Kitesoul Magazine #10 English Edition

a lot of support lengthens your
session time....
It goes without saying that the
greater is the support the more
your back will be grateful for it!
MEDIUM (the harness looks very
proportionate)
This typology is a good compromise
for all uses.
LOW (the harness appears very
compact and with a downward
unbalanced shape)
It allows a perfect freedom of
movement against a lesser lumbar
support and hence you will
have an earlier fatigue feeling.
Support distribution
To further complicate the above
distinctions, it must be considered
that, given the same
height support, we must observe
how the "support" has
been deployed. For example,
some harnesses shape may
have a greater support on the
higher area, less support on the
middle area and no support at
all in the lower area so not to
limit front bending. In short, if
you carefully observe the shape
of a harness you will already
be able to understand a lot of
it but, unless you "touch” it and
bend it with your hands, you will
not understand much else.
Hips support
The various models may look
similar from their back design,
but then they differ from one
another for their lateral support.
For example, for wave riding the
profile of the harness may seem
to have the back part similar to
the others but if you look at the
side profile you'll notice less
support in order to not impede
rotations too much.
Flex
The FLEX is related to how rigid
is the material used for making
the support.
A lot of people think that a greater
thickness equals a greater rigidity.
This is not always true as
the degree of resistance of the
material used for the stuffing
does not define rigidity by default
and, as a matter of fact,
this turns out to be often the
opposite ... Greater rigidity, that
is, little flex has without a doubt
three major advantages, especially
for wave riding:
A - Being rigidity undeformable
by definition, the traction
is evenly absorbed by your EN-
TIRE back therefore generally
with less pressure on unwanted
pulling points of your body. In
other words the kg transferred
on each cm of a rigid harness
are less than the ones on a
soft harness where the pulling
points depend on the shape of
the back of the rider and on the
harness design and these pulling
points can be very traumatic
and sometimes cause protrusions
or other dorsal pathologies.
B - A more rigid structure does