you're feeling or doing.

Manuel found something that's working for him. I liked Dan W's explanation. I had to read it a couple times for it to make sense to me. I'm a thinker, feeler, watcher, but not so much a reader, when it comes to learning techniques.

Go for it Manuel.

[isobars]

The two things that bother me about this rig-to-the-outside jibe are:
1. It's two unnecessary motions ... outside, then back inside. But if it's fun and works, that's what counts. After all, tricks, by their very nature, are inherently unnecessary.
2. It also leaves the driver leaning his whole body into the turn, most extreme in your third picture. That's normally a prelude to falling to the inside, but can obviously be compensated for to produce yet one more way to jibe. My inside shoulder has sometimes slapped the water in the middle of a fully planing jibe, but it's not "normal" and it's not a deliberate goal.

Being twisted around like that leaves us more vulnerable to external perturbations such as chop or gusts. The more normal posture, however -- knees and hips into the turn to load the inside rail, torso upright to keep our cg over the board, and rig oversheeted and driven inside and forward to also load the rail and put the rig right where we want it as we exit -- leaves us in a better position to absorb big perturbations in two different ways: tighter/quicker jibes expose us to fewer perturbations, and the more centered posture helps us absorb the ones we still have to deal with. I also believe we're less exposed to injury when not as twisted up as the guy in the first picture. I have no idea how he's going to deal with waist-high sharp chop and/or a huge gust mid-jibe. We can get away with murder on smooth water, though; one world-renown instructor used to teach jibing with straight knees until he tried it in the real (i.e., choppy) world.

It all just goes to further illustrate the huge variety of not just acceptable but highly effective ways to make a U-turn, rather than having to do it by any one set of rules.

[manuel]

I agree that overdoing it would cause the board to round up but when wanting more rotation a slight subtle swiping motion will help achieve the extra rotation needed to face an onshore wave. It's something that happens at sail opening not a stance which is held for some time except when "waiting" for a onshore wave at the top turn.

Another scenario I ran into, when jibing agressively without pulling the mast back up and out the clew will hit the water when sheeting out. That is true of both the jibe and an onshore bottom turn when trying to stay on the slope of a smaller wave.

[isobars]

[manuel]

Funny Mike, how about not going fast enough?

On the mast scissoring subject, I noticed that on a wave board it didn't need nearly as much convincing to turn as a freewave.

[manuel]

One thing that is directly related to the swinging of the rig is having our rear hand back... way back. This forces the rig to be on our opposite side as a counter balance for maximum control.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwfZB4CQ3hw

[isobars]

[PeconicPuffin]