How to Get Air on a Wakeboard

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Greg Lawrence, with Lake Lessons, and I'm here to show you how to jump on a wakeboard. First of all, there's several concepts you need to understand. When jumping a wakeboard, it's not done mostly by bending your legs, and jumping as you would, a jump shot. It's actually done by the edge of the board. You want to use the edge of your board for your power, all the way up the wake, and then, while slightly pulling the handle in off the top of the wake, to keep your momentum going forward with the boat. You want to extend your legs slightly for pressure, so it's not like a jump shot, in which you would push down with your toes. In fact, you want to push with your heels only. In the air, you want to remain as calm as possible, and you want to land, while crushing your knees, just like there. Now, when you're first starting to learn how to do a jump, you only want to take a small cut outside the wake, and do a small controlled cut, all the way up through the wake, a One Wake Jump. This is going to get you used to not only releasing from the wake correctly, but also landing, and cushioning your landing. As you get better with that One Wake Jump, you're going to want to add more and more edge. Now, that's an important point. As you'll see here, Ross is using a progressive edge, as he edges into the wake. That progressive edge means he starts very easy at the beginning, and he continues to add edge, so that he's on his most aggressive edge, as he goes up through the top of the wake, harnessing all the power of the water, rushing underneath the board, at twenty plus miles an hour. I'm Greg Lawrence, and that's how you jump on a wakeboard."