Front foot

derek_lukasik · Newbie Joined: 09 Jun 2004 Posts: 44 City: Fort Collins

What's your front foot good for when wakeboarding? No, seriously. I know you need it to stand up. But, other than that, what's it do? What do you do with it when you're cutting in? Do you consciously apply pressure to it? What's your balance front/back? How do you vary your balance for different tricks (e.g. weight your rear foot more for a backroll)?

I've heard some people mention weighting their front foot more to "feel" the wake before popping. What's that about? Should we all just cut off our front legs and ride one legged? Laughing

What about toeside vs. heelside? Is your distribution the same in both cases front to back?

jpminter · Posted: Aug 07, 2006 2:16 pm Post subject:

It depends on what trick you're doing. However you are balanced when you leave the wake is how you will land. Therefore if you have more weight on your back foot you will fly through the air with the tail below the tip. You never want more weight on your front foot than your back foot.

For example, if I am doing a backside 180, I like to go with more weight on my back foot, pop the nose up, then fall into the handle pass.

derek_lukasik · Newbie Joined: 09 Jun 2004 Posts: 44 City: Fort Collins

When I said, "weighing their front foot more" I didn't mean to imply that someone actually places more weight up front than back. Though, I see how that reads completely wrong. What I meant was closer to a 50/50 weighting than usual. Of course, that's assuming that you don't normally ride around with an even balance front to back. I feel like I ride/jump with a 40/60 front/back balance. That's for a plain old W2W. Maybe throw in a grab for fun. I'm usually pretty level in the air (though that was certainly not true in the past). I'm just wondering if I should be applying more pressure up front or not. I definitely see how taking off on a backroll with more of a back foot bias helps. Do other tricks need more of an even distribution? Spins? Raley-based?

jpminter · Posted: Aug 07, 2006 7:36 pm Post subject:

raleys should probably be even (note that i can't do them). with spins, i like a little weight on the back foot.

but listen, unless the nose of the board is flying up really high to the point where it looks dumb and you aren't landing with the nose digging straight down into the water upon landing then whatever you are doing is probably fine. post a vid if you can.