If You are Looking for Information on Trainer Kites, Look no Further. Find Exercises, Overviews, Diagrams and More, Right Here!

From choosing your first trainer to what to practice with it, find all the information you need to know below.

What are Trainer Kites?

Compared to kiteboarding kites, trainer kites are small, maneuverable kites that are used to teach kite handling basics in a safe and controlled environment. Although small when compared to a kiteboarding kite (which can easily be as big as a car), these kites are rather large. They range from 1m2 to 3.6m2; the larger trainers can even lift you off the ground in higher winds!

Although they are originally intended to teach kiteboarding skills, these kites are great for almost everyone. You can easily tow yourself on a snowboard or land-board, and they are an absolute blast on their own. They can easily be handled by children, which makes them great fun for the whole family.

How to Get the Most Out of This Page.

This page is designed to be an introduction for anyone who is looking to get, or has just gotten, a trainer kite. The information contained inside is broken down into four categories:

1. Before You Get a Trainer Kite -


1. Choosing a kite of your own can be confusing if you don’t know what to look for. I have outlined the two most important factors you should consider when choosing a trainer for yourself in this article -The Trainer Kite De-Mystified.



2. Getting Your Kite -  Find comparisons and reviews of the best trainer kites on the market.


1. The Best Trainers Available - Here is where you will find direct comparisons of the highest quality trainers available - come see how they stack up with each other in terms of price, size, and special features.


2. Trainer Kite Reviews - I hope you don't make the mistake of buying a low quality kite. I have created these reviews by enlisting beginner kiters to fly all of the major brands' kites in all different sizes, and they have given me their honest opinions. Find out what questions they have answered and get the reviews here.


3. Buy Your Kite, and Make Sure that You Love It- When you buy your kite from KiteboardingEvolution.com, you get our exclusive Trainer Kite Field Guide and trade guarantee for 30 days. You also get free shipping and unparalelled customer support.



3. Learning How to Fly - What to practice with your kite. I have compiled 15 kite exercises that will give you the best chance of learning to fly your kite quickly and safely. These exercises have been compiled into the following four pages:


1. Trainer Exercises Part 1 - The Basics - From launching your kite to landing it, these four exercises will get your kite off the ground (literally).


2. Trainer Practice - Basic Flying Skills - These exercises will get you comfortable flying your kite and will introduce you to the most important skill you must have when flying your trainer.


3. Advanced Trainer Exercises Part 1 - These exercises will start to build transferable skills that you will take with you into kiteboarding. You will find yourself using them when water starting, putting your board on, etc…


4. Advanced Trainer Exercises Part 2 - The FINAL Pre- Kiteboarding Practice - From running to jumping, have some serious fun and put all your skills to the test with this final page.



4. Additional Topics - The following additional topics may be of interest to you.


• How to Reverse Re-Launch a Trainer


• Frequently Asked Questions

Once you have mastered the skills in these pages, you will be more than ready to take kiteboarding lessons. This brings me to a very important point:

Do I Need to Learn with a Trainer Kite?

No, you don’t have to. But at some point you will need to take lessons and you'll learn the basics of kite-flying on a more complicated kite (so it will be harder to do and will take more time). You won’t be able to move on until you can do what your instructor wants you to do, so why not master these skills before you even go? At the very least you'll learn quicker, and since most instructors charge by the hour you'll end up recovering the cost of your trainer (if not more).

Not to mention, these kites are a lot of fun and you will be able to share your passion by teaching your friends how to fly your trainer!

Can I Skip the Trainer and Learn on a Bigger Kite?

NO! Kites produce massive power, and handling that power poorly can result in serious injury or death. The best way to learn to handle the kite’s power is to learn to handle the kite, and the best way to do that is to practice on a kite that doesn’t carry dire consequences when you make a mistake. In other words, spend some time learning with a trainer.

Look at it This Way…

Learning how to kiteboard this way is very similar to how I learned to drive. Growing up on my family’s farm I learned to drive farm vehicles at a young age (you could call this my ‘trainer stage’). We used an old pickup to collect hay bales, which meant I had to drive like you would normally - start, stop, park, reverse, etc… I never had any problems.

However, just because I could drive in the hayfields, I was not ready to drive on public roads. There were tonnes of things that I couldn’t do, like read traffic signs, drive in traffic, turn at lights, use traffic circles, etc...

When the time came for me to start learning on the road (my ‘lessons’ stage), I was way ahead of the pack. Because I already knew how to control the vehicle, all I needed to learn was the rules of the road. In no time I was driving like I had been doing it for years (and I really had been doing the basics for years).

Learning how to kiteboard is no different. If you lay your foundation first with a small kite and then build upon that, you will be miles ahead of the pack (literally!)