How you can finger flip? So a finger flip is just spinning the board around and catching on the same rail. You can do this trick in any of your board-off maneuvers, it adds a little bit of flare. Just something a little different if you're looking for something to add into your jumps and uh you know, have a little a new challenge and so it's a pretty simple trick a bit of practice and in this video we'll go through the steps on how you can land it.

So to do the finger flip essentially what you do is you're trying to hold the board right in the middle of the rail so that it's balanced on either side the the thing about the finger flip is it can take a little bit of practice just getting it and so, the tip number one is to actually practice this with an old board on the beach take your fins out so you're not going to break any fins off. I practice with an old surfboard just on the lawn and just practice spinning it spinning and spinning it the first time i did it i just was like banging my thumb banging my fingers like it takes a little bit of practice to actually get the timing right but once you get it right it becomes a lot easier. One of our mates, Graham he sort of gave me the tip is as it's spinning you kind of use your palm to let it bang on and grab like that that's a really good tip instead of trying to clutch to it. But you'll find your own technique. Again it's just that bit of repetition on the beach or on the on the grass where you can practice until you get used to it because the number one thing i would say is you really want to dial it in on the land otherwise you're just going to be falling and body dragging and body dragging when you're out there on the water so it's a nice trick just to practice over and over and over again. Get the finger flip done on the land be comfortable with it and then you can practice it on the water.

Now let's talk about how you actually spin it. So what i like to do is actually you sort of i lift up a little bit with my hand and then pull in like that and so you're spinning the top of the rail towards you and what that will do is it flicks it around you move your hand up and then as the rail's coming back around you try and meet it right there so that's the motion so you sort of up and in like that and let it flick the other thing that uh you might want to do is hold it down a little bit you actually do it when you're in the air you actually hold it a little bit lower than your head because sometimes if you flip it right up here you find that it actually hits you, so it's nice to kind of be hanging a little bit down and then you sort of flip it like that and uh that definitely feels a little safer you'll find that uh that's definitely the way that i like to do it anyway.

Okay so now let's talk about what you can do when you're on the water. I think the number one tip is that you can already very comfortably do a board off in the in that direction so you're basically doing a nice board off jump you feel comfortable in your launch landing and when you're doing the board off you really want to try and grab that center of the board that's going to help because you really need the center, right in the center, in order for it to flip evenly and essentially with the board off when you're grabbing with your front hand as you come up you're going to be positioned perfectly for it you'll still have your back hand on the bar you've got your front hand flying and then you can spin it during the board off. You're looking for that moment where you kind of feel like you're swinging a little bit so you're not it's not right at the start probably not right at the end, it's sort of right in the middle where the wind actually starts to lose some of its power. If you try and do a finger flip pointing up into the wind the board will blow back into you and if you try and do a finger flip, the winds on my back, down here and you try and flick it away it'll blow away from you so, what you're trying to do is actually have the wind running directly down the rail of the board so as you're doing the board off you'll be flying through the sky and the board needs to be pointing directly downwind that way when it rotates the wind doesn't actually catch it and it lets it rotate right back into your hand.

Okay so for another tip for this, i like to wax my rails. We're at a sandy beach at the moment so it makes the board look horrible but i wet basically wax underneath and all the way around and if you've got a pad it's nice if your pad gets close enough to the edge that your thumb can catch the pad as well. Now, coming from a surfing background when i saw someone for the first time waxing the bottom of their rails i sort of laughed... was like oh i don't know about that because surfing that might really affect your surfing, but with the kite it doesn't make any difference really because the kite's just pulling you through the water so easily so it makes a big difference to being able to do grabs so particularly for the finger flip where sometimes you just catch it just by your thumb you know you want to have that wax in that group there uh particularly when you're learning i find for all of my jumps these days i wax up the rails because i hate to have a session when i'm going out there and then you know i'm body dragging around just because i keep missing the grab so for me a little bit of wax all over the rails has helped a lot

So just to quickly recap the finger flip basically for the finger flip the way i like to do it is during just a regular board off to to learn it uh get comfortable with your board off and i find doing your board off on your most comfortable side is better as well so you're not thinking too much about the board off and you've got time to just do the finger flip what that means for me because i ride regular stance is i basically am doing the finger flip in my left hand because that way i'm flying the car with my right hand and landing with my comfortable riding stance then as you go up you're looking for that moment where it doesn't feel too windy you're sort of sailing a little bit and you're going to have the board in the center of the rail and basically lift up pull it in let it flip grab it like that now you're still sailing through the air and you landed exactly how you would normally land your board off a little wax on the rails will help practice lots at home with an old board on the lawn just flip it flip it flip it until you're comfortable with it and you'll have it easily

That's it for this tutorial. thanks for reading and we'll see you in the coming videos and tutorials.

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