Book your kite course with Gusty. Read more about our courses here.

Weather and wind are the two main components needed for kite surfing, but there are many other things to consider before launching the kite up in the sky. Trees, houses, hills and other objects on land can cause turbulence and too many times negligent kitesurfers without knowledge have experienced unwanted flights in the air that ended badly.

Spotcheck involves an assessment of the location where you are going to kitesurf to detect possible risks and to ensure that the spot is safe for kitesurfing both on land and in the water.

A trainer kite is a small kite that we use to learn how to pilot the kite in the sky before we move on to the real kites. The principle of a training kite and a real kite is the same, but the training kite is considerably smaller and it will not break when you plunge it straight down in the ground, or in other words a perfect toy for practicing piloting until you can make a safe transition to a large kite. The video below shows how to fly a training kite.

The lesson with the trainer kite involves rigging a training kite, learn to manage its security features and of course learn how to pilot the trainer kite in a good way.

When you’re kitesurfing and when it’s windy it’s usually very hard to hear what people say even if they yell at you, fortunately there are some international hand signals that kitesurfers use to communicate with each other.

At Gusty, you will learn the most important signals and you will be aware that they often come out to be very handy. The girl on the picture shows the sign for “I want to land my kite”. So when’re done kiting and want to land your kite, simply do the land-my-kite-sign and get someones attention. Hopefully there will be someone there to help you right away. Handy when it’s windy!

At a glance of a kite it might look complicated to keep order of all lines, knots, struts etc, and it’s no easy task to figure out how to put everything together on your own. Gusty gives you a thorough walkthrough of the kite’s construction and all of its parts, and you’ll learn how to connect and disconnect the kite with all of the lines connected to the bar.

The bar itself consists of different parts and it’s important to know what they are for and how they are used in a correct manner. After a course with Gusty this will be a no brainer.

Click on A, B or C to get a quick lesson in wind theory and aeronautics. It never hurts to come some what prepared for your kite lesson 🙂

Although you will learn to kite under safe conditions, there are sometimes unforeseen situations where the kite becomes difficult to manage, such as if the kite catch an unexpected strong gust or if the lines get all tangled, making the kite unmanoeuvrable. Fortunately, all modern kites are equipped with security systems that can be activated in a emergency. One can compare the security of a kite with a life insurance, you’d rather not use the systems, but sometimes we’re eternally grateful to have the possibility to just let go of the kite. Unfortunately it is not uncommon that kiters literally spoken don’t even bother to learn how the security systems are used, since they are so rarely used. However, the one who has learned the safety systems, will be grateful in the event of a dangerous situation. An instructor has a certain responsibility for you as a student why we always do a thorough review of a kites safety systems before we move on to exercises in the water.

Aerodynamics

Some basic understanding of aerodynamics are included in the safety chapter, that is how the wind affects a kite and how the power of the kite can be adjusted. In terms of your own and others safety, much is won once you learn to master the power of the wind. After a course at Gusty you´ll know how to curb the wind 🙂

This step means that you learn to explore the “wind window”. Desired pull from the kite can be generated depending on how you control the kite and where you place it in the wind window. You can adjust the pull and if necessary make the kite completely depowered by managing and controlling the kite in a proper manner. You will also learn how manage the important safety systems in conjunction to this lesson.

Body drag means using the kites power to pull you through the water. The purpose of this exercise is to get a feeling for the potential power that can be generated by a kite. We begin by body dragging downwind and then examine the technique to body drag upwind, which is very useful in cases where you dropped your board somewhere upwind in deep water.

One of the elements during level 2 is to launch and land the kite in a safe way. You’ll practise both landing and launching a kite several times during your kite course

We have completed all the theory and you feel comfortable with managing the kite, time to bring up the board! The very last moment before you can call you a kitesurfer is to come up on the board by using the power from the kite. Not that easy and expect some trial and error, but my goal is that you should have surfed at least a few meters by the end of a course. A whole new world that you will never get enough of will be open for you once you pass this little doorstep!

/Gustav – Certified IKO Instructor

The meaning of self rescue is probably something yuo can figure out by yourself. A self rescue is something that rarely needs to be performed, but is it important to know how to act in the event of an accident in deep water. In this exercise you will learn to perform a self rescue, which briefly aims to regain control of a crashed kite and use it as a sail to get into land or shallow water.

As a beginner, you will practice a lot with water relaunching your kite. Often modern kites tend to relaunch from the water with minimal effort from the rider, but sometimes you have the kite in the water in a way that makes it much trickier to make it relaunch from the water. A correct technique saves you many bad words and you get more time for the fun parts. During the water relaunch session you’ll learn how to relaunch the kite from various positions. During the water relaunch step, you learn how to water start the kite from different positions.

As a kitesurfer, you’ll soon be aware that you are not alone in the water. Fortunately, there are some simple right of way rules to avoid collisions and to make it safe for everyone to kitesurf. The rules are pretty straight forward and once in the water things will come naturally to you. Yet we go through these right or way rules, they remind a lot of the right rule for cars, just a little easier 🙂

After a kite session there is always one thing to do before you can go home, pack the kite equipment. It’s similar as to pack a sleeping bag in its tiny sack. The more careful you are the easier it will be to pack it down all together. And just like other materials the life span of your kite equipment can be prolonged by simple actions that we will teach you under the course.

Boardstart, thus to actually get up on the board and ride on the water. It looks so easy, but a bit harder in practice. Here you must keep control on the board, the kite and your body. All at once. It’s like learning to ride a bike. You try and try. You fall and try again, over and over again. But sooner or later you’ll nail it. We at Gusty gives you the very best conditions to make it happen sooner 🙂 A vast part of the second day on the 2-days course will be aimed for this step.

A boardstart can be performed in many ways 😉

As a beginner just learning to get up riding on the board can itself be very thrilling! It’s easy to get so excited that you actually forget to stop (in case you learned to stop)! Every so often it all ends with an accidental stop… Nevertheless, to be able to stop is super important, especially when there are other kitesurfers in the water. During a 3 days course we’ll make sure that you learn to perform controlled stops.

Ride downwind, walk 100 yards upwind, ride downwind, walk 100 yards upwind… We all know how frustrating it can be to not be able to ride upwind, it’s like go snowboarding in a mountain without a lift system. However, there are some tricks to ride upwind both on waves and in flat water. It’s all about finding a balance between body position and pull from the kite, Gusty will be happy to teach you!

Toeside is a relatively simple trick, but where the selection of the board can make things a bit harder. However, with a little guidance from Gusty you’ll soon be able to perform this trick, then it’s just a matter of time until you can make toeside carving turn!

Jumping is an incredible feeling, the higher and longer the greater! The principle of a jump is easy, all you do is aggressively pilot the kite up to zenith. This maneuver creates enough power to make the kite lift you up from the water, now the tricky part begins, we want to be able to land without being smashed against the surface. With Gusty, you will learn the theory behind the jumps and the technique to maintain balanced in the air and finally to land softly in the water.

Transitions can be performed in a number of ways. Easiest is to just make a small jump and change direction, but you can ofcourse add a rotation, a loop, a flip etc. Gusty teach you the technique!

Kite Loop – the ultimate adrenaline rush! Gusty would love to learn you the technique behind a kite loop and you can of course get a live demonstration. One requirement is that you already can jump in a controlled manner, since this trick is not entirely risk free. However, in the end you are relatively safe since we’ll get you equipped with a helmet and an impact vest which makes it much nicer if you crash during the attempts to kite loop. Be prepared for a flight that no amusement park can offer you! 😉

Kitesurfing requires wind

To make sure that you have a good experience from your course some wind in necessary. At least 4-5 m/s is needed for the trainer kite and 5-7 m/s is preferred for the moments in the water with a bigger tube kite.

Weather forecasts are not always to be trusted and if it turns out that there is to little wind or if it suddenly starts to rain cats and dogs then it can be necessary to cancel a lesson which we of course will continue another day when the conditions are better. We at Gusty want you to be happy and to get value for your course why a cancelled lesson of course will be continued another day without extra charges.

You’re safe with Gusty.

As a kiteinstructor it’s our responsibility to make sure that the conditions are safe so that you don’t hurt yourself or someone else why we teach under safe and good conditions.

We are all different. Some learn to kitesurf very quickly while it takes a little longer for others, but everyone can learn! It is in our interest to make sure that you, at the end of a lesson, leave me with the knowledge that you have gotten an extensive instruction in how-to-kite in a safe manner so that you’ll will be able to kitesurf independently after a course at Gusty.

Weather and wind are two decisive factors when kitesurfing, followed by the area that should be “kite-friendly”. Along Swedens west and southern coastlines are some good spots and the classes are held mostly at Habo Ljung (Lomma), Lundåkra (south of Landskrona). Agreements can be arranged to that courses also can be held at for instance Falsterbo (the most southern part of Sweden) and locations near Båstad, Halmstad and Varberg (west coast).

All instruction is done by IKO’s (International Kiteboarding Organization) standards, which means that you get the absolute best and safest training available. After completing the course you will be registered with the IKO with the opportunity to provide feedback on the instruction given to you by Gusty.