The 3 Fundamentals of Wakeboarding

There are 3 fundamentals of wakeboarding that you, and everybody else, should learn at the inception of your water sporting career. These will serve as the foundation in which you will build your wakeboarding game around. These 3 things will give you a fantastic base of knowledge, technique, and form that will allow you to progress much quicker than normal as a wakeboarder. Once you understand these ideas, you will be able to ride, maneuver, and jump on your wakeboard much easier than before, and it will require much less effort.

Body Position

First off you need to assess how you stand while you ride. Many wakeboarders, especially beginners, think they need to be in a knees bent, rope firmly at hip, triple threat-like position.

Is it possible to ride like this? Sure, but it really isn’t optimal. When you start bending down at the knees and waist, a few things are happening. Your chest is coming over the board, your hips are being disengaged from your body, and the handle becomes less stable. All of this contributes to a wobbly and off-balance ride. You will also feel like the rope is about to pull you over the board.

Instead of this, you need to stand in a more natural and upright position.

In this position you have your hips behind the board, and your shoulders behind your hips. Keep a slight arch in your back. This will help you keep a small back lean at all times. In this position you will feel much more comfortable, your handle will be stable, and your board will feel nice and sturdy.

Connection

Now that you ride in a correct upward position, we can talk about what this is doing and how it is helping you. Consider the physics of wakeboarding. You have 2 forces acting on you. The rope is pulling you forward, and the board is pushing you up.

As you ride, your body is connecting these 2 forces. The push comes up through your legs, the pull comes through your arms. When you are standing upright, these 2 forces are meeting at your core. Where is the easiest place for your body to create balance? The core. Once you have this connection, you will gain full control of your board.

Compare this to when you are bent over or squatting down. In these positions the forces might meet in your shoulders or lower back, which will create a fidgety and off balanced ride.

Leaning against the line

As you start to move around outside the wake remember to lean against the line while you move. Many riders, when cutting out wide, will lean their shoulders and head towards where they are going. This is unnecessary and just makes the move harder on your body. When turning and cutting out wide, lean slightly to the direction you’re going but heavily against the line.

As you lean back against the line, the board is doing all the work for you. It is pushing water the opposite way of your desired direction. This will, in turn, push you where you are trying to go. This also keeps the rope nice and tight, which gives you a lot more stability on the wakeboard. In the above picture, the rider is cutting heelside. When going heelside, if you are leaning against the line, you should really feel the tension extending into both of your shoulders equally.

When cutting toeside, like the above rider, make sure your head and chest do not go ahead of the board like the ride int he leftmost picture is doing. You need to lean back and against the line. You should feel all the tension in your back shoulder when you are doing this properly. Then as you cut towards the wake to make your jump, it will transfer into both shoulders as you begin to square up to the boat. Make sure, even when you are cutting towards the wake, that you keep that line tension and keep leaning against that rope. If you do this you will be much more stable as you hit the wake for your jump.

I hope this instilled some knowledge for you. Even if you aren’t a beginner, if you didn’t know these concepts, it may prove beneficial to be consciously thinking about these things when you’re on the wakeboard.

Alright, enough chatter. Time to get out there and shred!

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