Seat Harness vs. Waist Harness

[V]

A lot of people have been asking me the difference. I also think I learned something at Koshkenong yesterday...

Seat harnesses have a couple straps that loop under the leg in a criss-cross fashion to prevent the harness from "riding up" your ribcage. The power of the kite is also transferred more through your hips, instead of lower back, making your body's attachment point to the kite lower than with a waist harness, which would have the spreader bar more at your solarplexis.

When riding a seat harness, its more of a sitting feeling, and your center of gravity is higher, in my opinion, since you're kinda sitting up. Sure, you can lean back, but not when the kite is fully depowered. To depower the kite, you gotta let the bar out. When the bar is fully out with a seat, if you're not sitting up, you can't reach it as easily, unless you have long arms. This also forces you to use your legs more. When overpowered yesterday, my legs were burning holding the kite because I was in a more crouched position to be able to reach the bar. With a waist harness, I would have been able to lean back more with the hook higher on my body, and straighten my legs out a little more. This difference would be like the difference between squatting at the dinner table with no chair, or standing at the bar, eating your food. Having your legs bent at a 90 degree angle really forces you to use the leg muscles.

However, I think the lower attachment point of the seat harness helps on spins. because the weight is distributed more evenly, so it makes it easier to spin under the kite.

However, I think the lower attachment point of the seat hinders board-off tricks. By being hooked in lower at the hips, you have to exert a lot of effort to do a "crunch" (situp) to reach down to grab the board. With a waist harness, being attached higher, its easier to lift the legs to the chest to grab the board. I noticed a difference with loosening up the straps of the seat harness to let it ride up higher a bit.

I've got one of the new Felix Pivec waist harnesses from Prolimit coming in this week to check out the differences even more, since now I can actually tell, as opposed to two years ago, when I didn't know what the hell I was doing. This new wiast harness looks really good since the inside of the harness is molded to fit the shape of your back and gives extra room for the spine. It looks way better than the DaKine equipment. So I think I will be pretty comfortable in this, even though I usually get a sore lower back riding a waist harness. But if anyone has any additional comments, let's hear them!

[bcruz]

I would definitely say that a seat harness makes it easier to properly distribute the pull of the kite to the proper part of your body. This is especially noticable when you get extremely tired or are extremely overpowered. When you are too overpowered, you tend to keep the kite high in the air, which causes an upward pull on the harness.

My choice though is the waist harness. When you have the right size kite and are riding properly, the upward pull should be at about 45 degrees most of the time. Even with a loose waist harness, this should not slide up on you. If the harness is to slide up at all, you just arch your back and it will slide back down to your waist. The freedom you have with a waist harness can't be matched with a seat harness and allows you to be much more flexible and makes riding much easier when you are using it properly.

[Lithium]

I personally prefer waist harness. I think they are more confortable and allow a greater motion between your lower and upper body parts. Also, when u get pulled up by the kite, you dont have those straps going up your legs and aching.

[bcruz]

I agree, just need to make sure to have it setup properly and that it fits very well.

[blade_ripper89]

waist harnesses are betta in my o.p cus u have betta leg movements and for some reason i seem to jump higher in a waist harness? dunno y tho....lol