Mast position for pumping

[Hdip]

Thanks, Hdip!  I can’t see that video on foil.zone...won’t open for me.  Is it posted anywhere else?

He probably pulled it down. I don't know if he has it anywhere else. It was just surfline rewind. His text explains it well. In one part of the video he was doing an up and down porpoise pump. Like he was going up and down over rolling hills. In the other he is keeping the nose of his board mostly in the same position and pumping the whole thing flat with smaller taps.

To learn how to pump you have to dedicate sessions to just blowing waves. Take in and pull out within 5 seconds of being on the wave. In the beginning your cardio can take you maybe 15-30 seconds of pumping. If you surf the wave for 10 of those seconds you only have 5 seconds left to "learn" how to pump.

My record is 2 minutes on foil and I about died afterwards. That was on an AXIS 900 and I'm 6'1" 185# 41 years old. You have the gear you need to do it. It's just about blowing waves to learn how at this point.

[Califoilia]

But there are a heck of a lot of factors in play, not the least of which is simply believing you have the right setup.

Yes, you are 100% correct in that. I've been chasing the "shorter board" theory of pumping for over a year now, simply observing that 85-90% of the prone guys in our lineup are able to pump back out to connect a wave or two, while only about 10-15% of the sup guys are able to do it with any regularity, and all but about 1-2% of those sup guys have one thing in common...they're all in their 50s on down!

The simple physical factor of being able to exert the sustained energy required to keep those dang things moving at the pace necessary to create unassisted lift and forward motion is dang near as important that anything else...and us in the 60+ club end up looking for our lungs in the water at about the same time we're looking to start turning for the approaching second wave. 😰🥵

[Califoilia]

My record is 2 minutes on foil and I about died afterwards. That was on an AXIS 900 and I'm 6'1" 185# 41 years old. You have the gear you need to do it. It's just about blowing waves to learn how at this point.

Hahaha! I'm nowhere near the 2 minute mark, but the "about died afterwards" part I can relate to just in the few connections I'm finally starting to make more consistently. I can only marvel at the stamina of some of the guys hooking up 4-5 waves at a time, and seemingly be barely breathing hard when they finally set down. Amazing...but a brass ring I'll never even try to reach for at this point in time.

[bigmtn]

My 2 cents on pumping.  First off if you could get some footage of your attempts it would be a lot easier to say what you should be doing to improve.  That being said, I completely agree with Hdip, take a session and only focus on pumping. Don't ride any waves. Just drop in, get some speed, and pull off and start pumping back out.  Don't pump on the backside of the wave, just glide a bit, until you're past the wave, then start pumping.  When you get better and start pumping over multiple waves, use those waves as a level up to get higher on the mast.  Stay high on the mast.  The higher you are, the easier it is. Think about leaning forward.  If you were going to run really fast would you be standing straight up and down or leaning forward?  Think about having your front shoulder lower than the back shoulder.  Swing your arms, should feel natural with the pump, and you'll get more energy on the down and back arm stroke, so throw a little extra into it.  Make sure you are using both legs when you pump, I see a lot of beginners stand straight on back leg, then just bring front leg up and down real quick, thats a stanky leg, not pumping.  With the 910 if you're high on the mast, you can do just little hops to stay up, doesn't have to be a real big pump.  The big pumps are for when you start to lose height and need to get back up higher on the mast. Think about bringing your feet up and forward. shorten your stance, back foot should move forward on board to be closer to front foot. And most importantly and going back to the beginning, speed is your friend. The faster you're going when you start pumping the easier it is. (though if you are in big waves and going really fast, just glide glide glide until you feel like you're starting to slow)

oh and it helps if you have a spot where you can pump more parallel to the beach and connect to the next wave, rather than pumping straight out to sea. And use the wind to your advantage, always turn with the wind, rather than into it.

[jondrums]

what I've come to appreciate is that pumping is not simply a matter of stamina, although it is when learning.  If you're doing it right, it really isn't that much effort.  Just rewatch any video of Kane, the difference is NOT that he has super-human lungs but that his technique is perfect. 

I spent several months doing dock-starts when the beaches were all closed due to COVID.   It is very hard to explain the technique, but you can sure feel it when you get it right.  Energy use goes way down when things are going right.

As bigmtn says, staying high in the water and keeping your speed up is the closest thing I found for a magic formula.  Once you get low in the water or speed comes down, digging out of that hole takes a bunch of energy. 

All this talk about gear tweaks is interesting to me, but not going to be a game changer for anyone who doesn't already know how to be efficient as long as they are already on a reasonably efficient foil and a reasonably small board.

[Hdip]

[SUPdad]

Thanks, guys...all of this stuff is a big help.  I'll keep trying and try to incorporate these tips.  Lots to think about.  I guess I am pretty uncoordinated so it's not a big surprise this is taking me a while to figure out.

[Hdip]

There's also the problem of white boy rhythm

[Califoilia]

what I've come to appreciate is that pumping is not simply a matter of stamina, although it is when learning. If you're doing it right, it really isn't that much effort.

Which can be said about just about anything we do in life. Same can be said about youthful exuberance's "just do it" view of most everything as well.

Or maybe it's the other way around. That how many of us wish this new foiling thing had been around 20 years ago when we were in our forties, and when the body was MUCH more capable of being able to keep up with what the mind wants (and expects) us to do. Hell, I still think I can dunk a basketball like I used to, but now I'm lucky if I can even touch the net, let alone the rim, much less getting my hand over it. 

So yeah, I'm pretty sure you'll have a different perspective and definition of "stamina" 15-20 years from now, and look back fondly at what you're able to do now, and wonder why you just can't do so easily what you did way back when.

That's why I'm always awed and amazed at the very few Septuagenarians out foiling, and killing it...even if all a couple of them do is just fly one down the line w/o much turning or carving, and then just landing it safely (forget about pumping at all)...that's freakin' awesome IMO!

[surfcowboy]

Pono, don’t know if you listen to the Progression Project, but we have 2 young guys in our crew who are amazing foilers and deeply into the science. @bufoil Cole has a mechanical engineering degree from USC and @mattcoast (maybe needs an underscore) who is a weather scientist for a living for a gov agency. Listen to those episodes, you will love them.

Cole breaks down pumping without getting into the weeds. Next time you’re in SoCal, I’ll see if we can get him, and his Dad who’s an awesome hang too, down to Dave’s spot.  It’s great to have someone to ask questions of who can speak to the science and the experience. Both these kids are great people and solid prone downwind foilers.

[PonoBill]

My comments on the previous page were the source of my Mea Culpa: "I'm an idiot who doesn't listen" post elsewhere. While I don't think I was wrong from a technical standpoint, from a practical standpoint I had my head firmly up my ass. The center of gravity of a board and foil is a good approximation of the center of buoyancy, even though the foil is generally a fairly large percentage of the system weight and with rare exceptions, isn't positively buoyant. If you have your feet in the right position to float a fairly small board flat in the water, then if you just "shove your mast all the way forward" your feet will be in the wrong position to fly. I found this out most dramatically with my new 5'11" X 30" board, doing most of a downwinger on my knees, not only a necessary position to spinnaker my way down the coast without constant falling in the heavy chop, but also handy for praying for a #40 Torx wrench to fall from the heavens so I could move the mast back a bit.

Anyway, my pumping has actually improved microscopically with the new board and some fiddling with the 1150/390 combination. Yesterday I had a bit of a breakthrough, discovering that my back foot is more effective than my front foot both for pumping the board higher and for accelerating. Why this is a revelation escapes me now that I type the words, but it was.

Looking at the simple mechanics of pumping tells me most of what I need to know about the age gap. People pumping a foil are trying to go about 10 mph without the benefits of a mechanical contrivance that optimizes that dinky motor we have. Yes, foils are efficient compared to hulls, but we're still trying to run marathons through jello--water is a thousand times denser than air. Even in air I couldn't run 10 mph for more than twenty feet if there was an angry mob behind me.

Geezer pumping. Yes, I know, the board pumping is almost invisible. In my head, I'm pumping like KD headed out for the fourth wave:

s

[Solent Foiler]

I thought of you yesterday PonoBill. Hanging around on the beach with the kids hoping the breeze would fill in enough to get winging. About 4 pm it started to look vaguely possible and combined with a now or never, got ready to go. I've been really trying to figure out this light wind foil pumping with very slow progress, but yesterday I tried slamming the mast all the way forward, and had a little chuckle to myself as I did so. Long story short, I was consistently getting up in lighter winds than I have done before. I'm not at 10 knots yet (praying new wings will give me magical performance improvements, when it arrives!) but slowly slowly getting better...

[surfcowboy]

Glad to hear you both are working on this. It gets easier though I’m on the older side of the curve myself. My new board helped a ton.

Solent with the “get up” pump I’m seeing it’s more of an “unweight both” thing where the moving pump is the drive forward one. A smaller board and good wing pumps gets me going in pretty low wind I’m seeing. Starting to see why the good guys can ride 4m as their big wing. Crazy.

[Solent Foiler]

Glad to hear you both are working on this. It gets easier though I’m on the older side of the curve myself. My new board helped a ton.

Solent with the “get up” pump I’m seeing it’s more of an “unweight both” thing where the moving pump is the drive forward one. A smaller board and good wing pumps gets me going in pretty low wind I’m seeing. Starting to see why the good guys can ride 4m as their big wing. Crazy.

Thanks for the tip. It's one of these things that I know is going to be hard until I properly understand the right technique. The really difficult thing is it's not like enjoying a single perfect golf swing or winning tennis shot. You only get the enjoyment if you nail 6 perfect golf swings in a row (with heart rate skyrocketing!). Otherwise it's a whole lot of effort just pushing water around. Still, good cardio, so not wasted effort!

I probably need a 12 knot puff with a 5m, 65L 4'6, big 1900 foil and really flat water (chop often a problem) currently to get foiling, which isn't bad but not a 10 knots puff on my 1300 Veloce  which would be the dream (but feels a long way off!)

[surfcowboy]

Solent, yeah, I think it takes about 3-4 pumps/hops for me to get going with a similar rig in the same.

I do want to ask about your Veloce. Take a look on my Gong thread, I'll refresh it.

https://www.standupzone.com/forum/index.php/topic,36357.15.html