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It can’t be that tough…can it?


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Since getting a wakeboard two years ago, I’ve watched my wife get up the first time and become very comfortable boarding. Over this summer, both of our kids got up the first time. Daughter enjoys it, but would rather slalom ski. The little guy loves it and doesn’t care for our boat rule of slalom skiing first.

Ol Thumbs here struggles getting up on the wakeboard. Board plows for what seems like forever. Many times I end up letting go because it just seems like I am pushing the board thru the water rather than it planing.

Spent yesterday out on the Illinois River with Edwin and tried starting off the boom. Popped right up. Repeated that process several times. We then added a 5 ft line off the boom and plowing returned.

As for the particulars….I am a “petite” 6 ft., tipping the scale at 225 lbs. The board I am using is 141 cm.

I am assuming that I am doing something (or not) that is causing the problem. Hopefully someone seen/experienced a problem like this and can offer some suggestions. Once I am up, I’m all good. I want to let my darkside out, but I need to get the plowing problem fixed.

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try putting the handle by your lead hip as soon as the boat starts to pull you. It will force the board go that direction and to plane out sooner.

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Work the feet! That's what did it for me. Once I started thinking of them as controlling my ailerons I was able to start easy. Instead of focusing on keeping the board at water level until I plowed enough for it to act like a hinge and lift me out of the water I let the board sink some and kept it angled a little upward. I poppep up so easy it was crazy. Holding onto the boom probably changed your posture enough to encourage more of a deflection angle on the board to accomplish this.

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My best advice is to focus on your body position. The most critical parts of standing on a wakeboard are keeping your arms straight, getting your knees bent, and letting the boat do all of the work.

I suspect that you may have two issues - and this is just a guess, but hopefully it will help - first, you may be trying to muscle yourself out of the water, This is a big difference between slalom and wakeboarding. In wakeboarding the key is to let the boat do the work.

Second, because of your height, you may be having a hard time getting really "scrunched" or compressed to get up. I like to tell my students (for lack of a better word) to try and pretend like they are holding a $100 bill between their rear end and their heels. This helps establish the low center of gravity and good position for letting the boat do the work (did I emphasize that enough :)).

Let us know how it works out...

JZ

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As for the particulars….I am a “petite” 6 ft., tipping the scale at 225 lbs.  The board I am using is 141 cm.

I am assuming that I am doing something (or not) that is causing the problem.  Hopefully someone seen/experienced a problem like this and can offer some suggestions.  Once I am up, I’m all good.  I want to let my darkside out, but I need to get the plowing problem fixed.

I am pretty well qualified to comment because I am 6 ft 230 and riding on a 140cm board (although I could probably use a bigger one)

When I get up on the wakeboard I try to pull my back foot under my butt. Since I slalom lff for me the back foot is my right foot. That gets the board planing up like a slalom ski. It works for me and I get up no problem.

Good luck

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Picture yourself getting up on a ski. Got It? Now, forget everything about getting up on a ski. Period.

Arms straight? OK, that one is still valid.

Sitting in a comfortable crouch? WRONG-O! Scrunch your butt to your ankles. You aren't trying to hold a $100 bill there, but the only sets of keys in existence to a brand new fully paid off '06 VLX. Don't drop them in the 150' water. Scrunching gets the board closer to horizontal than vertical.

This is good.

Keeping your leading edge above the water? Bad Dog! No!! Bad!

Plan that as soon as the boat starts pulling, your front edge is going under 2-3". This is very good. The board going under gets it's angle even closer to horizontal which is mucho good. Now that it is nearly horizontal, you can think of it as an airplane wing. Let it fly you out of the water.

Another trick: assuming you are riding regular with your left foot forward, angle the board slightly so the front left coner is a bit higher than the rest of the board. It is still going to go under 2-3 inches but it will start you into the right orientation for just after you fly the wing onto the surface of the water.

Easy once you do it once. Great luck, have fun.

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[ Another trick: assuming you are riding regular with your left foot forward, angle the board slightly so the front left coner is a bit higher than the rest of the board. It is still going to go under 2-3 inches but it will start you into the right orientation for just after you fly the wing onto the surface of the water.

This is the trick that will do it. When we were learning a few years back

we were about to break ropes & pull shoulders out of sockets with the

board trying to "stop" the boat. Just tip that left end of the board up a couple

of inches like the Baddog suggested along with the knees bent & you will be

up instantly.

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Try putting your lead knee between you elbows until you get the hang of getting up. And follow JZ's instruction on staying crouched. Good luck.

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Stay crouched as long as you can... Count to 100 or more even :). Make sure the board is on a plane, even make a point to ride a while in the crouched position before you attempt to stand at all.

The issue is two-fold:

1. if you are worried about standing, you will forget to crouch as low as you can (rear-end to ankles, or heels - whichever is easier ;)).

2. If you stand to early, your center of gravity will be too high, and will have the opposite effect of the plowing, and thats going facefirst over the leading edge of the board.

Stay crouched, ride away.

JZ

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From another petite person (closer to 250 than 200 :-) ) who took a LONG time (3 full days) to learn to get up (and was able to send a low-stretch line into the boat..)

1 - Keep your butt down

2 - Point your toes (this will flatten out the board)

IT IS ALL IN THE FEET!

Once the boat is moving "point" your toes...as baddog said...the board will "ride" under the water for a while until is pops out....this is a sensation the smaller people don't feel. Think of the board as a wing under the water...it will be at about a 20-30 degree angle...if you hold the board at a 90 degree angle you will tear your arm sockets out...

You don't need to worry about EVER twisting forward or standing up...you should be able to ride all around the lake "sideways" with your butt squatting down...

The reason the boom probably worked, is you were more upright, which naturally flattened out the board...but when you went long-line you probably when back to a 90 angle to the water...

edit: Find someone over 200lbs to teach you...don't listen to the advice of smaller people...it is a much different technique the bigger you get.

AND have your driver hammer it...none of this "ease me up" stuff...you need LOTS of forward motion to get the board to get above the water...

Dave

PS Keep at it...big f-ers can board too :-)

Edited by RoverOn
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what i find works best for teaching people is i tell them to bend their knees in,,,lock their elbows around the "OUTSIDE" of their knees,,and hold this position. once the boat takes off,,,the pull will roll u forward so u are now "on top" of your board,,,and then just slowly stand up

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...

AND have your driver hammer it...none of this "ease me up" stuff...you need LOTS of forward motion to get the board to get above the water...

...

To quote Bill Lumbergh of Office Space - "Um, yeah, I'm going to have to disagree"

I think this is another cuase for poor body position. On any other boat (outboard, or I/O) I would say yes, you better gun it, but for an inboard (especially a Malibu ;)) taking it easy allows the rider to focus on setting up the correct body position and initiating a plane.

Jjust my $.02

JZ

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...

AND have your driver hammer it...none of this "ease me up" stuff...you need LOTS of forward motion to get the board to get above the water...

...

To quote Bill Lumbergh of Office Space - "Um, yeah, I'm going to have to disagree"

I think this is another cuase for poor body position. On any other boat (outboard, or I/O) I would say yes, you better gun it, but for an inboard (especially a Malibu ;)) taking it easy allows the rider to focus on setting up the correct body position and initiating a plane.

Jjust my $.02

JZ

If he was behind your VLX I might agree...but his profile shows him behind a Response...

Weighing as much as he does, it is VERY frustrating to be "eased up."

Butt down, point your toes and hammer it...

PS..how much do you weigh wakeandsno...if you are less than 200 I have already told thumbs not to listen to you :-)

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i agree with wakensnow,,u definately dont need to "hammer" the throttle down. just roll the throttle forward and it will be easier to come out of the water "under control" this aint skiing!

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Thanks again for everyone's comments. I am sure that my body position is far from perfect. Add to that the fact that I normally will not pull the board out of the rack until I have skiied several times...I am assuming that cannot help things either.

Maybe one day this weekend I need to just focus on the wakeboard instead of skiing and get this figured out.

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...

AND have your driver hammer it...none of this "ease me up" stuff...you need LOTS of forward motion to get the board to get above the water...

...

To quote Bill Lumbergh of Office Space - "Um, yeah, I'm going to have to disagree"

I think this is another cuase for poor body position. On any other boat (outboard, or I/O) I would say yes, you better gun it, but for an inboard (especially a Malibu ;)) taking it easy allows the rider to focus on setting up the correct body position and initiating a plane.

Jjust my $.02

JZ

If he was behind your VLX I might agree...but his profile shows him behind a Response...

Weighing as much as he does, it is VERY frustrating to be "eased up."

Butt down, point your toes and hammer it...

PS..how much do you weigh wakeandsno...if you are less than 200 I have already told thumbs not to listen to you :-)

I think 300 hp and the torque of an inboard can surely do the easing up... Just my thought...

As I posted above, I'm just shy of 230 lbs. (and not so proud of it Cry.gif )

2Thumbs. Try starting out fresh on the wakeboard next time. As you mentioned, I too think that skiing is detrimental to your health... uh, I mean mindset, ah darn, you know what I mean... :)

JZ

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2 - Point your toes (this will flatten out the board)

That tip has worked good for me when someone new is having problems and just seems to be plowing.

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I would definitely try wakeboarding first run of the day. For slalom skiing you need to point your toes up to pull the ski into crouch position. For wakeboarding you want neutral or even pointing down toe position. If you ski first it might throw you off. I just started slalom skiing again this year and I've fallen a few times getting up which never used to happen. Turned out I was pointing my toes down which flattened out the ski a lot, left my butt dragging near the back of the ski, and made it very easy to tip over as I was getting drug through the prop wash.

I used to wakeboard behind a 240hp Ski Centurion (1984) with a pylon and it yanked me out of the water much faster than my new-to-me 2001 Sunscape LSV with a tower. I like a really hard hit with a bunch of throttle so I can roll up onto the board and stand up right away. Other people I ride with like an easier hit. I think that's up to personal preference.

Does your boat have a high rope mounting point? (i.e. tower or pylon)? It's amazing what a difference those make when trying to get up. I bet that's why the boom worked well for you, it wants to pull you up out of the water instead of through it like a low line does.

Hope it works out for you, it's a lot of fun on the darkside!!

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Maybe it is just me but I see a lot of advise that is different than the way I get up on a wakeboard and I get up every time with no problem (and I weigh 230 and ski/ride behind a response). I agree with the advise that you want your legs pulled up underneath you and the board on somewhat of an angle. When the boat starts to pull me up I try and point the nose of the board (whichever foot forward I want to ride) toward the boat a little and pull the back of the board with my knee bent under my butt. This technique allows the board to ramp out of the water like a water ski rather than plow. Us big guys don't pop up as easily.

I also agree that you don't need to hammer someone to get them out of the water if they are doing it right.

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I believe in keeping it simple, so just two things to think about. Point your toes to angle the board, and knees to chest when the boat start to pull. I predict you will get it on your first or second try this weekend.

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I weigh 250. I learned behind a 1967 Wachita with a 75hp motor, and a 99 Seadoo 1200. The trick is in the toes. Your hands need to be in front of your feet or close. And you need to be really low. go really slow. You should adjust your toes so that no matter what speed you are goin your are not putting any drag on the boat. This is the secret that helped me. And then when you feel like you should faceplant. TURN! Kinda tricky at first but once you got it down. You got it down.

Once you get really good. You can stand on the board with it 3 ft under water and tell the driver to ease you up.

I can do 360's on a wakeboard but I can't stand up on 2 skis.

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Got my darkside on today Crazy.gif before the slalom ski touched the water. What seemed to work the best was getting my back foot under my arse. Add to that a smooth pull from Mrs. Thumbs and I pretty much popped right out of the water. It was all good (and alot less work). Thanks to all for the comments and suggestions.

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