I agree. About 25% of my students come into lessons with some trainer kite experience (i.e. good kite control, good intuitive feel for steering the kite, basic understanding of wind window, comfortable with the pull of the kite, etc). Without exception these people progress faster. In fact it should be every new kiters goal to fly a trainer kite until they are bored out of their mind and can fly it instinctively without looking at it in a wide variety of conditions.Brent4336 wrote:frankm1960 wrote:
If you go to your first lesson never having flown a kite before that might not be such a bad thing.
Good luck.
Really? IMHO its all about kite control. tons of people have loads of boardsports experience and it does eventually come into play, but at first its all about kite control.
Not sure how time spent on a trainer or any small traction kite can be a negative.
About 10% of my former students had wakeboarding experience, and many of them were astute enough to get a trainer kite. They progress the fastest for sure. People with snowboarding experience do pretty well too if they have had trainer kite experience.
In any case "kite control" is the #1 priority no matter what the relatable board skills are. I tell students that it would be a waste of time to try to get them onto a board until they have the prerequisite kite skills AND safety skills (QR/leash release, water safety, self rescue, etc.). I make these comments with well over 500 lessons in my past including having taught with C kites from 2004 and with the most recent LEI's currently on the market)
I find it to be an interesting misconception when people say "just use the instructors gear so you can crash his stuff and not yours". We do use my gear MOST of the time, however sometimes it's very useful for the student to have at least a partial lesson on their own gear to familiarize themselves more with his own safety systems, kite characteristics (flying, launching, landing, etc). But in fact, by the time I am done teaching with the trainer kite and some supervised flying/body dragging with an appropriately large LEI my students rarely crash the kites violently "tomahawk style", if at all, because they have learned good enough kite control not to, and also understand when releasing the bar is a good alternative, (which obviously was not possible with the old C kites).
It's possible to learn by yourself - but it really does not make sense anymore when there are lots of good instructors, with the risks of injury, with the risk of causing other harm that can lead to bans. I wish people would not encourage the idea of self teaching for that reason alone. It's a good investment (to take lessons) - something that you will value for the rest of your life.