This tutorial explains the kiteboarding raley in detail.
Let’s run-through the steps.
Ride with medium speed.
Park the kite and avoid steering it.
Turn your board downwind to reduce line tension and make it easy to unhook.
Unhook, then as long as you’re at a manageable riding speed, carve hard upwind.
Lean your full weight back, and edge the board.
As you carve upwind, line tension increases and starts to drag your upper body forwards.
At this moment, it’s important to keep edging with your lower body, especially the back
foot.
This will whip your legs back and launch you into the air.
Allow your legs to swing back fully.
Then, as line tension drops, swing your legs and body forwards.
Then try to pull in with your arms, to bring your hips towards the bar on landing.
Touch down with the back foot first, then bend your knees and hips to absorb the impact.
Let’s look at that riding to the right.
Medium speed, no more.
Keep the kite in position and don’t steer.
Turn downwind and unhook.
Carve upwind hard.
Even as the kite pulls, edge with your lower body.
Swing your legs back.
Then swing forwards again towards the kite.
Many people think the aim of a raley is to make this shape in the air.
Actually, the purpose of this manoeuvrer is to enable you to swing your body towards the
kite, and get your hips to the bar.
If you do this well, then you should notice that your line tension is gone on landing,
the bar feels loose.
This slack feeling is very important, as it sets you up for future unhooked tricks.
You will struggle to do an effective raley if your body is tense at the moment of launch.
If your core is crunched, your legs won’t swing back.
It’s then almost impossible to move your body towards the kite.
You will land with the bar pulling hard and far away from your hips.
It’s also difficult to raley if you don’t head downwind initially.
If you don’t ride downwind enough, there won’t be room to turn your board upwind
before the kite drags you.
The speed you’re riding as you unhook controls the potential size of your raley.
Riding in slower gives a smaller raley.
Riding in faster gives a bigger raley.
Of course, if you ride too slowly, the board will sink.
And, if you ride too quickly, you will struggle to engage the edge.
Kite position is also important during the raley.
You don’t want the kite to climb.
However, it’s very common that people steer up when trying to raley.
This is because your back shoulder is slightly further from the bar, and tends to pull harder.
If the kite climbs too much, you end up doing an unplanned unhooked jump.
To avoid this, try shifting your hand position slightly lower on the bar.
Your kite should hold position, or drop slightly, during the raley.
When practising, you can reduce risks by using less wind, less board speed and a higher kite.
This won't look great, but you can gain lots of experience with minimal impact.
Once you build experience, you can start to raley with the kite parked a bit lower, and
using a bit more speed.
For more unhooked tricks, access our OFF THE HOOK playlist.
Thanks for watching and safe kiting.