Most wakeboarders who are learning to practice this sport won't be able to do big and somersaults with such force until they have at least a dozen “regular riding” sessions, e.g. e.g. So, in short, is wakeboarding difficult? The hardest part of wakeboarding is getting up, as approximately half of new riders don't do it the first time. After this stage, horseback riding and jumping in the wake also require skills and practice.
Facial soles and hard landings add to the wakeboarding challenge. Having water sports skills can make it easier. . Likewise, learning jumps and tricks can be much faster practicing at a cable park.
If you're learning behind a boat, having a driver with the right experience and the right boat configuration can also make it much easier to start wakeboarding. Read on to learn how these aspects can affect the wakeboarding learning curve. When learning to wakeboard, getting on the water for the first time is not guaranteed. Whether you get it right away or not depends on many factors and is different for everyone.
Wakeboarding instructors know that only about half of the students they teach get up on the first try. Many students are still unable to stand behind the boat over and over again, p. Getting on a wakeboard can be challenging because there are a lot of things that need to happen with the right time and sequence. But the main problem is that students usually try to get out of the water instead of letting the boat drag them.
As a result, after a few tries, your arms get tired and you might get a little discouraged. To get up easily, you should start by positioning yourself in the water as if you were sitting in a chair leaning backwards, with the board pointing out of the water. Put your knees on your chest as much as possible and keep them that way while the boat starts pulling. Pressing your legs with your knees straight and fighting the water against the rope will make it much harder to get up and may even make you give up.
Squat with your butt as close to the wakeboard as possible until the board is completely brushed. Otherwise, you'll try to get up too early, sink the board and let go of the rope. If you've tried to get up several times fighting back against the pull, you may already feel tired, making getting out even more difficult. If so, take a break before trying again.
When you do, let the boat do the work this time. If you start learning to wakeboard at a cable park instead of behind a boat, you're likely to jump off a starting dock (a floating platform that's at water level). Check out this post on how to choose a good wakeboard for the cable park. For some people, the body twist that involves a surf-style posture doesn't come naturally.
Students with a history of table sports (snowboarding, skaeboarding, surfing, kitesurfing) have an advantage in this regard, since the posture will come naturally to them. Learning to maintain balance in your natural posture (with your left foot or right foot forward, also known as a “normal” or “foolish” posture) while the boat is towing you is the first challenge you'll face in wakeboarding. At first, your arms are likely to get tired and start to hurt after pedaling for a while. Wakeboarding can be hard on the arms, but most students quickly build the right muscle.
Keeping the handle close to the hips and avoiding pulling the rope will reduce the burden on the arms and will also reduce the likelihood of picking up the edge or diving with your nose on the board, causing soles to appear on your face. Then, you'll learn to use the tension of the rope together with your hips to lean on the edges of the wakeboard and cut side by side along the steles. Turns in the back (pressing on the heels) are usually more difficult to master than those in the front (with the toes). Another challenging technique that you must master in wakeboarding is to set up a switch, that is, in an inverted and unnatural posture: with your right foot forward you are “normal”, with your left foot forward if you are “foolish”.
Commutator riding is an essential but difficult skill to master in wakeboarding to do tricks. For some students, this can make it difficult to drive, as it causes them to lean more backward, which can cause driving to wobble. So, while a cable park can help you get up and pedal faster, it will also have its share of learning challenges compared to learning with a boat. Most students find it difficult to try new tricks of wakeboarding, jumping and turning, as they require a lot of practice and involve crashing a little and having the boat pick them up.
It's not easy to cut hard and jump high in the wake. The most advanced tricks, such as backflips, tantrums, Superman's, etc., require a strong commitment and a certain degree of audacity. Go back and forth from one place to the other and make small jumps, to your credit. Wakeboarders who travel to cable parks often practice jumping tricks on park ramps.
Even though advanced park guests make those tricks look easy, they're more difficult than they seem. As a beginner, you should always start with simple tricks in the beginner's sections, first pedaling at a low speed. Most people will agree that boarding an airplane is easier with a wakeboard than with skis because of the larger contact surface of a wakeboard. The speed of wakeboarding is also significantly lower than in water skiing.
However, once planned, wakeboards don't have the direction that fin skis have. For most cyclists, turning and maintaining balance on a wakeboard is more difficult. In addition, jumps and tricks are more difficult on a wakeboard, and falls are harder than on water skis, even if you go slower. That said, wakeboarding is generally not as demanding on the body as slalom skiing, due to the slower speed and greater contact area, resulting in less upper-body traction.
See my other post for an in-depth comparison of wakeboarding and water skiing. Younger cyclists have a different perception of the difficulty level of wakeboarding compared to older cyclists. The former often consider it relatively easy, often resulting in faster progress, while the latter are often opposed to mental blocks. Children also find it easier to get on a wakeboard than adults: about 4 out of 5 tend to succeed when they get on a wakeboard on their first attempt.
As mentioned, getting on a wakeboard is usually easier for girls than for men, especially for stronger men, because they don't fight against water and pull so much with their arms, and they wait for the boat to lift them. Once you've mastered waking to waking, learning advanced wakeboarding maneuvers, such as reverse turns and turns, is particularly difficult because of the risk of injury they entail. Closed ties can also cause leg fractures, for example,. After a bad turn and a fall.
The rope is another potential hazard and can strangle, burn, or cut a wakeboarder. Wakeboarding is the result of the collaboration of the rider and the boat driver. The way in which the person behind the wheel drives the accelerator and manages the speed and turns of the boat can make wakeboarding much more difficult or easier. See this post on how to drive a boat for wakeboarding.
Having the right boat configuration, including a wakeboard tower to lift the rope and the appropriate rope length (30 to 50 feet for a beginner) to keep the cyclist in the narrowest section of the wake, can also help reduce the learning curve. Once you've learned the basics and learn to turn strongly both in your heels and feet, you can unlock your progression in wakeboarding with some wakeboarding tricks for beginners. .
