In this wakeboarding how to, The Boarding School’s Shaun Murray, Travis Moye and Kyle Rattray show you a foolproof plan to learn to ride switch.
At the beginning of each week at The Boarding School, we tell people a bunch of different ways to get the most out of their time with us. One of those things is to do a whole session riding switch. When riding at your home spot, sessions may not come so often that you want to take the time to ride switch, or you set out to do just that but bail on the idea after about five minutes.
So much can be gained from riding switch, so take the time and you’ll be amazed where it can take your riding. When people start riding switch, they get frustrated that it doesn’t feel the same as their normal foot forward. If you grabbed a football and tried to huck it with your opposite hand, you wouldn’t expect it to go nearly as far and it definitely wouldn’t fly as straight. But, if you lobbed it only a few feet, you could probably hit a mark and maybe even get a moderate spiral out of it.
So don’t expect your switch riding to feel as good as your normal foot forward. Take your time and remember how things felt when you first started riding. You will be surprised when after 15 to 20 minutes things start flipping around in your head.
Have someone set a stopwatch and try to make it 15 minutes without riding with your normal foot forward. If you get tired, drop the handle for a minute rather than turn back to your stronger stance.
Start with just surfing the wake.
Make sure you are riding the board’s edges from toeside to heelside rather than pointing the nose around. Try dropping your back arm for the one-handed super slaysh.
Cross the wakes heelside and toeside
while maintaining good body position. It’s going to feel weird, but ask your buddies if you are keeping your upper body leaned away from the boat and shoulders square while absorbing the wakes with your knees. Keep your arms straight and relaxed.
The switch ollie
can feel a little funky since your body has to switch everything around. Remember that a good ollie results from pushing your back foot deep into the water. Start with some really small pops so you can start to switch your brain around.
Switch wake jumps, heelside and toeside
are too often neglected. Start small on your heelside but remember that a good wake jump on your normal foot forward happens with minimal movement and good body position. Take your time, and don’t just roll the dice. Keep in control so you can feel what you are doing right and wrong.
