The Best Way to Learn How to Kite for You!

What!? You still don’t kitesurf? http://portageparkdistrict.org It’s about time you start!

You’re planning a trip to Cape town, or you are one of those unlucky locals who still don’t kite?

Get ready for a new experience, Cape Town is one of the best places for kitesurfing world-wide. With more than a dozen kitesurfing-schools – the choice is all yours!

This variety of kitesurfing schools, courses and lessons can be quite overwhelming  when you don’t know what kitesurfing is all about.

Here’s our guide to help you make a qualified choice when it comes to your kitesurfing course:

1. First of all, evaluate yourself. What are your strengths and weaknesses? How do you personally learn best? What do you want to achieve during your course? Did one method work better than the other in the past? Consider all these points carefully before you search for a school, course or lesson.
2. Some people get nervous quickly if they can’t manage a tricky task during a lesson. If you don’t want such pressure during your course, 1-on-1 tuition is the way to go. If you are, on the other hand, getting tired quickly, you better choose a group-lesson as it will give you more time to rest in between exercises. Definitely go for private tuition if you’re impatient or short-tempered. An instructor deals with this better than another client.
3. Is the goal of your course just to learn how to kite? Then you won’t mind a group course. The other students will have the same goal in mind. Are you looking to achieve a certain skill? Consider private lessons.
4. How about your past experience? Have you made good or bad experience with either group or private tuition? You know best if either one doesn’t work for you.

Most people assume that a private course is always better. We’ve outlined the valid reasons to strive for 1-on-1 tuition above.

Here’s a little bit why group courses can be more effective:

Don’t even start to think that you only progress while you fly a kite. During your own practice, you will be focused on controlling the kite. It can help massively to watch someone else practice while an instructor analyses their mistakes for you.

The two major benefits of group tuition are:

1)   You can rest your body while the other student practises on the kite.

2)   During that time you have the opportunity to learn from their mistakes.

Be aware that learning to kitesurf is tiring for both body and mind. If you get tired and loose concentration, you will significantly slow down your own progression.

Once you have evaluated yourself and made a call as to what ratio suits you better, we can take a look on different course-formats. There are tons of formats out there: 1-2 hour lessons, full-day courses or camps and clinics that run for several days.

At Africa Extreme we believe full-day courses are the way forward.

• The advantage is that you can break down the entire progression in different levels and cover one level per day.
• Most students need about 8-12 hours to be able to get on the board and ride a short distance in both directions.
• That means for you that it takes you only 2-3 days of full-day tuition to know how to kitesurf.

Why we don’t like 2-hour lessons too much?

Especially if there are a few days in between your lessons, you will have to repeat the skills that you have learned and practised in previous sessions again. Just do the math, you will still need at least 8-12 hours of training. If you take a 2h lesson every day, it will take you 6 days to learn to kitesurf. In the best case scenario.

Don’t wait any longer! Book your kitesurfing course now! You could be a kitesurfer tomorrow!