Foot Straps
(Written June 2020)

At first thought it seems that the topic of "Foot Straps" is pretty simple and straight forward. Further analysis, however, reveals that foot straps are actually quite complicated and very important. There are many factors to consider including tightness or looseness of the strap, height of the strap, width of the strap, inboard or outboard placement, forward or rearward placement, narrow stance or a wide stance, feet on top of the board or feet on the side of the board, riding in waves or flat water or freestyle? Many, many factors to consider.

Let's start with stance as this can be nicely illustrated on a spectrum from narrow to wide stance. 
                                           Narrow Stance                                                                  Wide Stance
                                                Hydrofoil <--> Freeride <--> Freestyle <--> Slalom <--> Wave

Now, let's discuss it. Your stance on the hydrofoil can be very narrow (feet closer together) because there is NO CHOP with a hydrofoil. The board doesn't bounce, so you can stand taller. Likewise, with very large windsurfing freeride boards you will typically be using a very large sail because the wind is light thereby creating very little chop, so you can use a narrow stance as well. Maybe not as narrow as a foil stance, but still fairly narrow. The narrow stance also helps you to be 'taller' which allows you to push away from the board more in order to sheet in the sail harder particularly when driving upwind.  On the opposite end of the spectrum, you need a very wide stance on your wave board so that you can get lower. You want to be lower when wave riding to be in a 'surfy' stance and so you can control the board. For freestyle riding you want your stance somewhat narrow to get greater pop, but also wide enough apart for some stability. And you can see from the spectrum above where slalom fits in. Of course, all of this depends on your height. Shorter people need a narrower stance than taller people in general.