Keep your dominant or stronger hand on the rope at all times. Use it to maintain your balance and stay upright throughout the jump. Balance your weight evenly between both your legs to maintain your balance as you move across the water.
Leaning backward also throws off your balance, so lean only when you need to in order to stabilize the board. Maintain a strong base with your legs and monitor your balance on the board at all times.
Try to avoid moving your torso at all. If you move your torso, you might end up leaning forward and losing your balance. Crouch down slightly by bending your knees.
Many wakeboarders like to remove their trailing hand from the rope. Doing this helps you stay balanced with your board straight and your body oriented in a sideways position.
When you’re preparing for the landing, your best bet is to keep the back end of the board a little lower than the front end. It helps you avoid a wipeout. Instead of leveling out the board completely, focus on staying balanced. You may feel tempted to stand up at first. It’s an easy mistake to make when you’re in the rush of a successful trick, but try to stay calm and move quickly. Keep your feet planted on the board and maintain your momentum from the push-off you did to lift off of the water.
Ollies are fun ways to jump without a wake. Many wakeboarders use this trick to spin, jump obstacles, or grind on top of them. If you’re thinking of trying that, stay safe by mastering the trick first before approaching any solid obstacles in the water.
Balancing and steering are some of the basic techniques you practice when you first learn to wakeboard. Balance as you move by standing with your dominant leg forward, your knees bent, and your hands on the rope. To steer the wakeboard, pull the rope away from the boat. The board moves in the direction you pull the rope. You don’t need to move your legs at all to steer.
Hold yourself steady as your board cuts back. Use your body weight to maintain your balance as you lean toward the toe and heel edges. These edges steer the board in opposite directions, so lean toward the heel edge to turn the board back to the boat at a faster rate.
Holding the rope this way adds tension to it, also called loading the line. Loading the line increases the air you get during the jump.
Pull the line toward your hip if you haven’t already. Keep the line tense with the rope handle right in front of your hip to maintain your posture. While you’re in the air, monitor your board’s positioning. Leaning forward causes the board to tilt forward, which means a wipeout when you land. Always lean back the entire time to keep your weight on your heels.
Try to land at about a 45-degree angle. Don’t point the board toward the boat and don’t turn completely perpendicular to it either.
Since you aren’t lifting with your legs, you need more speed to clear the wake. Cut in sharply toward the wake by leaning on your heels to turn the board. This is a good way to practice basic board control, especially if you’re having trouble timing jumps with your legs. Many beginners perform this type of jump by accident. They assume that speed is enough for a big jump. Without a good push from your legs, you won’t get much height this way.
This is often called a speed jump. It’s a quick way to get to the other side of the wake. You don’t get much air, but it is handy as a transition and for jumping practice.
This type of jump requires more strength to control the line tension. You also land on the flat part of the water outside of the wake, so losing your balance is easier.
This type of jump nets you a similar hang time to the standard wake jump. The difference is that the sharp angle in this jump puts more tension on the line and requires better board control.
