What is Wakeboarding?

Wakeboarding in it’s simplest form is snowboarding on water! Absolutely anyone can do it, from any age. It’s fantastic fun and will leave you fit as a fiddle in no time!

Over the past few years the message of Wakeboarding has slowly but surely been getting out there. Presented as ‘the latest Extreme Sport’ Wakeboarding is securing big sponsorship deals, is now featured in the X Games and there are loads of international events. High profile female riders such as Dallas Friday, Nicola Butler and Amber Wing are paving the way for the rise of female wakeboarding. Everybody want to get involved and more recently it’s even being dubbed as a ‘new age dating opportunity’!

The excitement of the ‘Extreme’ label may get your juices flowing but for some it may leave you slightly alienated and bewildered……it need not! The girls are increasingly taking the stage in Wakeboarding and as more women only events, coaching clinics and tours are being organised, it’s easier than ever to get involved and have a go. It’s a great workout too, so you’ll be getting fit whilst at the same time having loads of fun!

The Basics

Where snowboarding relies on gravity to give you a push, wakeboarding requires a little powered help. By grabbing a handle on a rope, and with your feet strapped into bindings that are attached to a wakeboard,(like a snowboard set up), either a speedboat or a cable pulls you along an open body of water (usually flat water, old quarry lakes and rivers in some countries, seldom coastal, but not unheard of.).

Boat riding, like waterskiing, pulls the rider behind a speed boat that creates a wake (hence the WAKE in Wakeboarding) which is used like a springboard for acrobatic tricks. Cable is different in that it uses a motorised rotary pulley system. Scattered around the water are obstacles like ramps (kickers) and rails (sliders) to play on. Wakeboarders are using pretty much anything that pulls across an open body of water, jet skis and winches are very common too.