Issue 315 - MAY 2012
The way we stand on a board
The way we stand on a board – has it changed? Should it change? Does it really matter? Peter Hart looks backwards and forward at windsurfing stances.
Peter Hart
Here are two quotes. Your quiz question is to deduce in what possible way they might be related.
“Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they contradict their parents and tyrannize their teachers.”
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“On the board, it is important to hold the mast a little to windward, keep your hips and shoulders square to the boom, resist the power and try to relax!’ Well the first one, you assume, must be the depressed ranting’s of an inner city head teacher bemoaning the state of the X-Box generation. And the second is surely taken from a recent ‘how to …’ windsurfing manual. Yet you would be ever so wrong. The first quote is actually by Socrates circa 480 BC. And the second is from ‘Das is Windsurfen’ by Reinhart Winkler, translated from the original German and written in 1978 – so not that recent. Youth have, and always will, shock and disappoint their elders. In addition, given the fairly limited parameters of board and rig, the fundamentals of how we stand on a board and resist a rig are fairly similar – same game, just slightly different rules.
Does my bum look…
Clinics usually kick off with an Alcoholics Anonymous style meeting where the victims openly acknowledge their shortcomings and disclose the areas where they’d most like to improve. Often the confession ends with an embarrassed pause, and then, in hushed tones they add sheepishly, “… and could you have a little look at my stance?” “Why, are you the slowest on the pond, the last to plane, or in constant agony?” I enquire. “No … I’m just not sure if I’m, you know, looking like you should.” It’s just a kind of general enquiry born out of shame or a fear of inferiority. Often they’ve come back to the sport after a long break, and like the 70s disco king turning up to a modern London club in ‘loons’ and a tie-dye t-shirt, they fear they may look humorously dated and out of place. In the end, no one really cares, so long as they can still dance.
HARTY THROUGH THE AGES
The sport has changed in so many ways, yet, that first sensation I got holding onto a rig and driving power into the board in 1978 is the same today and I instinctively handle the rig in the same way. For old time windies, on the one hand, there’s a danger of getting stuck in an era and NOT modifying your stance to suit different set-ups and disciplines; on the other there’s an equal danger of trying to emulate the posture of a pro who may be a totally different shape and style of sailor. The message when it comes to stance is to be prepared to experiment and modify but follow your instincts rather than fashion.
(Photo Trog Tuite) 1978 - harness free - Cornwall in the pre harness era. Brutal. Force 3 and the battle was already commencing. But actually this stance isn’t so way out there. Arms extended, hips high and twisting towards the nose. I’d got hold of a new and massive ‘fat head’ 6.8 sail. The boom looks high but it was so hard to get a tight fit in the jaws that it twisted down and so was lower than it looks. My brother, on the white sail, still windsurfs like that.
Fixed shapes
A short while ago, I was making a DVD and the subject was posture. A fellow instructor liked to describe stances in terms of numbers. To imitate a 7 was good (straight arms, shoulders back). A 5 was bad (bend arms rounded back). I have to admit I was very nervous of encouraging such fixed shapes, for reasons I’ll explain shortly. So I asked him to demonstrate on camera. As he hammed it up and mutated from a nice tall 7 to a scrunched 5, the board planed at exactly the same angle – if anything he went a bit faster as a 5. The conclusion is that there are many ways of achieving the same end and that there is no such thing as the ‘perfect’ stance. My nervousness came from my initial days as a ski instructor when I failed an exam due to my hands being too far from my body by about six inches. I calmly queried the decision (“what f***ing difference does it make, you pedantic b****rds!”), only to be told that that was the posture as approved by the association and that it was written in the manual and that was that. Some 20 years later and driven by much younger and more enlightened management, the attitude has changed entirely. The end result is more important than the means. If you can carve a
sweet turn perfectly in balance, it doesn’t really matter what you look like (within reason).
Genetics and kit
On the subject of windsurfing stances, the wisest words I heard were from Slalom Champ Antoine Albeau. During the filming of my speed DVD ‘Faster’, I asked him how best to develop a stance for speed, he said simply that the first time you ever get on a board, you pretty much decide how you will stand. Ultimately, there are two main factors that determine our stance. Genes. Give two people the same task of resisting a force and they instinctively assume a position where they feel strongest. If they’re compact and meaty of thigh, they may crouch and drive the legs. If they’re tall and rangy, they’ll stand more upright, use their levels and pull from the shoulders. It’s in the genes. I was sailing a couple of months back with Dave White and his son Reese. I thought I was seeing double. Despite being coached by the Club Vass freestylers, Reese has the exact same stance as his Dad, because, he has a very similar build (lucky bloke) and has the same hard-wiring. Your kit and set-up. Your stance reflects your kit and set up. If the rig is set badly, pulling from
1979 – Straps and harness Daymer Bay on the infamous Windsurfer Rocket, the original jump board with ‘toe loops.’ The big difference here is the chest harness. The boom had to stay high to match the nipple high hook. I was deeply in love with the concept of these innovations but never felt comfortable on this board. I think it shows. everywhere and nowhere, you have to take up a position where you can resist. It may seem ‘bad’ by today’s standards but is actually appropriate to the task in hand. If you feel uncomfortable or somehow wrong on the board you may just have bad kit or a bad set-up, or a stance, which is not reflecting the kind of windsurfing you want to do; or you may be suffering from a hangover from a bygone era. It’s possible your stance hasn’t developed to suit more modern, and dare I say ‘better’ kit. At this stage, partly as an excuse to feature some delightful old slides and partly because we can learn so much from the past, let me take you through a brief history on the subject – how we stood through the various ages and why.
A brief history of stance
It’s all too easy to cock a snook at our past and chuckle derisively at the pioneers in their criminally short shorts and spread-eagled postures. But the fact is, that from the earliest days, our sport has been driven by some phenomenal athletes, who very quickly found the best way of doing things, however bizarre they appear today. What I’m saying is, give Gollito, Kauli or Ricardo Campello an original Windsurfer Regatta with its 5.4 rig with 260cm boom, and ask them to sail it in 25 knots, and despite all their modern knowledge and wizardry, they wouldn’t look much different to the pioneers. www.windsurf.co.uk
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(Photo Alex Williams) 1983 - Sinkers and high booms “Shooting Gallery” on Fuerte. More stable full batten sails permitted the development of proper short boards. The booms were still high because that was the only option with a chest harness. And since the sails had zero twist, the way to decrease the power was to pull the rig to windward. With a high boom you could do that without your bum smacking the waves.
1990 - Sail twist and short lines Sail testing, Silver Sands, Barbados. Sail twist and floppy leeches filtered into common use and did inspire a new tall, locked in stance. Short lines lifted the hips and the idea was to sail with straight arms, straight legs and straight body and not move a muscle – stay sheeted in, keep the board flat and let the rig do the work. Now this is what younger folk might disparagingly call an ‘old school’ stance. I must say, it was of its time and when I see someone with this stance and set-up, I do encourage them to lengthen their lines to give them room to move. 76
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1986 - Seat harnesses and low booms Barbados during the ‘Banks Beer Challenge’ (what an epic event!). Rotating battens and camber inducers stabilised rigs to a new level and allowed us to carry a lot more area. The stances were all about withstanding more and more power. Fred Heywood showed the way with seat harnesses and by now they were standard issue. To correspond to the lower hook, we lowered the booms and sat on the power. The sails still didn’t twist yet making catapults a constant threat; hence a low compact stance was the way to go. Some who cut their teeth in this era remain in the ‘80s squat’ and find high booms deeply offensive and illogical.
1995 - More movement, more speed Safaga. The early ‘twisty’ sails didn’t so much twist as just flop. But by now they were cleaner and more reactive and we binned the extremist rigid stance. Booms crept up again and lines got a little longer which allowed more scope to trim and react. With racing still being the dominant discipline, the majority continued with a seat harness, although they weren’t all sitting anymore.
1988 - Speed! Sotavento during the speed trials on an original Mistral Screamer. Racing and speed were huge. Hence we started to experiment more with stances. Along with many, I shoved my boom up and lengthened lines for more leverage and distance on scary broad reaches, but that same set-up was agonising upwind and made it hard to keep your butt out of the water.
2012 - Anything goes… Brazil. From the turn of the Millenium the world (some mistakenly) moved into waist harnesses. Wave-sailing and more especially freestyle informed the stances of everyday folk more than the racers. Amongst most free-riders, a shoulder high boom and lines longer than 28” became the norm. It’s mostly healthy, allowing people to hook in and plane earlier, move and trim in the harness and stand taller and in better shape to drop into manoeuvres.
The GENETIC STANCE
Of course altering boom and lines is going to influence your posture but despite changes, people instinctively find a way to stand whereby they favour their body’s strengths. Antoine Albeau scorching down the St Maries speed track in 1992.
And here he is some 15 years later at Fuerte despite all the kit development, a higher boom and longer lines, his basic stance is pretty much the same. (Photo Pete Hart) And if ever proof were needed of the power of genetics, here is Dave White (foreground) and son Reese (mini me - just not so ‘mini’) looking so alike as to be almost comical. Sharing the same gorgeous physique and genes, Reese settled into the classic White speed stance without being told.
The 70s and wooden booms
Boards with no non-slip, mastfeet that popped out at will and smacked you in the groin and rigs with the aerodynamic qualities of an umbrella in a hurricane, were bound to inspire eccentric postures. The planing stance of the time was based around survival and making yourself a hard object to knock over. The wider your legs and arms, the better placed you were to resist the unholy pummelling of a force 4. Early guidance included such golden gems as “to avoid a catapult, try dropping onto one knee or even lying down.” And, “in stronger winds brace your front foot against the mast, step and turn your head away.” Strong wind (15 knots +) windsurfing in this era was very different to today. It was a fight in which the sailor was usually on the defensive and the eventual loser. Racing, in light winds, was huge and spawned some horribly contorted, yet very effective stances, notably when sailing upwind. You had to line your feet up with the daggerboard, twist the hips, lean forward on the boom to tighten the leech, control railing and stop the board heading up. All along the way, your back and discs screamed for mercy. Today whenever you see someone sailing a small board with a trademark twist of the hips, you suspect they’ve been windsurfing for a decade or three, have an old raceboard somewhere in the garage, are pretty good (and probably have back problems.)
Early 80s. High Booms, harnesses and short boards
In truth, development was so rapid that that the above comically violent era didn’t last so long. By the start of the 80s proper short boards emerged along with higher aspect sails (taller with shorter booms) that allowed you to sail them without enduring a permanent spin-out (although it was still a distinct possibility). For stances, the big leap forward were harnesses. The first were of the chest type with hooks around nipple height. With the mast bases of the short boards so far forward, the set-up (as favoured by surf heroes such as Mike Waltz and Jurgen Honscheid) was for an eye height boom and short, widelyspaced lines. You stood very tall and the high boom allowed you to pull the rig right over to windward, thereby decreasing the area and the power, without your butt smacking the waves. Offering zero support to the lumber, the harness was brutally uncomfortable. At this stage it was in place merely to give the arms a quick rest. It was absolutely not a device to improve your stance and speed. If you wanted to go faster, you hooked out.
Mid 80s. Rotationals, camber inducers and seat harnesses
The stabilisation of sails through rotating full length battens and then shortly after through camber inducers, brought about the most immediate and radical change in the way we sailed and stood. Suddenly there was all this power, which pulled from one spot and so was kind of controllable. Fred Heywood led the
charge breaking the 30 knot barrier at Weymouth using a custom stabilised foil, and most crucially, a crude seat harness. He actually had a line running from the top of the mast to the hook for better leverage, which wasn’t too practical for everyday use. The thing about these sails, was that although they were more stable, they’d didn’t twist much. They were horribly ‘grunty’ and ‘draggy’. Full all the way to the head, the leech stayed closed. As they got over-powered, trapped air, the effort moved up and tried to haul you up off your feet. So we lowered the boom and sat. The stance was all about sitting down, pulling down and trying to keep the board on the water.
90S. Race, speed, lock out!
It was the era where windsurfing, while still fun, disappeared gently up its own backside, becoming increasingly techy and speed/race orientated. 70% of sails sold were full on camberinduced race designs (today it’s about 2%). Lighter, more flexible carbon masts gave rise to reactive leeches. The sails were softer and lighter in the hands, trimmed themselves and were so much easier to use. Hence, the top speed tip of the time was to keep the rig still and upright. The way to achieve that was to raise booms, shorten lines (like really short) and ‘lock out.’ The ‘de rigeur’ stance was straight body, straight arms and straight legs. This is what many ‘new schoolers’ pejoratively class as an ‘old school’ stance. In certain circles it remains very popular.
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THE GOOSE is COOKED in MANY WAYS
It’s an interesting exercise sailing along with your favoured set-up and then seeing how many strange or just unfamiliar stances you can take up. And then note how much, if it at all, the board’s speed and trim changes. You may even be shocked how the comical one may even be faster. It’s ammunition to fire at the Stance Police who insist you conform to a certain shape.
A classic ‘today’ allround, free-style, free-ride, wavy stance – standing tall, relaxed, inboard straps and pressure spread across the whole foot…
In some hire centres frequented by members of a country who I can’t name but came second in the 1966 world cup, you have to beg for a harness line longer than 24”. Short lines and locking yourself to the rig, even filtered over into wave-sailing stances.
The early ‘Naughties’ – freestyle, long lines and manoeuvres
On the competition scene, the limelight was suddenly stolen by freestyle, wave-sailing and SuperX, (slalom with jumps and freestyle thrown in.) From a stance point of view you were seen as a dinosaur unless you wore a waist harness. With the general emphasis shifting to manoeuvres, the aim was to get away with a smaller sail. A high boom, long line set-up helped you plane early. The new moves, in and out of waves, involved staying in the straps all the time; hence more and more boards came with inboard strap options which allowed you to trim the board on and off the plane and use the front foot to carve. The straps were also wider apart for stability. The whole set-up and stance was about allowing the most amount of freedom and movement while in the harness and straps – the very antithesis of ‘locked in.’
Lessons learned
All the above is a tad condensed and generalised I have to admit. However, I lived through all of those stages and it did sort of happen a bit like that. As these days I try to help people develop their stances, and at the same time trying to keep pace with the times myself. These are the main lessons I’ve learned from history regarding our multifarious postures.
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And what might be called a classically dreadful posture with bent arms and rounded back. Boom and lines are the same. It’s not one you’d advocate for someone looking to bounce into hot moves, but the board is still motoring.
Beware the Fashionistas (and the extremists)
Windsurfing has always been driven by an undercurrent of fashion (otherwise certain people would not wear shorts on the outside of wetsuits). Although the vast majority of the windy public free-ride for fun, the sport tends to align itself with the dominant competitive discipline, which used to be racing and now is freestyle and wave-sailing. Without knowing you can get persuaded towards those set-ups even though it doesn’t suit. If you’re a free-rider looking for speed and comfort on all points, 30-32 inch lines (a popular length amongst wave folk) are too long especially when you’re going upwind. And if you have a low centre of gravity, short arms, a bit of a spare around the midriff and want to go fast, a high boom and a waist harness will not compliment you. When you’re free-riding, and that means going pretty fast, carving the odd gybe, popping the odd jump, you’re not doing anything too extreme and your stance should reflect that. On the other hand, the performers who have driven many of the changes have been extremists. Fininan Maynard was using 34” lines when he broke his world speed record. But then he was sailing at 130º to a 50 knot wind and didn’t have to sail back upwind. Ricardo Campello was using an eye height boom when he developed many of his new school free-style tricks. I’m still not sure why. I suspect that when he was practising as a stunted youth in Margarita, he had to use adult rigs where the cut-out was too high, and he just got used to it. In both instances these are not stances the common man need copy.
The horse and the course
When someone asks me to examine their set-up and stance I have to reply that I cannot possibly judge until they reveal what they’re trying to achieve and where they reside on the manoeuvre vs speed scale. In truth, there are 2 fundamental set-ups and stances. For speed you aim to take as much power as you can and drive it laterally into the fin and rails. For manoeuvrability, you stand more upright and drive the board. For speed, a seat harness makes best use of your body weight. Exact boom height and line length depend on the width of the board and size of sail but the aim is to leave your hips at a height where the heels drive against the apex of the rail. For moves, an upright, tall stance with your feet near the centreline, leaves you in the best position to spring up into jumps or pops and move the hips quickly from edge to edge. I repeat – the real question is not: “Is your stance good or bad?” but rather: “Is it appropriate for what you’re doing?”
Stance – the kit decides all
The main lesson gleaned from the history study is that you can only take up positions that the kit allows you to take up. If a sail is pulling you up onto your toes, you have no choice but to sit down. Today, you can’t take up a freestyle stance with a 9.5 race sail. The freestyle sail has its power point higher and further back, which encourages that upright stance. Just as the pioneers did, forget preconceptions (there weren’t any back then), and just feel where the rig is pulling from, how the board is reacting and respond accordingly.
FREE-RIDE COMFORT
LONG BOARD CONTORTIONS
Board railing slightly, heels driving against the rail, hips square to the boom and plenty of distance between shoulders and rig – it feels right. In all stances you have to trust your feelings.
It was rarely comfortable railing an old long board upwind. The sail would fight and flog and the beating straps always seemed to be in the wrong place.
For general fast free-riding, the end result is more important that the look. The aim is to have your hips at a height where your heels drive against the apex of the rail – a position from where you apply the maximum power, and trim the board to the best angle.
THE FREESTYLE STANCE – multiple interpretations
Overall freestyle has been a tremendous force for good although it has led some up some dodgy paths. There once used to be a homogeneous stance as pioneered by early new schoolers such a Ricardo Campello, very high boom and worryingly long lines. Now, however, as more and more develop their own styles and moves, there seems to be more disparity.
Sliding mast-tracks and lift from daggers, mean the forces on a long board have always been plentiful and ever-changing. Upwind it’s a supreme balancing act. In days gone by, you would line your feet up with the dagger and then lean right forward on the boom to tighten the leech, stop the board heading up and control railing. These days with adjustable down and outhauls, it need not be so uncomfortable but there is till so much room for individual weirdness.
Don’t be told…You’re better than you think
It’s a confidence thing. Somehow it feels safer to conform to an accepted formula than step out of line and customise. But, if you’re not comfortable then no matter what the uber-guru says, you have to change something. I was the worst. When I first joined the World Tour, I used to go round the rigging tent measuring the line length, boom height, footstrap spacings etc of the rich and famous and then change mine to match. Even if it felt horrible, I’d persevere thinking that if Robby likes it like this, it must be OK – ignoring of course that he’s a totally different specimen, who sails in a totally different way (OK better) on boards with a different rocker and sails with a different profile. It took a chubby friend to point out that I was lot faster before I started trying to copy people. You have to back yourself. You’ll very quickly reach a standard (you’re probably there now) where you can instinctively feel what is comfortable and what is working for you. If you can’t breathe and cough up blood when you hook in, then bin the waist harness. Windsurfing hopefully will always be more art than science. Don’t sail by numbers but feel.
Experiment (but keep it simple) A freestyle stance has to leave you in the best position to extend and pop up. Long lines and a high boom are the way to go, but going for the low side of ‘high’ opens up carving possibilities as well. 80
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Boom height and harness line length have the most profound effect on stance. If you don’t have adjustable lines, it’s just boom height. It changes the height of your hips. Low hips mean more power through the legs. Avoid the extremes and play with it until you feel you’re using the right bits of your body to control the board.
John White at the 2012 Round Hayling. Harness lines back, hands forward to drive and trim the board upwind - just one of many long board stance variations that works.
What’s good and what’s familiar?
Apparently abuse victims can become so used to a routine of violence that perversely they can miss it when it’s taken away. If since 1983 you’ve sailed with a navel high boom and you shove it up to shoulder, for a little while, despite the many obvious advantages, it will feel weird (where have the aching knees gone?), uncomfortable even, until certain body parts are re-trained. Those returning to the game after a break can be prey to stance hangovers. You can change boom and lines to suit the modern way but above all try and shed the general defensiveness. Rigs that pulled relentlessly and dedicated slalom boards that threatened to trip as soon as you put them on their edge, put you in a frame of mind and body where you expected trouble and were always on the back foot both mentally and physically. The most obvious symptoms are hands too spread, front arm too far forward and the squatting posture of someone about to lose their pants to a gang of students. Modern kit is softer, more forgiving, lighter in the hands and under the feet and allows you to stand taller and go with the flow. More from Harty next month as he discusses the subject of power. Are you getting enough/too much of the right kind? In the meantime, check his website for news of his life-changing clinics, www.peter-hart.com and email for his newsletter on harty@peter-hart.com