haare wrote: ↑Mon Jul 16, 2018 5:24 am
It is definitely lot harder to learn with strapless. Of course you want to keep straps as loose as possible. Straps tell you where you need to keep your feet. Straps also help with balance because you can direct the board by lifting your feet up also.
I agree. Watching people learn strapless they seem to take longer to generate the muscle memory because their feet change position every new launch. Straps/hooks set up a fixed stance to help learn balance.
I'm sure its possible to learn both ways but I'd always advise folk to start with some type of guide so that you always start with your feet in the same position.
The second advantage is board positioning. With a alu foil, it tends to sink to the neutral position (foil down) fairly quickly. With a floaty/buoyant board this is doubly apparent. Straps/hooks help to keep the board in position whilst leaving you in a good position to start. Once you have starting off cracked, its easy to just hold onto the board with one hand but if you haven't ever successfully waterstarted a foil and aren't used to the daggerboard effect of the mast, its going to make things unnecessarily difficult.
Ultimately, most people forget the problems they had when learning pretty quickly so their advice can be contradictory. I can only remember bits and pieces because I kept a log of what I found difficult. I'd ring a couple of schools and find out how they teach as they are going to know better than most what helps - their business model is about getting people going as quickly as possible.