How To Do A Wake Surf 360
- Posted on
- By Jason Lybeck
- Posted in Wake
Jason Lybeck running you through the fundamentals in order to perfect the wake surf 360
Imagine being a high level college football player, freshly drafted into the NFL and you are about to go into your first practice of your new NFL gig. You’ve worked hard for many years perfecting your craft. Everyone around you tells you how great you are and how well you will do at the next level, you’ve got what it takes they say! Your new coach walks onto the field. He’s Vince Lombardi and you are excited to hear what he has to say that will improve your team. Everyone gathers around. Vince holds out a football and says “Gentlemen, this is a football.” Of course every person in that group knows what a football is, but the wise Coach was communicating a very important point: if we are going to be successful, we are going to have to focus on the basics and make sure that we are executing the fundamentals. Wakesurfing is no different. The fundamentals are something that you build on, but never graduate from. They are the building blocks of your riding. Working on fundamentals, no matter your level of ability, keeps you progressing and executing at a high level.
This one hits home especially hard for me. I thought that I was a pretty good wakesurfer. I had spent that past 10 years playing around on a wakesurf board, I had 20 plus years of board sports under my belt, and I could do quite a few tricks. While out one day surfing with some friends I was having the hardest time doing a 360. Everything was moving too fast for me and I was more or less out of control. One of my most trusted surf buddies in those days then said to me “Slow down, you’ve got to slow down and control your board!” I hesitated for a second thinking about what he just said and that was a eureka moment for me. “Board Control” was the key to executing my tricks!
Board Control, as I refer to it as, has a lot of things involved in it. How much pressure you have on your front foot, how much leverage you are applying to your toe side, where your foot placement is to allow the board to move correctly…and on and on. Breaking it down to a more simplistic idea that I could coach to people I came to the conclusion that “Edge Control” was the best way for me to teach people to understand how to control their board better.
I’ve coached wakesurfing for nearly 20 years, overwhelmingly the 360 is the most asked about trick I stated to refer to it as the “holy grail” for new wake surfers. The problem is, without understanding how to control your board and the edges (or rails) it is a difficult trick to consistently land. These are the same fundamentals that I had to go back and teach myself, to slow down and control my board. Fundamentals that I have been teaching my students and my own kids that have really helped in achieving their goal of landing the 360.
Check out the video below that demonstrates the fundamental skills of board control, revert & switch riding, and completing the Surface 360.
-Jason