Tutorial: Aerials & Wave Riding – the best tips for action on the Baltic Sea

A tutorial that contains more text than pictures is usually a very poor one. But sometimes that’s exactly what’s needed – more words – to get to the bottom of the secrets, and I hope that this might help some of you crack the aerial. These are, above all, tips that have helped me personally. And sometimes, amongst these supposedly ‘little tips’, there’s been a real game-changer. That was the case when I watched Graham Ezzy during his Windsurfing Masterclass I was lucky enough to tag along, and Graham gave his students the tip to bend their knees even before (!) they go into the bottom turn. What sounds so trivial and hardly relevant actually helped me make a breakthrough. It’s actually the key to generating the drive you need to get back up to the lip at speed. And that’s exactly what we need for powerful cutbacks and also for aerials.

Note: Anyone interested in a windsurfing masterclass with Graham Ezzy has regular opportunities to take part.- You can find all the information here.

The footage was filmed by surf editor Manuel Vogel during a winter test session in Dazendorf. The wave was barely a metre high but broke with real power – and that’s perfect for practising. You can find the full clip above – have a look! We’ve gone into more detail on the individual key points below.

Preparation – Building up speed for the aerial

Graham Ezzy taught me how important preparation is, even when riding a wave. Because by anticipating part of the movement, we can minimise the subsequent part, and it all becomes easier. Up until then, I’d often made the mistake of surfing down the wave at high speed, hoping to reach the top of the lip with that momentum. I didn’t have the time to take a proper look at the wave face and prepare myself. As a result, the timing and the aerial manoeuvre often became a matter of chance. So do exactly the opposite. Even if it means failing at first and not managing to build up enough speed. It’s the right way to get the timing right, above all, and to stay close to the wave face. The latter is what we need for the aerial.

So position yourself on a wave that’s still round. Prepare by steering the board slightly downwind whilst keeping your eyes on the wave face. Grasp the board with a wider grip and start bending your knees right from the start. Look for a wave that closes in at the end of your bottom turn or ride. That’s where the magic happens.

1. Footwork – the pump track on the wave

Bending your knees before you even make the bottom turn is the key to generating drive and the necessary speed with the board. This is because bending your knees in advance allows you to straighten your legs further and further during the bottom turn, thereby applying constant pressure to the rail and building up speed. You can use this trick for powerful carved turns just as much as for pumping and surfing along the wave face. It takes a bit of feel and experience. If you lose your flow, your legs might end up fully extended before the turn is even complete. These are often the moments when, despite plenty of lean and initial speed, you run out of steam at the top of the lip. Generating drive with the board allows you not only to stay close to the wave face, but also to pick up speed even with little wind and low pressure in the sail.

Look for a wave that closes in at the end of your bottom turn or ride. That’s where the magic happens

To better understand the drive – or rather, the pumping action – along the wave face whilst on your board, it helps to think of a pump track, where you can build up speed using pushing movements – for example, on a bike – without pedalling. You make yourself small and light at the top of the hill, then make yourself heavy on the descent to push the bike down into the dip. The same applies to a bend, where you start off in a compact position and gradually stretch out more and more as you go round the bend. Once you’ve got the hang of it, this pushing motion generates acceleration that allows you to emerge from the bend at a higher speed than you went into it. The same principle – though not quite as straightforward, as we’re not dealing with solid concrete – also applies to windsurfing or surfing.

2. Drive from the sail

You can also generate drive with the sail. There are wave sails that naturally provide plenty of drive and carry you through the turn with plenty of power (In the wave sail test, you’ll find suitable models with plenty of drive). Sails like these can be a great help when you’re starting out, but you can manage without them. To allow the sail to generate proper pull, extend your front arm during the bottom turn. The more you manage to lean forward with your body whilst tilting the sail in the direction of travel, the greater the pull in the sail will be. In light winds, here’s a handy trick: grip the front hand further back towards the harness lines. This will put more pressure on the sail.

3. Drive in a straight line

If we were to plot the curves we trace whilst riding a wave, we would see a sine curve which – depending on what we want to do – takes on different shapes. The trick to landing an aerial is to stay close to the wave and on the wave face as you ride it down. That’s the whole secret and the key to landing the aerial in front of the wave.

The sinusoidal curve we trace along the wave face is flat and elongated. This means that the path to an aerial differs significantly from carved power turns, where we take a wide sweep away from the wave face before surfing back up the wave as vertically as possible. My tip: Try riding this flat turn even in small waves.

The Aerial

Lars Petersen, one of Denmark’s best wave surfers, once said in his instructional videos: "It’s all about timing.". Although he’s absolutely right about that, I’d like to give you a tip: try to get the word ‘timing’ out of your head. That’s because ‘timing’ describes the result, not what you need to be focusing on as your goal. Instead, think of it as wanting to give the wave a ‘high five’.

1. High five with the wave

The High Five is a concept developed by Graham Ezzy. It involves not only breaking down a complex sequence of movements into a simple command, but also making a small adjustment to your mindset – which, in itself, can make a big difference. It’s a brilliant trick for applying past experiences – even those unrelated to surfing – to unfamiliar situations, so you intuitively know what matters. In this case, simply thinking about a ‘High Five’ automatically ensures you have the right line of sight, speed, body tension and timing. In short, the high five frees you from the burden of having to keep lots of instructions in your head, and the great thing about it is that the timing happens automatically. I also like the idea of a high five because it takes the fear out of the situation. A high five sounds much friendlier and more manageable than the idea of heading straight into the heart of the wave as it lashes out with full force.

So the aim is to clap along with the wave, to give it a high five. And you do that with the underside of the board. You hold it out to meet the wave just as it’s about to break.

2. Body tension during take-off

Manuel gave me the tip not to think of an aerial as a classic take-off, where you actively jump off and use the wave as a ramp, even though the sequence of movements is the same. It helps to remember to let the wave do the work and provide the pop. To make this work, tense all your muscles during the ‘high five’ and counteract its force by straightening your legs. The more you manage to hold the underside of the board against it, the better it can do its job – that is, transfer all its energy to you and propel you into the air towards the beach.

You might well find yourself facing the same problems at the start as I did: you try your hardest to do everything right, but there’s no sign of a pop, let alone an aerial. The board sticks to the wave. This is often down to a lack of speed or the wave not being steep enough.

Let the wave suck you in and spit you out

It’s not uncommon, however, for it to be down to a lack of flow. A useful trick here is to imagine being sucked in by the wave and then spat out again. When a wave is about to break, it propels the water from below upwards. It sucks in the water beneath it before crashing over. Try to mentally ride along with this sucking motion and catch the shape of the wave with the underside of your board. So let yourself be sucked in as you head towards the lip; as you do so, bend your knees again – whilst your legs are still straight from the bottom turn – and then, at the top, let yourself be spat out towards the beach with a high five and your legs straight once more.

3. The flight phase in an aerial manoeuvre

If everything went well, you’ll now be in the air and can tuck yourself in again. Keep your front leg outstretched whilst pulling your back leg towards you. You can improve your aerial by lifting the windward edge of the board to generate lift. You can’t see this in the photo sequence because I’m kicking the board away slightly with my back leg. That’s fine too – the main thing is to be in the air.

Tips for tuning your kit

Finally, a few tips on equipment: You might find that, especially in sideshore conditions and light winds, it can be difficult to build up speed along the wave face at the start. You’re more or less directly on a downwind course and have less pressure in the sail. A bit of fin tuning can help you get over these initial hurdles. A twin-fin setup or a single fin can make a big difference in getting the board to move more freely and thus generate more speed. With a quad setup, the board sits more firmly in the water. Due to their small size, the fins generate little lift, and the side fins are also set at a slight angle, which is excellent for carved turns but can act as a braking factor when riding in a straight line. A compromise between the extremes of a single-fin and a quad setup is the thruster setup, which combines manoeuvrability and lift. If you only have a quad setup available, it can help to screw the centre fins further back in particular. The same applies to the mast foot. If this is mounted further back, the board breaks free more easily and gets into a glide more quickly.

Appropriate sail tuning can also help to generate more power – and therefore speed – for riding waves or performing aerials. If the sail has, for example, two eyelets on the clew, the upper one usually provides more drive.

Have fun practising!