Barefoot Waterskiing

yeah dude, with tumble turns it's all about the handle placement along your waist line. if you start with the handle to your right hip, that will initiate a turn to your left. as you get to 180 degrees, you move the handle to the middle of your waist line. If you continue to move the handle towards your left hip, that will bring you the rest of the way around. as you get all the way around, you'll want to square that handle back up to center and stand back up!

that's pretty much the mechanics of the tumble - what you're doing that you don't realize you're doing. that handle motion from side to side/hip to hip along the waist line completely controls how fast or slow you spin the tumble turn. as you get more comfortable doing them, you can stall a tumble at 90 or 270 & then spin it back the other direction....all just by adjusting the handle position between your hips.

as far as other advice....practice practice practice.....rough water, calm water, & everything in between. you'll take a lot of headers as you learn, but eventually you kind of learn how to fall and it doesn't even really hurt anymore. it's hard to give specific advice without seeing you rip a run...if you're throwing down tumbles long line, I'd suspect that you're becoming a pretty solid footer! you should shoot videos of your runs though so you can...A) assemble a collection of awesome crash videos as you learn. everybody loves to watch someone get rag dolled across the water at 40 mph. and B) review your runs to help you dial in your tricks. mostly just A) though.

and a toe up is when you do a deepwater toe hold barefoot start. (How do you start? Are you stepping off of a ski, or do you do deeps?) you basically put your toe in the toe hold, get speed, and stand up one footed....this is more of a trick to do off of a 5 foot extension on a boom.....they're a real bitch long line...

one last thing....by all means don't ever hesitate to shoot me a pm if you've got any footin'/waterskiing questions! always happy to offer any advice that I can!
 
if your on a boom its not that bad, I got it second try and the wipe out the first time didn't really hurt at all

1311016186264918_10150235327669032_695254031_7239112_4024611_n.jpg


 
awesome advice man, the pointers you gave for the tumble are really helpful and it'll help me focus on the mechanics more rather than just going for it. As for practicing i pretty much try and get out as much as possible, even if the waters pretty shitty i'll give it ago. I get up deepwater (learned by stepping off one ski) and pretty much have that down, get up everytime unless i hit some waves when i'm on my ass. i'll try and get a video for you in the next couple days. I just picked up a t2i so it shouldn't be a problem. As for headers, i def. take my share of them every session, but like you said i've gotten pretty good at falling and they don't really bother me too much. Every now and then i'll take a couple good ones in a row and call it but it's usually just cuz of rough water. i'm loving it though, i used to slalom a good amount and pretty much have only been focusing on footin the past few weeks.

 
1:22 holy shit that guy's a baller

gotta try this shit next time i take my boat out (barefooting in general, not the tricks obv)
 
ahhhh just got done footin. had the best runs of my life thus far, whole lake was complete glass. Worked on my tumble turns a little more and got em more dialed. Did my first tumble turn on a whip, felt soooo good. Got the one footer but i was plowin a bit so next time im gonna have the driver speed it up a bit. im gonna get up early n hope for glass, so fuckin stoked right now
 
footing isnt that hard, at least it wasnt for me, its super fun and it doesnt really hurt that much unless your a total wimp, get a barfoot suit, and it might hurt your feet if they arnt tough
 
tumble turn on the whip? sick! as to your one footers - definitely need speed. remember though, no matter how fast you go the water line on your foot is going to be closer to your toes than on 2 feet. you just have to get used to it. keep at it and keep me posted!
 
got up early this morning to go out and had my bro film while he was driving (couldn't get a spotter but had to go because the lake was glassssyy) it's pretty tough trying to film and pull someone footin but he did pretty good considering. I mostly just wanted some video of the tumbles so i can kinda critique myself. The first shot is from like a month ago getting up deepwater and the rest of the shots are from this morning. From what i've noticed i still need to get the handle a little closer to my waistline when crossing from one hip to the next, any other advice/things to practice or work on would be dope though.

I tried the one footer but it wasn't on film. i know what you mean by having the water line closer to my toes. I either gotta up the speed of the boat or just work on my stance. i was still plowing but it could have been my foots stance for fear of catchin a toe. Regardless i'm super stoked on footin right now and wanna keep progressin

 
Back
Top