Most students find it difficult to try new jumping and somersault tricks for wakeboarding, as they require a lot of practice and involve a bit of crashing and falling. The beauty of wakeboarding is that the learning curve is quite steep. Unlike surfing and snowboarding, you can learn to wakeboard relatively quickly and skip the trail with just a few hours of class time. Soon you'll be exploring some of these incredibly great lakes for wakeboarding.
Then, push your legs with your knees straight. If you avoid water pushing against the rope or cable, you'll have a much harder time lifting this step, so it's best to avoid doing so. If you learn at a cable park, the rope is much higher than on a boat, including one with a wakeboard tower, so you feel much more drawn upwards. 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.
Wakeboarding instructors know that only about half of the students they teach get up on the first try. Most wakeboarders who are learning to wakeboard won't be able to do big, somersaults with such force until they have at least a dozen “regular riding” sessions. One thing I noticed in my first beginner wakeboarding lesson was how hard this sport is on the arms. 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.
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. 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. But the main problem is that students usually try to get out of the water instead of letting the boat drag them. Once you've mastered waking to waking, learning advanced wakeboarding maneuvers, such as turns and reverse turns, is particularly difficult because of the risk of injury involved.
Pressing your legs with your knees straight and fighting the water against the pull of the rope will make it much more difficult to get up and may even make you give up. Many wakeboarding beginners won't even be willing to try such difficult flights and somersaults before having at least a dozen “normal” wakeboarding classes. The hardest part of wakeboarding is getting up, as approximately half of new riders don't do it the first time. For some students, this can make it difficult to drive, as it causes them to lean more backward, which can cause driving to wobble.
If you start learning to wakeboard at a cable park instead of behind a boat, you're likely to jump from an exit dock, which is a floating platform that is at the water level, allowing you to start sitting on dry land, which can make getting up and going much easier compared to starting in deep water.
