SUP foil pumping epiphany.

[Dialy]

After 6 months of SUP foiling, I was still not able to kick out of a wave and “pump” away and I was beginning to think that the only way would be to trade my SUP foil board for one of these tiny prone foil boards. 
This morning though, after watching a YouTube video produced by Eric Terrien, I was able to exit the wave and pump towards the horizon like the cool kids. The video is in French so I will share the gist of it here.
The key is to think “un weighing” instead of thinking “pushing down” like the term “pumping” seems to suggest. Also, do not think of bringing up the front of the wing and the nose of the board by pushing down on your rear leg. When you un weigh yourself by bringing both of your knees up, at the very same time, the foil and the board will automatically “wheelie “ for you.
What goes up must come down so, as your weigh pushes the board back down, its nose will go down, completing the porpoise-like motion.
Personal note: when watching someone pump their board, it looks  as if they are creating the porpoise motion by slightly offsetting the raise of each knee.
It’s an illusion. The foil does the work all by itself. When exiting the wave, as you feel the foil still pushing you up, do not think “push back down” but “suck” both of your knees up. Bring them up to your chest like a mogul skier and use your paddle, you might as well,  to help with the propulsion. 
Also, using a foil with as much lift as possible should help. Today I was using the GoFoil Maliko 200 (I weigh around 210#) and that thing lifts me up like an anorexic  ballerina . I have not even tried my Maliko 280 wing yet...
I hope this helps all the geezers who, like me, want to be cool kids again.
Here is the video:

[surfcowboy]

Interesting. Colas, Long banned from here, mentioned unweighting on another forum and it caught my eye. He mentioned it casually in a post but it seems correct. If I'm getting it right, you're letting the foil go up and then glide back down like you would in a glider plane. Right?

[Dialy]

Yes, surfcowboy, I think that the glider plane analogy is spot on. After all that’s what a foil is. You let it soar and do its thing instead of pushing back against it and you repeat the motion as fast as you can.

[805StandUp]

Thanks for sharing!  Seems to make sense and very different than how we initially think we should be pumping. 

[Beasho]

. . .This morning though, after watching a YouTube video produced by Eric Terrien, I was able to exit the wave and pump towards the horizon like the cool kids. The video is in French so I will share the gist of it here. . . .

I did speak French at one time but DO NOT WANT TO HAVE TO STRUGGLE through interpreting this.

Can anyone help translate THE WHOLE THING?  Maybe there is a quick Algo (rithm) or Video translation and we can repost in English.

[Dialy]

Ok, let me have a go at the translation (French is my native tongue).
I am going to be as faithful to Eric's words as possible so forgive me if it gets repetitive because he tends to re emphasize certain points several times and, without his visual clues, it might seem like overdoing it.
Here we go:
"Hi Everyone. As promised, here is a short tutorial on how to pump a foil. I was thinking about making only one video but, instead, I will make two because I have realized that there are a lot of things to cover.
In the first video, I will cover the basics and, in the second one, which I will upload later, we will see the specific differences between surf foiling and SUP foiling and we will go over some details that will help.
The basic thing is that, when we are pumping, we are trying to lift up the foil and, to do so, there are only two ways:
either we increase its speed or we lighten its load.
A common mistake is thinking that the motion is about pushing down with the legs. When you push down with your legs, you put pressure on the foil and it comes down. We are looking for the opposite effect, raising it up.
Since, when we are pumping, it's because we don't have enough speed already, the only option left, in order to lift the foil up, is to lighten its load. When we lighten the load on the foil, it wheelies. We make ourselves lighter, it wheelies and comes up. Once it's at the top of the motion sequence, it levels, we put our weight back on it [gravity does not allow any other option] and, naturally, the foil comes down.
The full sequence is: We lighten the load, it wheelies and comes up, levels itself and, as we put our weight back on it, it comes down [Eric says so while showing the foil coming down flat] and picks up speed.
We anticipate the bottoming by making ourselves lighter again and the sequence is repeated.
When the foil is at the top of its motion, there is no need to try and make its nose go down on purpose. If we try to lower its nose first, it will come down too fast for us to anticipate the next phase. By just letting it level itself, the foil is going to come down and speed up on its own.
Another common mistake is to try to make it wheelie and come up by pushing down with the back leg.
If we do so, it's just going to pull the brakes. What we want is to lighten up both of our legs at the same time and to let it rise up on its own. We are not trying to force its motion.
By the way, through my conversations with other foilers, I have realized that we tend to move the rear foot slightly forward when pumping. We bring it right over the mast or very slightly ahead of it.
By doing so, we prevent the mistake of trying to wheelie it by pushing on the rear leg.
The wheelie motion comes from lightening up the load and not from pushing down on the rear leg.
That's it for today. I hope this helps you. Do not hesitate to leave comments. I will upload anther video in a couple of weeks or whenever I find the time. In that second video, I will go into more details and speak to the differences between surf foil (prone) and SUP foil. Thank you." End of translation.

My personal take:
It's at the very start of the sequence that we tend to mess up by pushing down on the board when we should lighten its load.
Next time you that you are foiling, while still on a wave, when you feel that you need some pumping to increase your speed,  instead of loading up by pushing down on the foil as on a pogo stick, just raise your knees (by relaxing your quadriceps muscles I guess) to your chest and notice how the foil just comes up all by itself and pushes your knees up. I think that the foil behaves like a spring that is already loaded ( by the lift created by the water running around the wing) and you do not need to load it by pushing on it first. That only  lowers it and defeats the purpose.
Now, when you exit the wave with some momentum and you feel the foil still pushing up, raise your knees to your chest (relax your quads), it will go up some more, then, as it comes down,  quickly raise your knees again.
Repeat and rinse.

[Dwight (DW)]

I’ve spent enough time watching Austin Kalama (live in person) switching between his prone foil and SUP foil, back to back, to completely switch my opinion on what wins when it comes to pumping.....it’s not prone.

Austin performs better on his SUP. By far, pumping farther and easier on his SUP.

It gave me great hope for the future of SUP foiling.

[Dialy]

I’ve spent enough time watching Austin Kalama (live in person) switching between his prone foil and SUP foil, back to back, to completely switch my opinion on what wins when it comes to pumping.....it’s not prone.

Austin performs better on his SUP. By far, pumping farther and easier on his SUP.

It gave me great hope for the future of SUP foiling.

Amen to that!
Since I fell in love with SUPing, I have not felt the urge to prone surf again.
“Why crawl when you have learned to walk?” said a wise man. Now he can add “why crawl when you can fly?”. Jokes aside,  standing on top of the water with a “stick” in hand feels to me, instinctively, like a more natural way for a human to venture into the sea. Paddling around on my stomach, completely blind to what is under (and I have seen some scary monsters down there since), was always, for me, the least desirable part of surfing. I’m glad that I won’t have to go back to crawling just to experience the joys of pumping.

[805StandUp]

Thanks for the translation, Dialy.  Sometimes when I pump my SUP board down the line to generate speed, when I am most effective I get the distinct feeling of weighting and unweighting my feet so perhaps pumping the foil is analagous--will need to play with this. 

Also good to hear DW's experience with Austin too b/c as I have been watching videos and folks foiling the breaks near me I was starting to feel that the smaller prone board seemed to be an advantage over having a paddle.  Good to know that there is a future in SUP foiling!

[Dialy]

You are welcome 805.
I think I have just figured out a simple way to explain the process.
The difficulty comes from the fact that the motion is at first counterintuitive:
In order to bring the foil up, we have to squat (=“bringing the knees towards the chest”) which unweights the foil and lowers our head. On the other hand when we push, we are extending our legs and raising our head which increases the weight on the foil and lowers it. 
We keep inverting the pumping sequence and fail at the very beginning because our neurons have not yet properly integrated the fact that our head (our point of reference) and the foil move in opposite directions.
The mantra should be:
1- Squat to bring the foil up.
2- Rise to bring the foil down.
When you kick out of the wave, start by squatting and bringing  your paddle forward to plant it.That will properly initiate the motion sequence.

[Beasho]

Ok, let me have a go at the translation (French is my native tongue).
. . . . .

This was / is super helpful.  Thank you!!!!!!

It's crazy how virgin the landscape is with this sport.  As if we are in the days of wooden windsurfing booms.

[Dialy]

Hey Beasho, I’m very glad I could help! I have been benefiting a lot from your many insights on this forum, on my journey to figuring out this new and exciting sport.

[Califoilia]

I’ve spent enough time watching Austin Kalama (live in person) switching between his prone foil and SUP foil, back to back, to completely switch my opinion on what wins when it comes to pumping.....it’s not prone.

Austin performs better on his SUP. By far, pumping farther and easier on his SUP.

It gave me great hope for the future of SUP foiling.

Really? I'm surprised to hear that. Only because it seems like every prone guy out with us is pumping all over the place almost as soon after they finally figure out how to fly the darn thing...and only a couple of the really good (young, and/or athletic) SUP guys are able to do it (with only one 20-something year old able to get more that 20 or 30 yards worth of it).

But also happy to hear that, and love the idea of "unweighting" vs "pumping" as the way to make these things go. Gonna head out now, and give it a try. Fingers crossed... 

[Dwight (DW)]

I’ve spent enough time watching Austin Kalama (live in person) switching between his prone foil and SUP foil, back to back, to completely switch my opinion on what wins when it comes to pumping.....it’s not prone.

Austin performs better on his SUP. By far, pumping farther and easier on his SUP.

It gave me great hope for the future of SUP foiling.

Really? I'm surprised to hear that. Only because it seems like every prone guy out with us is pumping all over the place almost as soon after they finally figure out how to fly the darn thing...and only a couple of the really good (young, and/or athletic) SUP guys are able to do it (with only one 20-something year old able to get more that 20 or 30 yards worth of it).

But also happy to hear that, and love the idea of "unweighting" vs "pumping" as the way to make these things go. Gonna head out now, and give it a try. Fingers crossed... 

Austin’s SUP is 4 ft something. That helps him. Dave’s is 5’8. I’m going to try 6’2 myself. Austin told me to go as short as possible. For all wave sizes.

[Beasho]

After 6 months of SUP foiling, I was still not able to kick out of a wave and “pump” away and I was beginning to think that the only way would be to trade my SUP foil board for one of these tiny prone foil boards. 

DIALY - Your translation and this video have made a quantum improvement in my abilities.  I too was thinking I needed a small board and had to be super fit. 

Here was a breakthrough wave.  100 yards paddling and pumping back out to sea.  I was on the East Coast of the US in Rhode Island.  The waves were small but clean.  This was made possible by this/your translated technique.  I was able to maintain 12 mph for much of the paddle out.  This was surprisingly fast.

As I was paddling out I could feel the increased lift from incoming waves and the softening as I would pass down the backside.  With proper rhythmic paddle technique it almost felt easy.  My knees were nearly coming to my chest.  However 20 seconds of this really wipes you out.  I am confident increased technique and cardio will add to the potential for taking off on a crappy wave and then going out to get a bigger better beast.  WOW!

This ended up being the longest wave of the day 160 yards Riding followed by 100 yards pumping.