The art of balance

So! You wanna be a foiler! That’s awesome!

Maybe you have already had your first go at foiling or have booked a lesson with me. Now you’re keen to progress and you’re wondering if there is anything you can do on land!

Absolutely!

There are in my opinion many things that you can do on land which will massively speed up your progression.

One of these is balance training.

Here I am going to introduce some balance trainers which will enable you to understand how a foil feels and responds before you ever set foot in the water.

For this to help you, you need to have a basic understanding of how a foil works.

SO HERE GOES!

Put simply a foil works in a very similar way to an aeroplane, even the parts have the similar names.

They are the front wing, fuselage, stabiliser. And we have the mast which attaches it to the board.

When a foil is travelling through the water it is controlled through the use of pitch, roll and yaw. These are 3 different axis around which we can pivot to alter the direction.

When the front wing is ‘pitched’ along its axis the foil will begin to take off, much like a plane taking off from a runway and the board will lift off the water, like magic!

To achieve this take off , both foil and plane must have enough speed. They must also take off at a shallow incline, because if they take off at too much of a steep angle they will stall either crashing back down or kangarooing! This tends to be what happens to beginners on foil.

When the plane or foil reaches cruising altitude it is levelled out and then begins a steady flight.

To turn the foil or plane it can be banked over using the roll, along the axis of the fuselage.

Where foils differ from aircraft and find a similarity with yachts is that we can also turn a foil board around the mast, which is called its Yaw axis.

Why this all this relevant and how can this help you train for foiling?

Simple. Balance boards replicate the movement of a foil very closely. Consequently, if you can become adept at balancing on one of these you increase your chances of learning to foil faster. Not only that but as we all know, ‘Life gets in the way’ meaning we can’t always get in the water as often as we would like. When that happens you can keep your muscle memory firing with a session on your balance board.

I try to get on mine daily for 3-5 mins. It actually makes me relax too!

Now lets go into this a bit deeper.

There are two main types of balance board available, those which work on a roller and those on a ball.

A balance trainer such as an Indo board is a great introduction to foiling. It does really well at mimicking the action required to pitch the foil up and level out.

You can ride this left or right foot forward and indeed you should do, especially if you're learning to wingfoil. In which case really pay attention to working on your non dominant side.

Those of us who come from a surfing background tend to be really good in one direction and find riding the other way can be challenging. Your balance board provides the opportunity to correct this imbalance.

These boards also come with an inflatable cushion. This is excellent as it changes the control required from a linear action to multi directional.

But there is another step you can take which is even better and in my opinion this one truly replicates the feeling of being on foil.

In fact I think it is SO GOOD that you could almost use this to teach your self how to foil before you ever get in the water!

The CoolBoard

The balance trainer which most closely resmebles foiling and the one that I now use is a Coolboard. The hard rubber ball when used on carpet is just slow enough and feels to be sized correctly so that it closely replicates the feel of a board attached to a mast and foil, mimicking all three actions of roll, pitch and yaw.