Beginner Wakeboarding Tricks

Billy Garcia: Hi! I am Billy Garcia, owner and coach of Freeride Wakeboard School. I am showing you how to get started in Wakeboarding. Now, we are going to go with your first beginner tricks. Okay, your first beginner trick is going to be Riding Switch. That means that your lead foot is going to be in back and your back trailing foot is going to be in front. What you want to do for this is just be super careful and make sure that your body position is correct. Obviously you don't want to be back with heavy, you want to have your weight about fifty-fifty. Make sure your hips are aligned with the boat and that the rotation of your upper body comes from the ribcage up. Don't let your hips come open to the boat and also make sure your handle is out by your lead hand. Your back arm should be straight across your body and your front arm should be slightly bend. As always make sure your knees are super bend and flexible. Another beginner trick is the Surface 180. It is a 180 because you are rotating the board, 180 degrees and it is a Surface 180 because you are not leaving the water, you are doing it right on top of the surface. What you want to do for this trick is, as always make sure your knees are super bend and flexible, and also make sure you do it slowly and lean on your heels a little bit, so you don't catch a front edge and face land.

So, for example, you will be riding left foot forward with the handle on the front hip, pull the handle towards your back hip a bit and as you are doing that transfer the weight from your back foot to front foot and twist your hips, that will initiate the 180. Once you come around and do the 180 be sure to let the handle back out to what's going to be your leading hip. The last beginner trick we are going to go over is called the Ollie. This is where you jump the board out of the water without using the weight to launch you. So, what you have to do is get right outside of the wake on your heel side. The next thing you want to do is edge fairly hard about 5-8 feet. You are going to need some momentum so make sure you have a good hard edge. After you let up off your edge and you still have that momentum, go ahead and push down against the water with your front foot and lift it back up. You want to immediately follow this with your back foot, so that your board comes completely off the water. It is a little bit different than a Skateboard Ollie and that you are not going to pop your front foot and then your back foot. It is going to cause you to nose dive. So, make sure that you immediately after popping the front foot and lifting your front leg, you follow it up right away with the back foot. That will keep you from nose diving and digging the front of the board into the water. Up next, I am going to show your first beginner Wakeboard jumps.