Some one recently got on my case for my attitude towards beginners/intermediate flyers at the hill. (I sorta avoid them.) My reasons for this are that they ALWAYS ask the same questions (which is to be expected) but the questions are almost always motivated from, in my opinion, the wrong mindset. Stuff like, “show me the movements for…” and “what are your hands doing when you…” really bother me. I’m not talking about casual inquiries from non-kiters. They don’t get specific.

Because I was called out on my perceived unwillingness to help newer flyers, I’ve had occasion to think about why it is that I feel the way that I do, and I think what I’ve come up with might be helpful food for thought to beginning flyers. It’s a bit philosophical and concept-oriented, but if you’re like-minded what follows could prove helpful in getting your head into the right place to be a better flyer. Maybe not, but I’m going to write it out anyway. Take if for what it’s worth - one person’s opinion. If it helps, great. If not, you just blew 10 minutes of reading. Sorry.

Basic Stages of Development:
1 – Kite Flies You
2 – You Fly the Kite
3 – You Fly Together
(credit to Mr. Elrod for the above)

I’ll start at the end and work backwards. Higher ethics/goals and beliefs aside, the basis for flying well is having an established connection with the kite. It tells you things and the wind tells you things. You process this data without thinking about it. You just know what to do to get the kite to perform. You know what’s possible and what’s not, given the changing conditions around you. At this level, conscious thought goes into composition and structure rather than execution. Or, you can choose to flow in the moment and take what comes along, picking up loose change as you see fit. Everyone who’s been at it for a while knows this feeling. It’s flying in the zone. At first it only happens for a few seconds at a time, but this will increase in frequency as you improve.

Before this point, you’re the one using your physical power to force the kite around. You’ll probably notice times when a move you know how to do just falls apart and wonder why. The reason is simple; You are flying the kite. You’re also probably not listening to it very well. The results are familiar to all of us. An axel that doesn’t flatten out, but rather turns full sail into the lines. The pancake that is really more of a lawn dart. The 540 that rotates up on the horizon and tangles itself. My advice at this point is to take a break, sit down with your eyes closed and fly the move in your head. Visualize the kite, the bridles, the hand movements, the lines and you. Try to understand the relationship between all these elements. You can be mechanical and mathematical in your analysis, or as poetic and metaphorical as you please. Whatever works best, but if you don’t find a vocabulary that works for you, you’ll never really be able to progress and build on individual skill sets. The moves will fuse together and you’ll find you can only do (for example) an axel with your left hand after a ground pass leading to a stall. Or only get into a fade after a pancake. You get the idea. You want to be versatile. To be versatile you have to nail down the individual elements, then you have to nail down the possible entrances and exits for each, then you have to be able to seamlessly put them together in any order you wish. (Or more likely, in the way that the conditions best allow.) This is where listening to the kite makes a difference. Know when you just can’t pull the move off. It happens to everyone. Too much sail pressure for something. Maybe too little. Too high in the window. Too low. Whatever, you get the idea. Eventually these limitations begin to recede as you become better and better at overcoming or compensating for the wind. This is a learned process without shortcuts, you just have to spend a few thousand hours with a kite in your hands to get there. Throughout this stage keep thinking about how the kite works. Get short lines so you can see the bridle move and the kite react. You’ll notice you’re becoming more efficient. You need less movement to do the trick. Eventually, if the wind is good, you’ll just be moving back and forth in the same 5 feet of ground twitching your fingers and wrists. The kite will be doing all sorts of acrobatic maneuvers, but because you understand just when and where the kite needs your help you’ll have very little to do to achieve the results you want. I’ve always called this flying with soft hands. (Maybe something I heard from some one else?) This doesn’t mean that you don’t hit the kite hard when you need to, it just means you don’t beat the crap out of it for no reason and break sticks anymore. On a side note, before anyone who remembers when I first started says anything, I was a champion stick breaker. Had a set of cement hands that would have turned the Mafia green with envy. Avia Sport has a carbon wrap machine with my name on a plaque. I was horrible but I learned, so hope is not lost if you’re like I was. Chin up, pip pip and all that.

And now we end at the beginning. It’s always helped me to visualize when ever I’m trying to learn a new skill-set, especially ones that are dependent on muscle memory. All of the basic building blocks of good kite control are muscle memory moves. Straight lines, clean corners and crisp snap stalls are all muscle memory. The best way to begin to learn these moves is to watch people that can do them well. Watch the body positioning. Watch the hands. Watch the movement of the body throughout the move. Try to get a feeling for the flow of the move. Put it in your mind’s eye. Lock it in. Watch the videos, memorize hand movements if you’d like, but all of that is prelude to actually feeling the kite and learning to interpret what it’s telling you. (I understand the argument that you have to start somewhere. I agree completely, but real growth will only happen watching good flyers in person and getting as much time on the lines as you can.) The secret is in the synthesis of observed behavior and applied experience.

Most importantly, for God’s sake learn to stall! Start small and easy, but really learn to do it. One of the moves I can do in my sleep, and I often would do on demo fields just to waste time, is the axel, fade, 540, fade, 540, etc. and people would come up and ask me how to do it. When I ask them if they can do a snap stall, I’d get all sorts of answers from confident “yes” to “maybe” and “kinda.” In almost all cases the flyer really couldn’t do what I would consider to be an acceptable stall. You’ve GOT to be able to stop the kite, and stop it hard and level. BANG, just that fast. If you can’t, STOP wasting your time. You’re learning bad habits and re-enforcing muscle memory you’ll have a very hard time undoing later. (Many can’t, are remain mid-level flyers.) Trying to learn complicated moves without the basics is like building on quicksand. Not gonna work. You have no hope of being confident in combination moves unless the specific elements in the combination are rock solid. So, to do the axel, fade, 540 move, you HAVE to first STALL the kite. THEN axel. THEN fade. THEN exit and 540. If one is weak, the move won’t be solid. House of Cards Syndrome. It all comes tumbling down. You can develop many things side by side, but the snap stall is the best move of everything out there to practice till you have is down cold. The rest just starts so much easier.

Here’s another thing I wish some one had stressed to me when I was starting. Learn to fly straight lines and hold your speed. If the snap stall is the foundation your tricks are built on, then the concrete in the sub-basement is straight lines and corners. Flipping and flopping the kite around only looks good if it looks like you meant to do it. If everything is hair-ball squiggly, then it just doesn’t look sharp no matter how difficult the move. Think about all the stories you’ve read when some one doing an impressive combo has a passerby thinking they’ve just screwed up. But blast out of a slack line move on a hard 90, then angle back to the ground and bury a tip stab and you look like a God. If you can start your trick combo after turning some perfect corners and carving solid lines, then the counterpoint brings validity, credibility and justification to the slack line moves. What am I going on about? Learn the basics REALLY well. You’ll be better off. It’s not like it’s work or anything. All you need to do is to take the effort and remember to separate your moves with some lines and corners.

That’s all I can think of, but it touches on the major points I wanted to make. Just so I don’t get a bad reputation, I really don’t mind talking kites I just like to talk about them in more specifics than most people are looking for. And as an end note, I do usually tell folks the hand movements! (even if I don’t think it will help in the long run.)

Matt