Every kitesurfer wants to jump high in the sky – I think it’s the first thing that many of us see and aspire to achieve, and if the Red Bull King of the Air event shows us anything it’s that big jumps are loved by one and all!

We also know how important learning to jump is as the Progression Jumping chapter is the most popular download on the Progression Player.

Many may think it’s a trivial skill to learn, but to do it well, jump high and land softly every time, that is something that takes practice and understanding of your kite. There are so many different elements that add to that perfectly timed floaty jump. You can break it down in to 3 obviously stages:

  • The Launch
  • The Airtime
  • The Landing

Understanding each is vital but also realising that they are all connected, get the launch wrong and your landing will probably end with a splash! Analysing your mistakes can really help to work out what you’re doing wrong, why its having a negative effect and how to solve it.

The Launch

Launching is all about timing. Timing the kite movement with your boards edging. The faster you ride into your launch the higher you can potentially go but you must be in control and holding your edge. Get the technique and feel for the balance between the boards edging and kite’s upwards movement – even riding slowly, if you have power in the kite you can rocket upwards, if you release your edge at just the right moment. We posted this video a while back but its a great tip about sheeting the bar in when launching:

The Airtime

For this we’ve taken a short excerpt from the Progression Jumping chapter, part of the Kiteboarding Intermediate Volume DVD & Digital Collection. Here you can see & learn about the importance of kite position during the airborne part of the your jump and how it affects your landing:

The Landing

The two most important aspect to focus on:

  1. You can’t land with your kite above your head or sitting at the front of the window, you need its power to be giving you some forward momentum to allow you to land and ride away with speed. So keep it above your head in the air and then bring it down in one movement into the power zone, if you wuss out and gently steer the kite down it will simple hug the front of the wind window and leave you no power.
  2. Point the board downwind as your land. This is crucial; it has to be hammered into your subconscious! With the board pointing downwind your can handle lots of power from the kite as you will simply ride straight downwind towards the kite allowing you to regain control of the kite and board.

There is a lot of different aspects to get constantly big boosting jumps, that’s why our premium jumping video is 30 minutes long, with a lot of detail to cover and A LOT of common mistakes to go through. But start small and build your confidence and kite control and you’ll be seeing the tops of building before you know it ;-)

What’s the most important thing you’ve learnt when trying to jump?