You've Got Gear — Now What?

Look at you — you bought the gear, you got out there, and you keep coming back for more. That's the part most people who talk about "trying wing foiling someday" never actually do. You're not one of them anymore. You're in it.

Here's the good news: the gap between "surviving a session" and "I can't wait to rig up again" isn't more gear, more luck, or more time on the water than you've already put in. It's a short list of specific skills. Close that gap and everything about this sport opens up — longer rides, real turns, the feeling of actually flying instead of fighting to stay up. Here's exactly how to get there.

Five skills, five short videos from Damien LeRoy — a former world champion kiteboarder turned wing foil instructor whose tutorials are some of the clearest out there. Work through these in order; each one builds on the last.

1. Consistent takeoffs. Getting up and staying up, not just popping onto the foil for a second before falling back off.

2. Efficient pumping. The difference between exhausting yourself in ten minutes and riding all session.

3. Holding a controlled line. Riding steady and on-purpose instead of white-knuckling wherever the wing takes you — worth rewatching even past session one, since most of it clicks differently once you've actually fallen a bunch.

4. Your first turns.

5. What's actually holding you back. The habits that keep people stuck at this exact stage.

If you taught yourself this far, a single lesson now can do more than five more solo sessions — not because you need a full course, but because an instructor can spot the one habit you can't see from inside your own body. Wing position, stance, over-sheeting — the small stuff that's invisible to you and easy to lock in as muscle memory if nobody points it out. This isn't the "should I take lessons at all" question (see Lessons vs. Teaching Yourself for that) — you're past it. This is a habit check, and it usually pays for itself the first session it saves you from reinforcing a bad pattern for another month.

Your first setup was sized to get you started safely — it may not be the right size anymore. If you're still fighting your foil to get up, or your wing feels like a chore to hold, that's often a sizing issue, not a skill issue. Run your current weight and progress back through the gear calculator to see whether it's time to size down.

Fine-tune your setup →

The mistakes that end progress at this stage are usually predictable — and avoidable if you know they're coming.

• Mistakes & Safety

None of this is a race. The riders who end up loving this sport for life aren't the ones who progressed fastest — they're the ones who kept showing up. You already are. Now go put in the work and earn the good stuff.