Archive for the 'Kites' Category

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Recurring Rib Injuries – The Cure

Published on Oct 20, 2008 in Dreams, Environment, Freedom, Kites, Kitesurfing, Learning, Power, Recovery, Safety, Speed, Surfing, Swimming, Training and waves. 0 Comments

Recurring Rib Injuries - The Cure

I’ve mentioned my recurring rib injury before. It bothered me a lot last year. This was my first year since childhood of surfing daily again. I never had this issue as a kid. I think it had a lot to do with my body aging badly due to being very inactive for many years.

Now it’s fine. I take some quite heavy wipeouts both surfing and kitesurfing and it feels fine so far (of course there are other things that hurt but hopefully I’ll figure out how to deal with these things over time).  I noticed while talking to quite a few friends that quite a few of them are suffering from the same thing – both surfers and kitesurfers. Ages range from 20’s to 40’s. When I talked to a GP a while ago he said there was not much that could be done and that it would recover naturally. I think that this is pretty much true but I do believe there are some things that can be done. I’ve tried them and they worked for me.

I think that it’s irrelevant whether it is broken or not as it cannot really be be immobilised anyway. But the pain can be quite severe and will likely do this job for you if you’re not stupid enough to take pain killers.

Anyway, this is the cure that worked for me:

1. Rest
2. Chill out and have fun doing something that is not painful. Maybe bowling or darts or ping pong or drinking tea could be good. This will help you forget about it which is absolutely crucial.

after the pain has subsided a bit…

3. Stretch. Long stretches up towards the sky are good. Torso rotations are also excellent. General yoga is great. (I’ll post more about stretches soon)
4. Swim. Swimming fixes everything. All strokes are good but freestyle is particularly good. Try doing long slow strokes, stretching forwards as much as possible and gliding a lot. Bodysurfing is also excellent. I’ve written more about swimming before here.

I’ll post some more of my thoughts on prevention soon.

If you have a rib injury, I hope this helps you get back out there soon.

Thank you

Try

Published on Oct 16, 2008 in Dreams, Environment, Freedom, Kites, Kitesurfing, Learning, Power, Recovery, Safety, Speed, Surfing, Swimming, Training and waves. 0 Comments

One of my fav vid clips ever. Super inspiring 🙂

Blue Kites are Faster than Green ones

Published on Oct 9, 2008 in Dreams, Environment, Freedom, Kites, Kitesurfing, Learning, Power, Recovery, Safety, Speed, Surfing, Swimming, Training and waves. 0 Comments

 Blue Kites are Faster than Green ones

Today I had a really nice long chilled kiting session with a friend. It was flat water for a change. Usually I’m too lazy to venture into flat water as the beach is closer to where I live most of the time. When I got there I was so lazy I didn’t even feel like going out. But the conditions with the tide and wind were close to perfect – nice and gusty, on and off with quite a fair bit of chop. Unfortunately there was no current and only one or two poles and hidden hazards. Last time I kited there I hit a submerged bridge at low speed as the wind was dying and I was negotiating a route in near a messed up fence with lots of trash around it. Today I managed to avoid this dark corner and it looked cleaner. Or maybe that’s because I was looking more at the sky and the horizon.

My main goal for the session was to relax. But I also experimented with going as slow and as fast as possible. Slow is definitely harder. I usually use a green kite but my kite buddy had a blue one in the same style that was partially rigged already. He wasn’t using it so I just went with that. I try not to look much at the kite or even think about it but the blue against the sky has a very different feel. And it’s definitely the fastest I’ve ever been so it has to be the colour. I only really need one kite so I’m thinking of getting a few different colours in the same style. Or maybe I’ll just paint mine when if I get sick of it.

History of Flexifoil

Published on Aug 28, 2008 in Dreams, Freedom, Kites, Kitesurfing, Learning, Power, Safety and Speed. 0 Comments

History of Kitesurfing

Here’s a very interesting history of Flexifoil. There are some great classic old pics and crazy experiments and stories. It’s quite amazing how humble fun things like this evolved into massive sports like paragliding and kitesurfing.

Kite Power

Published on May 2, 2008 in Environment, Kites and Power. 1 Comment

Kite Power

Wow! This is awesome! Kites for power generation. Well at least to part-power a ship. Looking at the video, it’s a foil kite. It looks very much like a paraglider. The kite is 160 sq metres and flies 100-300 metres above the ship. It achieves a 30% reduction in shipping fuel for a cargo liner. Impressive stuff. I saw something online a few years back about using kites for power generation. It appeared to be at quite an early concept stage but I reckon the idea is feasible. There’s so much power in wind and waves and it’s great to see more of it being tapped into.

I Was Starting to Feel Bored With Everything

Published on Mar 4, 2008 in Dreams, Freedom, Kites, Kitesurfing, Power, Recovery, Safety, Surfing, Swimming and Training. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

I Was Starting to Feel Bored With Everything

Everything was becoming more and more boring. Totally dull. I got the occasional bit of a buzz from cycling and enjoyed swimming. But something was seriously lacking.

Over the past week I started easing back into my addictions. Surfing and kitesurfing again. But carefully. This felt good. My injury was holding up ok. Not much discomfort. But keeping to very small waves surfing carefully and kitesurfing lightly in underpowered conditions felt depressing. It was good to be on the water again, building up the next expressive session, but it was just dull. There was no rush, no buzz, no fear.

A good summer SE was forecast yesterday and the morning saw it coming through nicely. Eager to hit it, I rushed out early with my biggest kite. Too early. Gusty and underpowered. It was a good warm up and I took a break for lunch while I waited for it to gather momentum. In the late afternoon it looked solid. There were a few other kiters out. I went out with my regular kite. The swell had jacked up pretty solid. Still gusty but perfectly rideable. I did a few easy runs to warm up. It was tricky to make it out the back through quite consistent swells running close together. Realising that I would not make it over a wave I turned. As I did this I hit a dead patch. The water was glassy. No wind. I looked back to see it baring down on me. It’s one of those moments where you wish you could blow into your kite like a cartoon character to make it power you out of there. I took a breath as it hit me and tried to hang on and somehow get enough power into the kite but got swallowed by the white water. The turbulence felt a bit much to hold onto my board with a dodgy ankle so I booted it free.

What followed was very frustrating. When I surfaced I came within a metre of my board a couple of times. Body dragging upwind in waves for a board in currents can be a fruitless task. Fortunately boards always end up on the beach at my local spot. Usually they go one way but the direction can sometimes be a mystery. I started walking the beach the usual way until another kiter told me his board had gone the other way. As I headed back up the beach some Sunday strollers found it for me. They asked why I did not wear a leash. I explained that it’s too dangerous and I seldom lose my board anyway.

Leashes in my opinion are very stupid and should be banned from our sport. They make sense for surfing. But it’s simply overcomplicated to be attached to a kite and a board simultaneously. It’s impossible to do serious freestyle or even jump safely with a leash. The risk of it shooting back at you are high enough on flat water. In waves this increases dramatically. If you’re using the kite to pull you through a wave and the board is being pulled in the other direction the recoil from a leash can be immense. A leash without stretch could tear your leg off. Unlike surfing it’s also not so easy to swim under water and wait for the board to recoil over your head. Generally the kite keeps you on the surface like a sitting duck. Wearing a helmet is simply not sufficient protection. There have been a number of leash-related fatalities even with helmets.

Eternally grateful that my session could resume I charged out again. This time with some anger and frustration at having an unwanted search mission thrown in. Since I was landing on my healthy back foot I felt free to boost a couple of airs off the waves on the way out. Some nice little bits of hang time fueled my addiction and restored my endorphin balance. This morning my boredom is dead and buried and I’m feeling inspired.

World Speed Record

Published on Mar 3, 2008 in Dreams, Freedom, Kites, Kitesurfing, Power and Speed. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Here goes Tilmann Heinig unofficially breaking the world speed record in perfect austere conditions in Westerhever, Germany with wind speeds between 35 and 45 knots. It was January 26 and it looks icy cold! Being closer to frozen wind often feels more powerful when it’s cold so perhaps this worked to his advantage.

Over a 500-meter course he averaged 50.9 knots. This world record breaking speed was recorded on his GPS and is recognised by gps-kitesurfing.com. He clocked a top speed of 55.2 knots (102 km/h)!

Read more about it here.

Susi Mai

Published on Feb 17, 2008 in Dreams, Freedom, Kites and Kitesurfing. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Susi Mai tells her story. Inspiring stuff.

Injured Improvement

Published on Feb 7, 2008 in Kites, Power, Recovery, Safety and Training. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

Injured.

Again. Injury is part of sport. Impossible to avoid. But so frustrating.

A year ago I adjusted my lifestyle so that I can surf and kitesurf daily. This has been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. In spite of the common reservations on how to make ends meet financially, I found that I had more energy for work and performed far more efficiently and with greater and more consistent motivation than ever before.

The only downside has been two minor injuries that have required weeks of rest from surfing and kitesurfing.

The first was a rib injury sustained during an impact with the water on a late take-off whilst surfing (weird, I know, but it happened somehow) . The second was a ligament/ tendon strain sustained on freak wipeout attempting a floater on a small wave over a shallow sand bar.

The funny thing is that there is very little written about surfing safety. Yet I’ve sustained countless minor injuries in the sport over the years. Admittedly I’ve been kitesurfing for much less time. Perhaps my relatively lower kitesurfing level means that I’m doing more conservative things, but I’ve yet to sustain any form of kitesurfing injury beyond the inevitable muscle pain that’s largely declined as fitness has increased. Perhaps extreme freestyle or kitesurfing surf-style will yield more injuries. Time will tell. But I hope not…

When I’m injured I try and keep as active as possible. Currently I’m swimming every day and doing a bit of cycling.

I’m interested in the idea of coming back stronger after injury. There are many stories of athletes to inspire this. Lance Armstrong and Mick Fanning are keeping me inspired at the moment. I read It’s Not About the Bike while I was still hopping and largely sofa-bound after the ankle injury. I didn’t know much about Armstrong before this. His story is incredible and blew my mind. Something he seems to have in common with Fanning is turning negative experiences into positives whilst competing and throughout life. More and more, lately, I think that great athletes are made mentally. Injury can’t hold you back there.