How to ride toeside?

Toeside is a fun and relatively easy trick to learn. This article is written by 2x Danish champion & 2x Turkish champion in kitesurfing, Emely. Emely also has extensive teaching experience for beginners and advanced students from all over the world and now runs her own kitesurf travel agency as, among other things, offers kitesurfing trips around the world.

What does it mean to "ride toeside"?

"Toeside", is one of the first tricks you can learn in kitesurfing. In toeside, you slide the board around so that you sail on the toe side of the board and not the heel side, hence the terms "toeside and heelside".

Toeside is an important trick to learn and it can open up many other fun and exciting tricks as well as other kitesurfing disciplines. If you e.g. want to learn to wave kitesurf, then it is a prerequisite that you can master sailing toeside.

When am i ready to try toeside?

Typically you can try it after you have learned to go upwind and learned to turn. The way you normally ride on the board is called "heel-side". The opposite is therefore toeside, where you slide the board around and have the weight in your toes instead of your heels.

How to ride toeside?

Both the position of the kite and the position of your body are important when you go toe side.

Start by riding in a normal way. Don't ride too fast and not too slow
Place both hands close together in the middle of the bar, this is to make the kite control more direct and you can also avoid mistakes
You can possibly just control the kite with one hand, so that you have more movement to be in the new position
Keep the kite at a 45 degree angle
Push your rear hip forward so that the rear part of the board is now forward and the part that was previously forward is now back
Now put the weight in your toes instead of your heels
You now have a new back leg. Put the weight in the back leg and stretch the front leg
When you want to go back to sailing heelside, you simply push the "new rear hip" forward

Typical mistakes I see my students make:

When you slide the board, be aware that you are not going to pull the kite up at 12. It will make you lose the power and possibly sink into the water. There must be power in the kite for it to pull you. When you are toeside you can adjust the power by pulling your bar in for more power or sending it away for less power.
Try not to maintain height when riding toeside, you can sail a little downwind, but not too much, as you may risk your kite losing power or slackening and thereby inverting (the kite falling into the power lines)