Ray-Board’s shape moves efficiently through the water while keeping your arms, head, and shoulders in a relaxed and comfortable position.
Ray-Board’s shape allows you to be in a more natural position, with your elbows bent and forearms directly supported. The lower elbow position allows your hips and legs to achieve a more favorable alignment, and you can position your head in or out of the water to suit your training objective.
This helps relieve back and shoulder pain, allows you to kick longer, and allows a better core workout during kicking.
Tilting your head back to look forward creates stress within the shoulder joint and leads to tight muscles in your neck and shoulders. Over time this can lead to muscular imbalance, headaches and potentially lead to injury. (Try reaching up high over your head. Now, look up at the sky/ceiling. That is the uncomfortable position you are in with a regular kickboard.)
To avoid shoulder pain, swimmers often hold the kickboards fully outstretched and arch their backs. Unfortunately, this is an unnatural position that overextends the back.
Wide at the bottom and narrow at the top, Ray-Board’s shape fits the natural position of your arms and shoulders.
The wings of the board allow for a bent arm position to support and balance the weight of your body. This can lead to a better core workout (not just legs).
The shape of the board cradles your forearms and elbows, putting your body in the correct position.
Ray-Board easily glides through the water with little resistance.
Long hours in the pool place large demands on your shoulders. Give them a break while you kick.
Have you been cheating on your swim workouts because you don’t like using a kickboard? Maximize your pool time with Ray-Board.
Mix up your swim exercise routine by working your leg muscles. Ray-Board makes water exercise comfortable and fun.
Ray-Board was designed by Norah Kolb, a high school student in Connecticut. Norah swims competitively for her high school team and the local USA-Swimming team. Her long hours in the pool led to shoulder pain, and she would often swim kicking sets on her back. After icing her shoulder daily and visiting the physical therapist twice a week, Norah realized it was time for a solution. And what better way to create an invention than through an 8th-grade science project!
In 2018, Ray-Board was born. With a few sketches of an idea and an application to the Connecticut Invention Convention, our journey began.
After months of tinkering with the design, and testing prototypes with teammates at the local high school pool, we packed our bags for the Invention Convention and won the ESPN award for best sports-related invention!
Later that year, Ray-Board was selected from among 80 applicants to present at Connecticut’s local shark tank-like competition. Norah won the top prize of $12,000 to invest in the development of Ray-Board.
After 2 years of making prototypes, testing different foams, and working with suppliers, we are proud to deliver the finished Ray-Board.
We moved from hand gluing foam blocks from Home Depot, to fully functional (but really expensive) machined prototypes, to a molded EPP foam design, which is lightweight and durable.
We are now looking to complete the final step, manufacturing a Ray-Board ready for commercial sale.
By purchasing a board you are helping us cover the cost of the final tooling, and making Ray-Board available to everyone.
So if you’re wondering whether a high schooler can actually complete this project and deliver your purchase, rest assured, Norah’s parents have engineering degrees from MIT, Stanford, RPI, and Case Western, and this isn’t the first product they have brought to market.
Although we have made a few sample production units, our manufacturer says we need final tooling for volume production. Molds are very expensive. We are hoping to sell at least 200 Ray-Boards on Kickstarter to raise money for the mold and begin production. A limited quantity (55) of Ray-Boards is currently available in blue, and all additional orders will be in a color determined by your votes in this Kickstarter campaign.
Here’s the breakdown of the budget:
For those who are not interested in buying a Ray-Board but are looking to contribute, you can donate a board to a swim team of our choice, or purchase a sticker or swim cap.
Thank you for your support and we are looking forward to seeing this product grow!
We have already made and tested full kickboards. The biggest challenge is the slow sea cargo shipping speeds to arrive in bulk.