How to Carve on an eFoil: Speed, Body Position and the S-Turn

Most riders learn to stand up on an eFoil in an afternoon and then plateau for a whole season. The board goes where it is pointed, turns are wide and cautious, and every attempt at something tighter ends with the foil breaching or the rider in the water. Carving is the skill that separates riding an eFoil from flying one, and it is far more learnable than it looks.

This episode covers the full progression across sixteen minutes on the water, filmed at Little Carnelian. Below is what it covers and why each piece matters.

Speed is the thing nobody tells you

The instinct when a turn feels unstable is to slow down. That instinct is backwards. Speed is what keeps the front wing loaded and the board committed to its line, and it is what stops a carve collapsing halfway through. Riders who back off the throttle entering a turn are the riders who fall in it. Carrying momentum through the arc is the single change that makes everything after it possible, and it is where the episode starts for good reason.

Your upper body starts the turn, not your feet

This is the correction that unlocks the most riders. A carve is initiated with the shoulders and chest, and the board follows. Steering from the feet alone produces the wide, flat, unsatisfying turn that most people are stuck with. Once the upper body leads and the lower body holds the platform steady, the board tips into the turn instead of being shoved into it. The episode spends real time on the difference between upper and lower body control because it is the hinge everything else swings on.

S-turns, tick-tocking and hop turns

The progression runs from linked S-turns and tick-tocking, through controlling the tip of the board with body position, and out into big committed S-turns. Done properly a carve develops a springy, loaded feel that riders who have snowboarded deep powder will recognise immediately: the board pushes back, and you ride that push rather than fighting it. Hop turns sit at the far end of the progression, along with a frank discussion of which water conditions actually let you carve well and which ones will fight you no matter how good your technique is.

This takes seasons, not sessions

Worth saying plainly, because a lot of tutorials imply otherwise: these skills came together over multiple seasons of riding, not over a weekend. The episode is honest about that timeline. Knowing the technique shortens the road considerably, but the road still has to be ridden. The final stretch is uninterrupted drone footage of the ride itself, which is the clearest look at what all of this adds up to, followed by a full rundown of the gear used to shoot and ride it.

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