Training with drone and radio: Finally glide through the jibe thanks to live coaching with Martin Brandner
Martin Brandner
· 17.12.2025
Martin Brandner's Jibe, Speed, Fitness & Fun Camps will enter their fifth season in 2026. Every year, the busy former windsurfing manager adds a new, innovative detail to his coaching concept. After a self-built simulator, drone videos and mental training, he is now adding a direct radio link to the ear.
If you are an advanced windsurfer and want to improve your riding skills, there is no getting round individual training sessions. Word has long since got around, which is why the various riding technique clinics are so successful. In small groups or in individual coaching sessions with well-trained instructors, enormous progress can be made in a short space of time. Former F2 manager and JP founder Martin Brandner has made it his mission to help jibe students in particular to achieve a perfectly glided power jibe. In addition to his self-developed simulator also on Mental training and, above all, video training with drones. Now he has gone one step further.
Martin Brandner is constantly developing coaching further
Who hasn't experienced it: there's a very hard-working surf instructor who follows his pupil around and tries to give him commands while shouting. The pupil hardly understands anything and the whole thing is relatively ineffective. Martin Brandner has now found a solution to this problem by providing training via radio and drone or from a tower. The surf instructor's voice can now be spared. In 2022, Martin developed his own simulator for his first jibing camp at Jürgen Niens' centre on Rhodes, which was also able to simulate foot control with wind pressure in the sail. He subsequently expanded the training to include mental coaching, in which special videos and a gymnastic stick are used to practise and mentally memorise every detail of the jibe on dry land, so that it can then be recalled on the water. Many participants had an "aha" experience with this method, and word quickly spread about the high success rate for power jibes during the camps, meaning that Martin's camps are always well booked.
A completely new and innovative training approach which, in combination with the videos and daily analyses, has enabled many "aha" experiences and learning progress." (Steffen Keinath)
But Martin wants to make the training even better and, above all, more effective. That's why he has recently introduced a completely new way of coaching participants live. He is connected to them via Bb-Talkin' radios. What's new about this is that he does this from the beach or from a tower or flies above them with a drone while he talks to them and gives them tips and instructions. At the same time, he also films them so that a detailed video analysis can be made afterwards.
What the participants say
The small radio on Astrid Gogolin's helmet makes it possible: "For me, coaching with radio support is like having a personal surf guide in my ear - only without the nagging. Getting direct feedback while you're riding makes a huge difference. No more guessing what went wrong during the last manoeuvre - the correction comes immediately, at the exact moment you need it," she enthuses.
Live coaching from the air
On Rhodes, Martin sits highly focussed on the beach and flies over the participants, talking calmly to the individual surfers. He can switch back and forth between three surfers and give them perfect technique tips as he can see exactly what is happening. He can also observe the surface of the water and tell the students exactly when to jibe, for example to use the wave thrust as a turbo or to catch a zone without choppy waves. He tells them live when the ideal time is to start the jibe and when they should change over and shift.
Jibing course 3.0, with drone and headphones - simply brilliant. It was great fun, highly effective and felt like Martin was sitting right on my shoulder." (Claudia Raab)
The drone footage later enables a unique analysis, as the participants have never seen aerial footage of themselves before. The bird's eye view reveals even the smallest mistakes. At the camps in Dahab, Martin films and coaches the surfers either from a tower that rises two metres out of the water and therefore offers a similar perspective to the drone (which is prohibited in Egypt), or he does it from the beach. Here too, the participants are filmed with very high-quality camera equipment for subsequent video analysis. The participants of the camps receive all videos and photos of themselves on a USB stick afterwards.
In 2026 there will again be two camps organised by Martin Brandner:
All information on these and other Learnivals at surf-action.com
