All beginners are taught the following steps, in this order:

Basic theory How to manipulate your kite in shallow water (or on land) How to use the power of the kite to get dragged in the water (called body-dragging) How to take off with a board on your feet How to sail in both directions How to turn

We are going to concentrate on Step 4: Taking off.

Here is what your teacher would tell you:

Stabilise your kite in the air above you (12 o’clock) Sit in the water while holding your board in your hand Put your feet into the straps of your board Pull your kite back just a little (at 11 o’clock) (See drawing) Pull your kite in one motion into the power zone (almost to the horizon) — This will pull you out of the water immediately and get you moving. Bring your kite back up before it hits the water ☺

The takeoff: this is what your kite should do.

Watching people go through this learning curve is fascinating. The beginners are all bobbing in and out of the water. One second they’re pulled out of the water the next they are back in, never gaining any speed or momentum.

Before trying this out myself, I spent some time working on understanding why this was happening and what I could do to avoid bobbing and instead sail away after my takeoff.

I sat down in the sand and started analyzing what the more confirmed kitesurfers were doing in comparison to the beginners.

That’s when it hit me: The beginners were half-assing it. That’s all.

Beginner kites were not coming even close to the horizon whereas confirmed kiters were flying down towards “6 o’clock” as if their lives depended on it.

Notice the difference in between a beginner’s and an expert’s kite trajectory for the takeoff

What struck me most is that it has NOTHING TO DO WITH TECHNIQUE. All you have to do is pull on one side of your bar, hard (the bar is the equivalent of a steering wheel for your kite).

If you don’t pull hard, you kite moves slowly and gives you less power. It’s not rocket science, yet 99% of beginners only pulled half way. When it was my turn, I shut my brain off, and did exactly what the pros were doing. I pulled hard, and waited for my kite to get low before pulling back.

I was out of the water speeding on my first try.

A few minutes later I made a sailing mistake and got slammed face first at high speed into the water, but that’s another story. So why do most beginners only pull halfway? Because they feel shy. They aren’t comfortable in this new situation so they tiptoe around instead of “jumping in”.

Here’s how their inner voice goes: “Let’s just pull a little and see what happens. It might work. I’ll pull harder next time.” What’s interesting is that they ended up crashing way more times than I did.

I convinced myself not to feel shy, rehearsed the move on land and in my mind many times, and was determined to simply replicate what I saw the experts doing. Two hours later, I was having a blast sailing around, while the others were still “pulling a little more to see what would happen”.

The reason I’m sharing this story with you is because it’s such a clear example of how timidity slows down the learning process. Remember, this step didn’t call for any technique whatsoever. All you need to do is pull on a bar hard enough. In this example after hours or sometimes days of trying, the beginners eventually all ended up pulling hard on the bar, and making it.

They all followed a slow process that led them after many unsuccessful tries to mistakenly pull hard enough once, see that it worked, and only then internalize the lesson and start applying it consistently.

Ironically, these people crashed many more times than I did because they were playing it safe and trying not to crash. They thought they were taking less risks when in fact they were insuring a longer and tougher learning process.

Fast learners know this trick of the mind and apply it all the time. Refuse to be shy. Don’t overthink it. Once you know what to do, do it all the way. Jump in. You will learn faster, and you will have a lot more fun in the process.

This is one of my favorite techniques to accelerate my learning curve in any activity especially if it involves physical skills. Fast learners take the plunge and go all the way. They harbor the crazy hope that they might get it right on the first try.

And sometimes they do.