Still in control - Kiteworld Magazine Issue #78

TESTED: COLD WATER WETSUITS, FOILS AND THREE STRUT SUPER-KITES

M A G A Z I N E

EXPAND YOUR LIMITS TOOLS AND TALES FOR THE ALL-SEASON SLAYER

+

FOIL BASICS SAFE SELF-LAUNCHING GETTING YOUR TAIL TO SLIDE MAXIMISE YOUR BOOST POTENTIAL

78

#

ISSUE#78 > DEC’15–JAN’16 UK £4.90

OTHER COUNTRIES PLEASE AFFIX NEW BARCODES THE WORLD’S BIGGEST INTERNATIONAL KITING MAGAZINE

WWW.KITEWORLDMAG.COM

I098

/ Feature / Grabs

I

Jerome Cloetens gives us another perspective of the Indy back-to-blind, coming in on the opposite tack as Bruna.

From this angle you can see he is boning his back leg instead of the typical Nosebone

STILL IN CONTROL

The whys and wherefores of grabs. This issue we call in style police o ff i c e r E r i c R i e n s t r a f o r q u e s t i o n i n g a n d a s k h i m f o r h i s i n s i g h t into the relevant history and correct procedures for making grabs.

I t ’ s a t o u g h c r o w d o u t t h e r e r e a d e r s a n d , a s y o u m a y k n o w a l r e a d y, being two inches short with your placement and boning is the d i ff e r e n c e b e t w e e n b e i n g h a i l e d a h e r o o r a z e r o WORDS : E r i c R i e n s t r a ALL PHOTOS : A n d r e M a g a r a o

I

n board sports, the essence of style is derived from stillness. Grabbing your board and holding it for the entirety of a jump not only looks extremely elegant, but is proof of perfect aerial balance. Imagine for a moment you are standing on a slack line. Unless you have mastered it already, you’ll be shaking and waving your arms as you try to maintain your balance. Now stand perfectly still and see how long it takes before you fall. You will find that without movement to help you balance, you will fall almost immediately. The same is true when you’re performing kitesurfing tricks in the air.

Grabbing forces you to lock your body position and sets your inertia on a path that can only be changed by breaking position, so you have to throw whatever trick you are attempting perfectly or you will not be able to hold the grab very long.

Each grab puts you in a different position and therefore changes the entire feel and execution of each trick. The basic grabs are defined by where you grab the board, which hand you use and which leg you bone out.

Almost all grab names are based on four grab spots on your board. The closer to these spots you can grab the more legit and difficult it makes the trick. These four spots are the nose, tail, toe-side centre and heel-side centre.

You can reach three of the four spots with each hand without turning your shoulders perpendicularly to the board. This gives us six basic grabs to start with. Using the front hand you have Mute, Nose, and Melon; with the back hand you have Indy, Tail, and Stale Fish.

In kiteboarding, back hand grabs are easiest because in most cases it is easier to control your kite with your front hand on the bar. We will focus on those in this chapter before moving on to front handed grabs in the next issue and then advanced grabs after that.

I 099 I INDY

The Indy is probably the most basic grab – grabbing the centre of the toe-side rail with your back hand. It was either named after Independent, a popular skateboard truck brand, or because when paired with a backside air in the half pipe or bowl, the rider was thought to resemble an indy car going around a corner.

It is most often associated with a boned out front leg, referred to as an Indy Nosebone.

In kiteboarding the Indy becomes a bit more tricky as we have a harness limiting our ability to bend forward comfortably. To make it more stylish I focus more on bringing the board to my hand rather than reaching for the board. I have to ball up as much as I can, which is harder when I am doing a rotation because the smaller I get the faster I spin and the more G forces I need to fight. I have found the back roll is the easiest rotation to do with an Indy, as you are more balled up to start with than for a front roll. To get it with a front

roll you really have to huck hard so that you can bring your head back down and tuck your body up while still having enough inertia to complete the rotation. With a back roll I often find myself over-rotating because the rotation is naturally faster. I get the grab later in the rotation so it feels more like I am stalling the rotation with the grab, as opposed to trying to speed up during the front roll. This carries over when I go to blind after each rotation. In a front-to-blind I have to speed up and keep rotating, whereas in a backto-blind my body movement rewinds and I can stall it out more.

ERIC’S INDY TIPS: Bring your knees up as close to your chest as possible before reaching for the grab.

It is easiest to start with a back leg bone on back rolls, and a nosebone on front rolls.

Bruna Kajiya is one of the most stylish female kiteboarders, as you can see from this Indy she adds to her back-to-blind

I100

/ Feature / Grabs

TAIL

I

Named for obvious reasons, a Tail Grab is back hand on the tail. It involves a further reach than Indy but is much easier to control and the harness doesn’t get in the way as much. A Tail Grab is restricted to front leg bone, but a front or backside tweak can be added by turning your chest towards or away from the grab, the frontside version being called a Tail Shift.

As before, focus on bringing the board up to your body rather than reaching for the tail, but push your front foot forward instead of bringing it into your chest. Then, once you get the grab, it is really easy to bone your front leg as you are grabbing as far away from it as possible. You hardly even need to bend at the waist really. This gives some wiggle room to control your balance by tucking or opening up without letting go of the grab. Just remember it is better style to try to hold the same position.

ERIC’S TAIL TIPS: Bring your back leg up while leaving your front leg more extended; think of pushing your front leg forward in front of you instead of down.

Shift your upper body back a little bit for counter balance as pulling up just your back leg will make the board want to go behind you.

Tail is the easiest grab to do with a front-toblind and to line up for the camera. As you can keep your body so open there are a lot more angles that show off all the action!

I 101 I

Stale back-to-blind is one of my favourite tricks. The way the back leg whips out behind you as you stall makes the back leg bone feel like it is extra poked out

“A fellow camper was reading the journal one day and saw the word ‘Stale Fish’. He asked Tony if that was t h e g r a b h e w a s d o i n g ? Ha v i n g n o n a m e f o r i t y e t, T o n y s a i d y e s a n d t h e n a m e stuck. But in reality he was writing a b o u t t h e f i s h t h e y h a d f o r l u n c h .”

STALE

Finally, the last of our basic back hand grabs, the Stale Fish, performed by grabbing the heelside centre of the board with the back hand and boning out the back leg. As legend goes, Tony Hawk attended a skate camp in Sweden and had started doing some crazy new grab that no one else had done. He kept a journal that had cryptic descriptions of the day’s events, such as the tricks he had done, what they ate etc. A fellow camper was reading the journal one day and saw the word ‘Stale Fish’. He asked Tony if that was the grab he was doing? Having no name for it yet, Tony said yes and the name stuck. But in reality he was writing about the fish they had for lunch.

I think the Stale Fish is one of the sickest looking grabs because you have to be the most contorted. However, because of this it is hard to bone out properly. As you bring the board up you pretty much have to do a frontside tweak just to get your hand all the way to centre. If you don’t make it all the way to the centre then your hand lands closer to your back leg, making it harder to fully lock the bone. When adding rotations it is hardest to get the Stale Fish with a front roll. A Stale Fish back roll on the other hand is much easier, as boning your back leg occurs more naturally during a back roll. This makes it a common grab to combine with a back-to-blind.

ERIC’S STALE TIPS: Pull your legs up like with the Indy but try not to bend forward as much. Instead try to bend your upper body more towards the tail, like a Shifty.

Focus on getting your front foot really tucked up to get the board closer to your hand.

At the end of the day we are all just out there having fun, so feel free to grab wherever you like, but among pro riders you will hear terms like Tindy or Tailfish thrown around in jest to call out someone that doesn’t grab in the right spot; on the heel and toe-side edges but not between the feet. I’m pretty sure this stems from the fact that a skateboard doesn’t have these areas, so when snowboarding took off they were not considered legit grabs. Either way snowboarding and wakeboarding have all shunned these grabs.

I guess it is kind of like a clown nose - there’s nothing wrong with it, it’s all good fun, but you are wearing a clown nose.

Eric Rienstra is sponsored by Slingshot and Dakine. If you were wondering – thankfully, it’s still okay to ‘Tinder’ KW

The Stale front-to-blind on the other hand feels really awkward as the back leg bone slows the rotation, taking away momentum that could have helped a lot during the last 180-to-blind