Regular and Switch riding in wingfoiling

 Your favoured stance – Regular or Goofy?

• Before we discuss the difference between riding regular or switch, we’ll first explain the difference of your prefered stance.
• As with most board sports (e.g. skateboarding, snowboarding, surfing etc) you’ll have a prefered stance. This is either right foot forward, or left foot forward. If you’re not sure what this is, a good test is to ask someone to push you from behind and see which foot naturally moves forward first.
• Someone who prefers to having their left foot forward is know as ‘regular rider’ – apparently this is due to more people prerefering it.
• Someone who prefers to have their right foot forward is know as ‘goofy rider’ – don’t take it personally!
• Be careful not to confuse this with regular and switch riding, although it is linked. As you will see below.

So now we know which stance we are, we’ll now understand how this impacts our riding stance.

Riding in a ‘regular’ stance.

Riding ‘regular’ in wingfoiling is when we have our back to the wind, our heels are pointing upwind and we’re holding our wing down wind. We can be either riding from left to right, or from right to left.

This is likely the most comfortable riding position as we have better control and balance, making it easier to perform manoeuvers such as the foiling gybe.

But as we went through above, you can be riding a ‘regular stance’ but be going in the unconventinal direction. If you prefer to have your right foot forward (a ‘Goofy’ rider), when riding regular and going left, you will have your left foot forward. This might feel slightly unconventional and slightly harder to start with. Vica verce for a ‘regular rider’

Riding in a ‘switch’ stance.

Riding ‘switch’ in wingfoiling is when we have our chest to the wind, toes pointing upwind, but are still are holding our wing down wind. We can be either riding from left to right, or from right to left.

How can you do this I hear you ask. Well we’re able to twist our body and arms in a way that allows you to position the wing ‘behind’ you.

This is likely a harder riding position as we are twisted and control and balance are more tricky.

Similar to the regulary stance, riding switch can be done in both directions – from left to right and from right to left. Again, you can have your prefered foot forward, or your non prefered foot.

How to ride switch whilst wingfoiling.

Now you have grasp what switch riding is from the above descriptions, learning how to ride switch will open up many of the intermediate manouvers.

There are predominantly two ways to enter a switch riding stance – first is to initiate and performance a foot switch and the second is to ride into switch from a toeside gybe. We have guides on both of these, so check out how to gybe, or how to switch feet (coming soon).

The trick to riding switch is:

• Practice on land holding your wing in the switch stance
• Understand flexibility in your upper body and core can help (work on stretches to increase your range of movement)
• Pull in on your back hand to gain the needed power
• Experiment moving and twisting your rear foot in order to allow your body to rotate more
• Ride a bit downwind as you get used to this new riding style
• Keep practicing! It will feel strange to start with, but overtime you will get used to it (as with all new techniques learned)