Did I just say "I learned from Wake Surfing"...?

[Luzz]

Before the hate messages, I'd like to say that I enjoy slalom skiing much more than wake surfing.

 

I took a day off on Monday and went to the big natural lake, just outside my house in Italy, to take a wake surfing lesson. Here is the playground:

 

This was my second time wake surfing. After a solid deep water start, the first moves were very mechanical and uncoordinated. Emil, a good friend and instructor there, started giving me extravagant tips like "get in a cowboy position", and many more which are Rated X. However, after I could surf the wake without holding on to the line, he made me shift my weight forward and back, getting closer to the boat and further away respectively.

Then, these two instructions came:

 

- "notice how you are accelerating and decelerating."

- "wake surfing is a game of anticipation, your movements need to anticipate what will come."

 

The whole accelerating/decelerating thing is impressive. A little shift of weight to the back and the board flies towards the platform, a bit of weight forward makes you retract to the point that if you don't anticipate it, you loose the wake and start swimming.

 

Ok, so what have I gotten from all of this? Clearly there is no towing line in surfing, so the forward motion of the board on the water is generated by the wake. In a sense, slalom skiing ends to be a towed sport when you are almost done with the edge change. What keeps you going is your own speed outward, until the line (if you did everything correctly) calls you back and starts bringing you to the other side.

 

So today I tried to focus on these two points at the lake.

On the first one, I tried to focus on my own speed out of the second wake, and try to feel it rather than assess it by looking at the buoy. I noticed a much more solid position out of my offside turn, which allowed me to be stacked right away, something I have been struggling with at 41off.

The second point helped me get off the onside turn with the ski already under the line. I basically tried to anticipate the drop in on 2 ball, or to put it differently, started to move before the ball reached me. This is something I feel a lot of RFF skiers struggle with going to 2 ball of their limit pass. The shorter the line, the worse your visual awareness of the onside ball (it eventually goes behind you). So, today, I tried to anticipate the turn during that little blind spot, and I ended up with solid yet not heavy onside turns.

 

Bottom line, Monday was supposed to be a day off skiing (especially on the mental side), but wake surfing just didn't help that...

 

 

[ALPJr]

Makes sense to me. Growing up at the south Jersey shore a lot of friends surfed ocean waves and they all picked up slalom skiing on open water pretty quickly.

[jimbrake]

Hi @Luzz. Interesting observations and I do the same thing in many other sports - learn little things about movement that translate over to water skiing. You wrote: "A little shift of weight to the back and the board flies towards the platform, a bit of weight forward makes you retract to the point that if you don't anticipate it, you loose the wake and start swimming." This sounds completely backwards. In both surfing and water skiing (and snow skiing), forward movement in the direction of travel generally means acceleration and a move back opposite the way of travel means deceleration. Am I just misunderstanding what you are saying? Thanks, Jim.

 

Oh, and that's a beautiful place to wakesurf or ski or just sit and look!

[ski6jones]

I had a coach trying to explain the acceleration with the weight shift back. We were dicussing my glide after pulling out for the gates. When i felt too fast in the glide I would move back on my ski trying to slow it down. His point was that move advnces the ski making the feeling of being too fast worse. Very counter intuitive. He related it as something he learned from trick skiing.

I don't beleive it works the same crossing the wakes where the same move just increases load.

 

 

[Luzz]

@jimbrake I wasn't trying to defend that the same weigh shift will produce the same results on a slalom ski. The key point is that I started to anticipate what speed the ski will have and regulate my movements according to that criteria, rather than where I was compared to the buoy. Some people call it "skiing with the boat" or "skiing with the line", but I feel that noticing and anticipating your speed clicked better. Obviously, I tried it with some students at the lake (gotta experiment your new theories!) and for most it clicked too.

[bbirlew]

@luzz,

Weight forward on a wakesurfer speeds you up. Shifting it back slows you down... I think maybe you got it mixed up in your original post and that was @jimbrake's comment.

[mwetskier]

pushing down on your back foot has a different result than sliding the ski forward underneath you but i think both seem and look similar. in my opinion many skiers shift their weight back and push down on the back foot at the end of their pull out for the gate because they are uncomfortable turning in with higher speed and a light line. ' putting on the brakes ' like this lets them feel connected to the boat which seems more secure.

 

pushing down on the back foot tends to wheelie the the tip up and that sinks the tail in deeper resulting in slowing the ski. they do this so they can feel some tension on the line making it more comfortable to turn in but they lose speed and angle when they do that. keeping pressure on the front foot during the glide allows the ski to carry more speed and enables the skier to turn in on a light line resulting in more speed and angle through the gate.

[texas_slalom_trick]

I started wakeboarding before I learned to slalom and trick.