subject: Don't Learn To Kitesurf [print this page] Learning to kitesurf is not about how fit you are, or how good you are at flying kites, or whether you've wake boarded before. Your ability to learn to kitesurf is an attitude. Whether you are naturally gifted or not you will face certain challenges on the way to being a fully fledged kitesurfer and it wont always be easy. Please don't think that just by booking on a course you automatically guarantee that you will learn to kitesurf. You still have to put the hard work, blood, sweat and tears in to actually learn to kitesurf, no one can else can do that for you, Ultimately the only person that can teach you to kitesurf is you.
So forget about kitesurfing fitness and how sporty you are. If you approach kitesurfing with the right attitude its only a matter of time before you learn to kitesurf. I've taught people that have been up and riding in a matter of days, others who have taken weeks and weeks to actually ride but all had one thing in common. The ability to take a knock, to their ego or their body, brush it off and get on with it. It is those who take every little failure as a personal assault, as a confirmation of their inability or ineptitude that ultimately fail. Everyone struggles at one point, as Arnold Schwarzenegger pointed out,
The difference between champs and chumps is the ability to push on through the pain.
If you can do that, then rather than take your mistakes as a personal failure, simply congratulate yourself. Making mistakes is how we learn so the more mistakes you make the more you're learning, and the better chance you have to not only learn to kitesurf, but also of enjoying the process rather than finding it an endless slog during which your ego takes a battering. So get out there, prepare yourself for a challenge, but a very enjoyable and ultimately very worthwhile one, take the knocks as they come, pick yourself up and start again.
