Building Endurance

In this lesson I'm going to share a variety of tips and techniques for building a more efficient stroke and increasing your endurance. This is an advanced lesson that goes deep into the details. If you're looking for the fundamentals of out how pump, check out the Pumping the Foil lesson.

This lesson is designed as something you come back to over the years as you master this sport — not something that you try to absorb and practice all at once. Also, don't feel like you need to hit a specific flight time before going on to the next lessons. If exploration is your goal, you can continue to the lessons on rock starts, beach starts and freefoiling even with only a few minutes of endurance.

Impact of Water Temperature, Wind and Sea Water

First, it's important to understand the impact of the environmental conditions to help set your expectations.

As the water gets colder, the viscosity increases significantly. When the water drops from 25°C to 0°C the viscosity doubles, and the drag goes up by about 20%. When you add the impact of the wetsuit and the fact that you probably don't pumpfoil as much in the winter, you could see a 5x difference in endurance between summer and winter.

Wind will also decrease your endurance. Fighting a headwind is tough, and if it's creating waves that are pushing you off balance, it becomes even tougher. You can pumpfoil any day of the year — but if you're looking to do long runs, watch your weather app, go in the early morning when it's calm, or find locations that are more sheltered from the wind.

Sea water vs. fresh water doesn't seem to have much of an impact on endurance. Any difference you feel is likely dominated by the difference in temperature, wind or waves.

Improving Technique

Improving your technique is the most important thing for achieving long endurance. The tips below are presented in a logical progressive order, but feel free to jump around. Focus on one point at a time, and drill it over and over until it's intuitive. Also, be sure to review the fundamentals presented in the lesson on Pumping the Foil. The tips below are all refinements on those fundamentals.

Fly Lower

On almost every other foil, flying high above the water is what you want to do to reduce the drag of the mast and reduce the required effort. But on the Beta Freefoil this relationship is reversed: the mast drag is minimal and you need to fly the foil deeper in the water to minimize wave drag. The graph below shows how your height above the water impacts the required effort, and why you should fly as low as you comfortably can.

Fly Slower

The last three lessons have all told you to fly fast, but now that you're getting more comfortable handling the foil, you can start slowing down. The graph below shows how the required effort varies with flight speed.

For an 75 kg (165 lbs) rider, the foil takes the least amount of effort at 10.5 km/hr. To scale this to your own weight, apply the following approximation, with your mass in kg:

At first, this speed will seem inconceivably slow for you and if you try to fly at this speed you'll stall the wing or going into a spiral dive. But as you get better, you'll be able to slow down more and more, and eventually get comfortable at any speed on this graph. When I'm going for endurance, I actually fly about 0.5 km/hr faster than this minimum-effort flight speed, because of bit of speed margin helps with rhythm and consistency. As you learn to fly slower, the nose will ride higher and you'll want to put shims between your mast and board to get it back to the ideal angle (see the section below on Adjusting Your Board Angle).

Drop the Wetsuit

Your wetsuit adds weight — but worse than that, it puts rubber bands over your knee joint that you need to fight with each stroke, and it hampers your proprioception, making good technique harder to achieve. You definitely need to stay warm to be safe and have fun, but as you start flying longer and swimming less, your need for a wetsuit goes down.

Instead of upgrading your foil, the best endurance gain per dollar spent is getting a thin, short-legged wetsuit that doesn't go over your knees. Water shoes, like the Vibram 5 Fingers that we use for freefoiling, are a great replacement for wetsuit booties that improve your connection to the board.

Move Your Feet Around

Play around with moving your feet — wider apart, closer together, further forward, further aft — and try to find the position that feels most comfortable. If your legs are too wide apart they have to make bigger motions as the board pitches up and down. If they're too close together, it's hard to control the pitch of the board. If you're too far back, it's hard to pitch the board down and accelerate before the push. If your front leg burns out before your back leg, move your feet forwards. Mainly, just play around with foot position — your body will figure it out and optimize for minimal energy.

Find the Sweet Spot and Go Weightless

There's a sweet spot on the board that feels a bit like jumping off a stiff springboard. If you push in front of this spot, the board just pitches down away from you without giving you a solid platform to jump from. If you push behind this spot the board doesn't pitch much at all, and the propulsion is less efficient. Play around to try to find this spot.

Now, imagine the board is a trampoline, and start focusing on the part where you go weightless. Keep your attention here, trying to feel more and more weightless, more and more relaxed. If you focus on being weightless your body will naturally deliver the appropriate push, your legs will extend more fully, and you will start to find a brief moment of relaxation.

It takes a lot of practice to fully extend your legs, but this is the key to unloading your muscles between pushes, and the only way to start building real endurance. At first, you'll be crouched down low for better balance, but as you master the foil, you'll be able to extend your legs more and more. Just remember, don't try to achieve fully-extended legs by pushing them further out, do it by focusing on going fully weightless. The image below shows the brief moment of relaxation — weightless and extended.

Adjust Your Board Angle

To fine-tune the concept above, we want both legs to be equally extended during the weightless part of the stroke. If the nose is too high, the front leg is bent and doesn't achieve the same recovery. To achieve the right board angle we put shims between the mast and the board. You can purchase board shims here, or 3D print your own by downloading a free 3D model here.

It can take a few sessions to get used to a new angle, but it will be worth finding exactly what works best for you. I ride with no shims if I'm trying to go fast and with a 2 degree shim when I'm doing slow endurance runs, but this can vary depending on rider physiology.

Fly More Sideways

If you turn your body a bit more sideways, instead of facing forwards, you cut down on wind resistance, and get better alignment through your joints. It requires specific practice and can take some time for your body to adapt. The photo on the left shows a typical stance, and the photo on the right, a more streamlined stance.

Explore Different Techniques

When I was learning, I would watch videos of different people's techniques and try to emulate them on the water. I mastered a few distinct styles, and on long endurance runs I would rotate between the styles to spread the load over different muscle groups. Eventually my body consolidated the best parts from each technique together into a few styles that I use today:

• My standard technique involves a moderate pitch amplitude, minimal arm motion, a distinct pulse that is in tune with the foil's natural rhythm, and a cadence of 80-90 strokes per minute. This is what I do 90% of the time.
• If I have a tailwind, I sometimes switch to a light bouncing technique. The board stays almost flat as I bounce lightly, in tune with the foil, at 90-100 strokes per minute. I don't use this much, but once in a while it's helpful.
• For penetrating into the wind or going fast, I use a high-power technique: it involves a large pitch amplitude, the use of the arms and hips to deliver more power, and a slower cadence, of around 70-80 spm, that matches the larger motion of the foil. This means that at higher power, I use a slower cadence — counterintuitive, but it seems to be what works best to stay in tune with the foil.

I can't claim to have developed the perfect technique, however, and I would encourage you to explore other styles that you find. The commonality is that any good technique will be at a much slower cadence than back when you were fighting to reach the 1-minute mark. With improvements in technique and timing, you can deliver more thrust at a lower cadence.

Find Relaxation

There's no way to achieve real endurance without finding relaxation. When trying to calm down our body, the breath is a good place to start. Try breathing more slowly, breathing through your nose, or timing your breath with the motion of the foil. Can you achieve a cadence of 4 strokes per breath? 6?

Next, move your attention from one part of your body to the next, and see if you can get it to relax. Are your shoulders tight? Can you drop and relax them? Are your arms working too hard? Are you able to relax your legs briefly when you go weightless?

Flying With Your Eyes Closed

Finally, my favorite drill: flying with your eyes closed. This is the single most effective drill that improved my technique and endurance. It started with a simple desire to be able to foil comfortably on a perfectly still morning, where the mirror surface eliminates the visual height reference, but it ended up becoming much more. When you close your eyes you can sense your speed by the sound of the foil, your balance with your inner ear, and your height by the angle of the board (when you fly higher, the surface interaction results in a nose-up board angle). Fine tuning these senses gives you better control of the foil — you improve your feel and connection with the foil, reduce the micro corrections that are sapping your energy, and find more relaxation on the water.

Of course, please do this safely. Blink your eyes open every once in a while to make sure you're not on a collision course!

Improving Fitness

This section could be an entire book on human physiology, endurance training and nutrition, but I'm going to keep it as simple and practical as possible by borrowing from Jason Koop's hierarchy of needs for ultra-running. Here's my version of his training pyramid, adapted to foiling:

Just like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the foundational needs on the bottom must be satisfied before it makes sense to move up the pyramid. The blocks at the bottom of the pyramid are responsible for the vast majority of the fitness gains, while the tip of the pyramid is for the elite athletes that have already done everything they can and are looking to get that last 1%.

Training Volume - Time on Foil

It seems obvious, but first you just need to log a lot of flight hours. This is important for improving technique, optimizing neuro-muscular timing patterns, and building sport-specific strength. For most people, the power required to fly is above their anaerobic threshold and it's just not possible to do long steady rides. Instead, doing short intervals is the standard approach for getting more training volume without burning out the body. Mix it up with some shorter sets where you can focus on technique, and longer intervals where you push your body harder and try to maintain good technique through deeper and deeper levels of fatigue.

Rest and Recovery

Physiological adaptation happens through the process of overload and recovery. You need to push your body. Then you need to rest. Until you've achieved exceptional fitness and technique, foiling is a high intensity, Zone 3 to Zone 5 sport, and requires a significant amount of recovery. If you have the opportunity to foil almost every day you will make huge gains in technique and endurance, but in that case I would recommend switching it up between easier technique-focused days, and harder interval-workout days to avoid overtraining symptoms. More commonly, foiling 3 to 4 days per week will give you lots of time on the water and lots of time for recovery.

Nutrition

You need to make sure you're taking in enough food to support your training volume. Cutting weight will reduce the effort required to sustain flight, but it's not what you want to be doing during a high-intensity training program if you want to make the most gains and avoid overtraining. That being said, if you're above your healthy weight, pumpfoiling can be a great excuse to get in shape, and you will definitely notice your endurance improve as the weight comes off. Long story short, with both nutrition and rest, you really need to listen to you body.

Other Supplemental Training: Zone 2 Training, Cross Training and Strength Training

The main problem with trying to build foiling endurance is that, for most people, pumpfoiling is way above their aerobic threshold and it's not possible to get in the long hours of easy Zone 2 training that are the foundation of any endurance sport. So, should you supplement your foiling with Zone 2 bike rides or runs? During the offseason, yes, definitely try to build a strong aerobic base. During the on season, almost certainly, but you need to watch out that it doesn't interfere with your recovery. If you're really trying to optimize for foiling, then foiling will end up being your hard days, and any cross-training should be your easy days. If you're fit enough that foiling is a Zone 2 sport for you, then you're in a different category and you already know more than I can teach in this lesson!

Strength training (ie. lifting heavy weights), it excellent for overall health, longevity and injury prevention. Building up your strength during the offseason is likely to be beneficial for foiling. But during the on season, excessive strength training will definitely interfere with your recovery, and heavy-feeling legs will make it hard to improve technique.

Overall, supplemental training is the tip of the pyramid and is less important than training volume, rest and nutrition. Unless you're training for a world record I would just keep it simple and fun: foil as much as you can, pushing yourself on technique and fitness, build in enough recovery time, and feed yourself appropriately.

 

That's it for my top endurance tips! Don't try to take it all in at once — keep coming back to this lesson and you progress. And definitely don't stop at this lesson waiting to hit a specific endurance milestone. There's a world out there to explore, and the next lessons are going to show you how!

Other Resources

• Yvon Labarth - 8 Pro Tips to Pump Foil Longer: Yvon is a phenomenal pumpfoiler and has a keen intuition for the things that matter. Everything he says here is helpful on the Beta Freefoil, except for decreasing your stabilizer size, which, in contrast to other foils, decreases performance on the Beta. I especially like his tip about going somewhere instead of just flying laps.