He crew
I'm a long-time windsurfer and Wind Foiler... getting into Wing Foiling.
Any Tips?
I'm saving good videos to a playlist so I can find them easier...
Pump with the front hand: 
If bounding the foil gets too high at an angle, your backfoot should move forward
Practice toe side riding and turning - I never wave sailed and it is hurting my WingFoiling.
Foot straps are your friends - especially the front one. I couldn't wing goofy until I used mine!
As someone who came from windsurfing I found this recent video to be very insightful.
In windsurfing you focus on maximizing power from the sail to produce speed. In the video, he empathizes riding the foil, not the wing for wingfoiling. Use the wing as a tool just to get on foil and stay on foil.
Main one for me was figuring out that you stay upright over the foil, side to side and fore and aft. Don't lean back into the wing like you do with a sail. You and the foil are one and the wing rotates around you. Leaning back leads to instant ejection ??.
Select to expand quoteDirly said..
Main one for me was figuring out that you stay upright over the foil, side to side and fore and aft. Don't lean back into the wing like you do with a sail. You and the foil are one and the wing rotates around you. Leaning back leads to instant ejection ??.
this^^^
I couldn't believe how many times I got up and fell backwards immediately when I first started, even when telling myself not to lean back...
Since you are already an accomplished windfoiler you will find getting up and going in a straight line pretty easy. And if you have good wind (not on the edge of being underpowered) then getting the board going in the other direction is pretty easy too. But if you are like me then here is where the trouble starts:
1. I never taught myself to ride switch. Worse, my brain would scream "switch feet, switch feet" halfway through the jibe. I really had to force myself to learn to ride switch and it's important.
2. Windsurf and Windfoil boards are longer and heavier and so have a higher MOI in pitch. So the foot placement is more critical when you do switch. And I had 30+ years of stepping back first etc. Different habits to learn.\
3. I found that having the boom in my hands connected to the mast, connected to the board helped me in my foot placement. It still feels like "the board is down there somewhere" when I'm winging. It's getting better though. I'm now over 80% jibing on flat water and about 40% in the sloppy stuff.
Good luck! I find that it's great cross training as it uses different muscles, primarily because the pumping action is so different.
I had nearly 40 years of windsurfing before I started wingfoiling three years ago. It's magical. I'm never going back.
It's all about front foot pressure. Set up your foil so your front foot is in the proper location where it stays. Rear foot moves.
Forget stinkbug for now. If you need stinkbug as a newbie your board is too small. Start with a board that is stable enough to start on your knees. If you are serious about learning you'll be falling a lot and you shouldn't be wasting time trying to start a small board. And start with larger foils and work your way down. Online used gear markets are great.
In my case jibing was much easier to learn than switching feet. It's still the weakest part of my riding. Practice on land whenever you can. Footstraps are often recommended to learn the switch but I prefer to go strapless--foot or ankle injuries are a no-no for me.
My favorite online mentors: Lachie White, Alan Cadiz, Damien LeRoy, Kitefoil college. Watch watch watch. Practice wing handling on land on light days. Just like windsurfing, follow a good winger on the water and try to emulate.
It's a good idea to protect yourself from the foil as a newbie--lots of falls, right? Even a thin wetsuit helps avoid those leg cuts. Consider an impact/flotation vest and helmet.
Seems like almost all former windsurfers prefer a wing with a boom. Infinite number of handholds--easy to slide hand fore and aft.
Enjoy the ride!
Good advices! I been using this metod since beginning! Best way to get up IMO!
Good tips everyone, thanks for the encouragement. Good thing I've got a few weeks holiday this summer, plenty of time to watch videos and put it into practice!
I'm a former windsurfer who did 5-10 sessions of windfoiling before swapping to wingfoiling. I'm now a beginner/intermediate who can gybe and is starting to tack. Lots of great advice here so I'll just say four things.
1) Footstraps: I found putting the front footstraps on the board was quite intuitive for me and provided a bunch of benefits, like getting the board out of the water when pumping, staying on the board when it was choppy, transferring power into forward motion (especially in chop), recovering from touchdowns and when stuffing the nose. It also helped learn toeside riding. Once I cracked that I took the straps off again and have been riding strapless since. I recommend setting up the front straps to be quite long (i.e. the outer holes) so that you can wiggle your foot forward and backward while still in the strap.
2) Toeside riding: I don't think anything in windfoiling transfers to toeside riding. I found that getting up and foiling heelside was pretty intuitive but if I made it around a gybe I wouldn't be able to ride toeside for more than like a second - I'd basically just fall off immediately. It eventually just clicked, but having the front strap on the board helped me control the board even if my front foot is lifting at the heel. You definitely want to learn toeside riding because you can't really gybe without it, so I think it makes sense to really focus on learning it.
3) Footswap: When gybing you probably instinctively want to footswap when coming through the gybe. This isn't gonna work like it does with windsurfing. Stick to riding out toeside and then once you can ride toeside for some time, start learning the footswap.
4) Foil safety: with windfoiling you've got the benefit of the mast & boom which effectively keeps the bottom side of the board i.e. the foil away from you. You don't have this benefit with wingfoiling and you can easily have the board go one way and you go the other way and fall towards the foil. It's pretty scary and I don't really have any advice for solving the problem except just being conscious of it and trying to avoid scenarios where you're falling off the outside of the board.
Enjoy - I think the feeling of foiling with a wing is far more enjoyable than the feeling of foiling with a sail.
Select to expand quoteDirly said..
Main one for me was figuring out that you stay upright over the foil, side to side and fore and aft. Don't lean back into the wing like you do with a sail. You and the foil are one and the wing rotates around you. Leaning back leads to instant ejection ??.
My mistake for the last four years
As has been noted above, if you're learning, some of the things above will become more relevant later in the journey.
Get a biggish board. You're better to be 10 litres too big than 10 litres too small when learning. It will make your time above water easier and you'll learn faster. After a year, you might think of downsizing to the right board.
Biggest thing for me was gybing. Always switched my feet when dead downwind on windsurf board. Big no-no on foil. Could not break the habit. So learned how to ride toeside first, then went into gybes toeside exiting heelside without feeling like my feet were wrongly placed. Toeside is hard to learn, so find smooth water so that the chop interferes less with foil control. Narrow your stance before doing the foot swap. Wide stance tends to mean when back foot goes to the front, the board tends to dive harder and it's more difficult to keep it from touching down.
Also, don't think about footstraps. While getting your basic skills down pat, you often need to shuffle your feet around and I found they just get in the way. Clean board to begin. When you advance, then think about where they need to be. If you are struggling with foot placement and use the footstraps as location markers, then put something on your board (electrical tape, non permanent marker) to located your feet.
Good luck with the journey. It's fantastic and challenging.
My pumping seems much more effective with the rear strap! I know the foot placement is way back. but I'm so used to powering up both legs when I pump the Windfoil, it really helped. Without it my pumps felt like they were cancelling out and just bouncing vertically not forward!
Next question. Why do I suck at toe side gybe stability... on WindFoil I gybe toe-side all the time but switch feet mid-turn to finish heel side.
On the wing the second half of the turn is where I struggle. early days but any tips appreciated.
you are used to rely on mastfoot pressure to balance out /compensate a backfoot heavy riding stance. Ditch the straps, get to learn to steer your board by weight and balance instead of hanging and wrinching/pulling on the straps. Taking of the straps helps you to balance out by moving your feet more freely I always advice former windsurf buddies to approach wingfoil more as Sup/ surfing then as windsurf. because the way you steer and balance is closer to those sports as to windsurfing. Especially when you are a freerider or racer hanging outside kicking against a fin.
Besides that, unless you are serious racing or jumping you don,t really need straps.I,m 97kg and ride a 95 and 56l board strapless in everything from 12 tot 40+ knots from flat water to 4m+ waves.
As Jeroensurf said when windsurf foiling, the fact that the mast is connected to the mid-front of the board takes out the rotational axis and pitch axis instability, it damps it all massively. On a windfoil that's all in your feet, much more delicate control is needed.
You'll get it, when I started, and as you know, come from the same racing 'IQ foil' style background as you I had the same issues but over a few sessions you'll figure out the more neuanced control required, just take practice to learn that new muscle memory. Foil setup is also important but from memory you had an F4 setup so it's probably good already.
Despite so so so many posters on here suggesting it to new wingfoilers, particularly those with deep rooted windsurfing backgrounds, to remove the straps I think is actually a ridiculous idea. I listened to that advice when I started, despite my better judgement and literally foiled like 100m and went, this is the stupidest idea i've ever heard of, went straight back in, put the front straps on and have never looked back. Having straps, the front ones only to start, makes so much of a difference to the control, foot placement and general consistency when wingfoiling I honestly don't know why people would not use them....particularly if you come from a very high level of windfoiling and windsurfing. I can understand it if you're just crusing around on a massive foil at like 12kts just 'feeling the flow' but if you want to progress bigtime, you need straps, imo.
I would also practice toe side riding both sides, a lot. It's an important skill, much more important in wingfoiling that in windfoil as you really need to be able to do it well once you progress to foiling tacks etc. There are so many videos on learning to gybe on youtube and that's the best way as a video is much easier to digest than a description on here. They highlight how imporant the wing switch timing is when you're starting etc...and you need flat water too at the start, makes it much easier.
