So I've been thinking about the effects of extreme non-ergonomic forces on my wrists. Feeling them too, actually. As a new power kiter and owner of a bar-controlled Beamer TSR 3.6, I'm concerned that this may not be the most healthy situation.

After my 2nd day out with the kite I noticed that the outsides of both of my wrists were sore. Not sore in a "ouch pain" way, but more of a dull ache way. The winds were pretty strong, and my 170lb body was being dragged all over the place.

As I got to thinking about it later, I realized that the straight control bar isn't very ergonomic in terms of natural wrist positioning. For me, it forces a pretty steep 15-20 degree ulnar deviation from a neutral position. And combining that angle with the high stresses of trying to hold a 3.6m kite in 15 mph wind may not be a good idea.

One thing that makes the situation particularly bad is that I'm just scudding, or worse yet, trying to hold the kite back while sitting in one place. The forces involved would obviously be much less if I were moving with the kite, like on a buggy, skis, all-terrain-board, whatever.

Seems to me this situation is quite like the whole ergonomic keyboard thing for heavy computer users to avoid carpal tunnel syndrome. In fact, I found this research paper on ergo keyboards to be pretty interesting: http://www.ptjournal.org/cgi/content/full/81/4/1038 There are some comments in the Discussion section of that paper that actually scare me when I think about how much more force this kite is putting on my wrists.

So, any comments? Does anyone make ergonomic control bars? Do your wrists hurt after an afternoon scudding session? Maybe I should just get an ergo keyboard for my computer and stop trying to blame my kite!

I do experience some discomfort in my wrist area after a kiting session, I use handles not bars. I don't know what the long term effects of such forces on your wrists. Maybe kiters who have been using handles for a while can elaborate more.

What would be a good design for handles or bars? How about curved handles like "(" and ")"? So, when pulling on the top lines, your hands are positioned like "/" and "\"; for braking, you'd have to slide your hands down to the lower curve part and your hands would be positions like "\" and "/".

I hurt my left forearm years ago (non kiting related) but do find that if I get out for a couple of sessions a week, my arm is toast and requires a few weeks off to recover (if I'm not wearing my harness)

Get a harness and forget about the ergonomics of it all. No more arm pain at all and you can kite for hours. But you need to be more careful when hooked in as you can't dump the kite on killers as easily.

YUP,, The harness is the answer to fatigue.
The idea of a better shaped bar seems like a good one to me. I get pains when I'm lucky enough to get running sessions. I only wonder why the big buck companies haven't done some R+D in that area ? Perhaps a good shape for flying doesn't work as well with handle passes and such ?

If you are flying without a harness then you need to get one. It takes all the stress off of you arms and hands.

Susan

I guess the harness is a good idea. I hadn't really considered that for scudding sessions, and was waiting until winter snowkiting time to move in that direction. Perhaps I'll start looking for a harness sooner. In the meantime, I think I'm going to experiment with a homemade control bar, similar in design to the ergonomic curling bars that weight lifters use. Even at very low stress levels with a harness, I would think that ergonomics will still be important. There's no force applied when typing at a keyboard either, but just holding that unnatural angle for extended periods of time has been shown to be problematic.

Well then. Any suggestions for a good harness?

Dakine Fusion seat harness - but if possible try before you buy.

Pros and cons to both seat and waist depending upon your body build.

I like the fusion but the hook is low and takes some getting used to boarding.

My concern for your experimenting with homemade bars is safety.

Weightlifting bars are heavy so they may be more comfortable but now you’ve got at least a 5# (if not a 10#) bar in your hands so that’s going to create stress and fatigue right off the bat.

Or you go with an aluminum bar but that may be thin and subject to bending?

I wish you luck and maybe you’ll come up with a winner but I really think the simplest thing to do is get a harness – once the load is locked in, I don’t think ergonomics really plays that big a role. Its more of a factor with handles because you can still pull turn and brake turn but mostly you are just balancing the power and the lines not holding them as you are now.

But if you want to experiment there is the Peter Lynn C-quad bar and there is some other variant of that bar from another MFG out there. Look that up and see it that helps at all.

My guess is there are far more injuries from lofting and flying over powered than repetitive motion type injuries.

Harnesses work. I skied with a guy this past winter who separated his shoulder in the middle of the week and kite skied on Saturday (and all subsequent weekends) locked in to a harness. That should tell you something about how little load your upper body needs to carry when the harness is on.

If you plan on using aluminum, 6061 T6 would be a good choice. It's not as brittle as 7075, and will bend a ways before a catastrophic break. It's easily machined and if you can hook up with a local hang gliding shop, they usually have tone of broken tubes you can pick from. There are also airfoil shaped bars of varying widths. It would look very cool, but I can't imagine being able to bend one of those buggers if that's what you're after. Here's a good link: http://www.willswing.com/features/controlBars.asp

I have no wrist/arm pain from riding with handles. With handles the main line is between my index and middle finger. This puts the forces of the kite in a straight line with my forearm bones. When flying quad line kites you only use a little bit of brake to fine tune the flying of the kite which does not put much if any stress on my hands or arms.

When I fly with a bar or do regular windsurfing with a bar/boom my wrists all the way to my elbows are sore very quickly and the pain lasts for a few days. I think because the forces are not directed through your forearm bones. Instead your wrists are in a twisted angle.

But with handles if I don't wear a harness and fly for a while my arms are of course sore from holding on. Get a strop and a harness and you'll do better.

Scott