Forward loop help, with many videos

manuel · Joined: 08 Oct 2007 Posts: 1158

Good points, 1, 2 and 3 are relative.

I'm curious and slightly obsessed with settings...
1 where is your hook. how tight is your harness, how tight is your hook, how long are your lines?
2 what's your height and boom height?
3 are they tight on the side? how much foot goes in?

number 8 is nice, might set off more of a speed loop than a true forward. so long as the fin clears anything goes.

boardsurfr · Joined: 23 Aug 2001 Posts: 1266

I like a lot of your 10 points, but I think #10 has the wrong idea - you are not really at the center of the rotation in a front/spin/speed loop. At some point, the sail loads up and catapults you around. If you move the mast to the front of the board, you better just jump high of a big wave, since you'll go end-over-end; if you moved the mast to windward, you'll have a more horizontal rotation. Either way, you will have to let the sail whip you around, while you hold on to it.

Andy Brandt describes this in his loop lectures as having to learn not to lean into the curve (as you do when riding a bike), but letting yourself fall to the outside. In the flat water loop he teaches, you take most of the speed out of the board by doing a wheelie; you let your momentum carry you forward-windward. This is enhanced by the sudden change in apparent wind direction from stopping the board, which has exactly the same effect as sheeting in: lots of sudden pressure in the sail that pulls you forward.

A problem with the downwind version of the loop (your #8 seems to go there) is that you have almost no apparent wind, so there is not much that will whip you around. It can be learned this way, but this is much harder than the loop from a beam reach or slight downwind course. ABK had a much better success rate in students learning the loop after they switched from the downwind version to the beam reach version.

In your pictures and the GoPro movie, you body seems to be straight over the board, and the sail seems to be very open (sheeted out) in the middle of your jump. At this point, your body should be more to the outside, and the sail should see more of the wind.

Wind-NC.com · Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2014 9:50 am Post subject:

Wow, Going for it! Nice work! Cool

Next step is to relax that front arm at the elbow and let the rig get away from you. It looks like you're choking the sail with your front arm- hence the "slicing" pull down towards the water, rather than getting that nice "whipping" pull up and around from the sail.

kevinkan · Joined: 07 Jun 2001 Posts: 1661 Location: San Francisco

you're going for it, and that's the hardest part!

looks like your rig movements are happening too late and on the way down. from your first picture getting off the water, it looks like you're leaning back and also have the rig pulled toward the tail... too much like a traditional chop hop. By the time you take off you want to have the rig already upright (not raked back) and have your more upright and balanced over the board lengthwise. It also looks like you're jumping into the wind a bit... maybe try to take off 10 degrees more off the wind or so... just a little bit, so you're not too far out of your comfort zone... it will make the move a little bit more technique-compact.

Your loop reminds me of the 2nd one in this video the day I was trying to learn them on starboard

http://teamdawg.org/media/143

7 years later I still suck at looping on starboard.. le sigh

Here's a sequence on port that might help you break it down

[img]https://scontent-2.2914.fna.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xap1/v/t1.0-9/10259761_716851055037774_6266925439538276647_n.jpg?oh=6de2b88470b6cd84f3b472c327ed0195&oe=54827465[/img]

kevinkan · Joined: 07 Jun 2001 Posts: 1661 Location: San Francisco

one of the greatest loop videos/stories of all time IMHO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuWcwaZvuTU

enjoy!

30knotwind · Joined: 30 Aug 2005 Posts: 239 Location: White Salmon, WA

Thanks again everyone!
No wind today in the gorge, but hoping for E wind tomorrow.

This sequence really shows me that the extension forward must be a push, pic 2, not a pull. I was definitely pulling down in my last session, which sliced into the wind and missed all the power of the whip.

Images from this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yf-ab1mfGmo
The first one is an amazing totally flatwater loop!

LUCARO · Joined: 07 Dec 1997 Posts: 661

Did someone post this video already?

First time I have seen it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0G_wA38HkI

kevinkan · Joined: 07 Jun 2001 Posts: 1661 Location: San Francisco

Check out this flat water loop... from probably ~2000 or so

http://youtu.be/XvJtb5_8Sc0

30knotwind · Joined: 30 Aug 2005 Posts: 239 Location: White Salmon, WA

The extension FORWARD seems to be what I have been missing. The pics below are extreme--tiny wave and mast to nose, flatwater loop--but illustrate the concepts well.

Seems that the formula is:
Beam+ reach, pop/jump, push rig forward, sheet in, get body above back of boom, death grip on boom

Video sources for GIFs:
First, Second, Third

kevinkan · Joined: 07 Jun 2001 Posts: 1661 Location: San Francisco

any progress? I did a quick upload of a loop slowed down to two different speeds... footage was taken on a windy day at Berkeley, so it's similarish conditions to a day in The Gorge... jumping of chop and swell but not waves.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAbaUcZK228

i'll try to take some screen caps and annotate them w/ tips and add them to the end of the vid when i get a chance.