Staying with the Wave While Wakesurfing
When learning to wakesurf it's important that you know how to stay with the wave for a smooth ride. We've got professional wakeboarder Cobe Mikacich here to share his tips and best practices for staying with the wave.
Video Transcript
Hi. I'm Cobe Mikacich out here at Freedom Wade Park. Our friends over at Monster Tower asked us to do some instructional videos. Today I want to go over how to stay with the wave while wakesurfing.
Alright, one of the most important things is where you have your feet on the board. One of the most common mistakes is trying to get in the wave too fast. First thing you should do after you get up is kind of drift out of the wave, hang on with your lead hand, and get your feet real centered on the board. You don't want to be staggered. You want to be nice, centered, have your arch running right through the center of the board. Like I said before, don't be in a rush to get in the wave so fast.
After you get your feet in a good position, slowly drift into the wave and start feeling the energy of the wave to stay with the wave. It's really important to keep your body nice and straight and tall, standing over the center of the board, and put some pressure on the balls of your feet favoring that toe-side edge that's going to help you cut down the line of the wave and stay with the boat.
One of the most important things is keeping your hips underneath you and drive with your hips. I'm left foot forward, so to stay with the way I like to drive my hips forward, getting me over my front foot and getting me down the line like this. Probably the biggest mistake I see when people are trying to stay with wave is they try to do it with their shoulders. What happens when you try to lean over your shoulders is your hips go back and you have a tendency to favor your back foot when you do that so that makes the board go flat where you start losing the wave.
Think about the board running down hill, pitching forward. Get your hips over your front foot. That'll help you pitch the board down the wave. While riding in this position, you have total control. You can do a quick break check and they get right back on the accelerator down the wave.
So at the beginning, the goal is to stay in one spot, the pocket's pretty small. So just trying to stay in one small area. Then after you get more comfortable, then you can work forward and back of the wave.
Hope this was helpful for you guys. Get out there, enjoy wake surfing with you and your friends this summer. Check back with Monster Tower on more wake surf videos.
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