There’s nothing better than flicking your feet around to ride toeside, then whacking the bajeezus out of a piece of chop. Water simply explodes from your kiteboard, it glints in the sun, floats for seemingly forever in the air then settles back to earth like nothing ever happened.

To perform such an awe-inspiring, stoke inducing maneuver requires the simplest of things, riding toeside.

Which is not easy.

So to help you achieve the goal of smashing pieces of chop like there’s no tomorrow, we’ve come up with five amazing tips to kiteboarding toeside.

Five Tips to Riding Toeside

The lead-up.
When you’re new, psyching up for the switch to toeside takes ages, entire runs in fact. You’ll be riding along saying “NOW! Ok… No really, NOW! Dammit, How ‘bout NOW!?” Once you’re comfy with the switch, not even a second goes by after you spot that sucker of a wave. Feet switch, kite gets whipped overhead and ka-boom.

So, when you are kiteboarding along, comfortably on your heels without a care in the world; there are two options to make the nose, the tail and the tail the nose. The first is a slide, the second is a little jump. It doesn’t matter what style you choose, the most important thing is to make it fast! We’re talking fast riding, fast switching. Don’t muck around, ride with speed, commit and get the board switched!

The recovery.
Now that you’ve found yourself with your toes down, your harness twisted and your face dry, it’s extremely important to recover before you lose all your speed.

By that, we mean getting tension back in the lines, your riding angle re-established and weight distribution sorted. Do it like this:

Get the tension back.
Line tension translates to speed and power. If you follow your kite downwind for more than a few seconds you’ll be on the sandy path to sinks-ville. Transfer your weight to your toes and look upwind, try your hardest to resist the harness pulling you back to heelside.

Re-establish your riding angle.
Remember the first time you went upwind? Going upwind toeside is another one of those “ah ha!” moments. For now, settle for riding across the wind. Do this by trying, don’t let that kite pull you downwind.

Distribute weight efficiently.
Watch any first time toesider and you’ll notice how hard they press on their new backfoot. It’s unnecessary and will set you up for being pulled downwind, sinking and looking like a goof.

Take a look at the front fin, the one on your toeside that you’ve never used before. It should be skimming the water, not 30cm above it! Push down on the front foot and flatten the board. You will ride faster, further upwind and look totally awesome.

The short version

1: Switch the board fast.
2: Recover from the switch (it’s not over!).
3: Get line tension by pushing on your toes.
4: Don’t be a sook and let the kite pull you downwind.
5: Push the (new) nose down. Speed is your friend.

Follow these five tips to kiteboarding toeside, and soon you too, will be smashing unfortunate waves to pieces with your toeside carving turns. We’ll tell you how next week, in another episode of Kiteboarding Basics…