Kiteboarding Practice for Beginners 

Nine things you can practice to start honing your skills...

You’ve finished your lessons and you have your gear - it’s time to get in some kiteboarding practice sessions to solidify everything you learned ...before you forget all of it!  But, even if you do, don’t worry - the skills covered in this page should be enough to jog your memory after the longest of winters. 

This page covers some of the things you will have learned during your lessons, and some things that just might make your life easier as you hone your skills.  They are:

1. Basic Kite Theory
2. The Wind Window
3. Attaching the Kite’s Lines
4. Launching Your Kite
5. Re- Launching a Bow or SLE Kite from the Water
6. The Upwind Body Drag
7. The Water Start
8. Flying Your Kite and Proper Posture
9. The Self Rescue

I know I say this all the time but - this page is not intended to teach you how to kiteboard, you need lessons for that.  Instead, this page is a resource for beginners who have taken lessons and want a different perspective on what they learned - it’s a learning resource, and nothing other than that.

Basic Kite Theory

Understanding how and why your kite behaves the way it does can give you an incredible advantage when you are learning to kite.  Instead of getting stuck on a certain problem, you can logically work your way through it faster than otherwise.  This page covers the basics of how kites produce their power.  It is not critical to understand, but it sure did help me!

The Wind Window

The wind window is the reference point for everything in kiteboarding - every kiteboarder needs to understand it.  Not understanding the wind window can be extremely dangerous, so make sure that you do.  You can read about it here.

Attaching the Kite’s Lines

There are a couple of ways you can attach the lines to the kite - find out about them here.

Launching Your Kite

When first starting out, launching your kite with a partner is the best way to get it into the air.  Make sure you keep safe with these steps. 

Re- Launching a Bow or SLE Kite from the Water

At one point or another, every kiteboarder needs to re-launch their kite from the water.  Thankfully, it's an easy thing to do if you follow these steps.

The Upwind Body Drag

Body dragging is an easy way for you to get upwind when you can't do it with a board. You also need to know this skill whenever you need to retrieve your board (which happens a lot).  A step by step guide of this skill can be found here.

The Water Start

Getting out of the water and onto the board can be a challenge.  Here are a few tricks and a guide that will hopefully help.

Flying Your Kite and Proper Posture

Flying the kite can be a challenge, especially when first starting out.  This page shows you some secrets that help you get the most power out of your kite.  It also shows you how you should be counterbalancing that power when you do get it.  Read about flying your kite and proper posture here.

The Self Rescue

How do you get home if a line breaks and you cannot fly your kite?  What happens if the wind dies?  The Self Rescue is a very useful way to get home in either of these cases, and is the most important kiteboarding practice topic in this page - if you don’t know how to do it, read how it is done here.

 

If you have ever found yourself wondering what sort of kiteboarding practice you can do to sharpen your abilities, the exercises above are a great place to start.  (In fact, they came from all the notes that I took back when I was taking lessons myself!)