What is your wakeboarding set up?

[Tommy2slow]

One of the first steps to getting the “pop” you are looking for is to get comfortable with what is called the “progressive edge”. It doesn’t really matter much what you are doing with your legs if you don’t have lots of tension on the rope at the top of the wake. The advice given on extending your legs and standing tall at the top of the wake is correct but if you don’t have line tension you won’t get much pop. Most novice riders make the common mistake of cutting out far away from the wake then cutting in towards the wake as hard as they can right away. What occurs is that you reach your top speed out in the flats instead of at the wake. The issue is that once you reach your top speed you let off on your edge therefore losing “line tension “. You want to do, instead, is once you finish cutting away from the wake just let the boat begin to pull you back into the wake. Call this 1/10 intensity. As you begin to approach the wake you want to steadily ramp up the intensity of your edge towards the wake. You don’t want to hit your max intensity 10/10 until you reach the wake. You will still be hitting the wake at the same speed as you used to but now you have line tension! Don’t worry about extending your legs just yet. Keep them “strong”, not locked when you hit the wake so your legs don’t absorb all your hard work. Keep the the handle of your new wakeboard rope at your hip and you will get LAUNCHED! Once you are getting consistent pop on both your heel side and toe side (nobody wants to be a heel side hero) then you can start to work on your timing extending your legs at the top of the wake. Right now you should slow the boat down to the slowest it will go but still has a clean wake, shorten the rope to a length that you are consistently landing on the downside of both wakes. Once you have the progressive edge figured out and you are landing in the flats consistently you can start letting out the rope and inching up the speed. Not too much on the speed though. My friend is currently the top rider in Canada, Hunter Smith, and he rides at about 21 mph. Happy shredding!

[Andy]

Ya I agree, @Tommy2slow is right! Great explanation!
Learning a progressive edge is how you get height. Loading your board with line tension sends you up. If you've ever tried or seen someone do an air trick at a cable you can really see this progressive edge and load. Since there is no wake or kicker, the height is relying on only line tension and load. As you get more comfortable with it won't seem to take so much strength - eventually you shouldn't feel like you're cutting in for a raley each time.
Loading the board happens in tandem with a progressive edge. As you edge harder you push the board deeper into the water. It's like pushing a basketball under water then releasing it - the deeper you push it under, the higher it will bounce out. (This is a subtle characteristic that happens as you edge progressively so you don't necessarily want to intentionally push your board under water). As you load your board (edge in) and release it in different ways like scooping off the tail (which will initiate a backroll motion) or pushing off more of your front foot (initiating more a glide or front flip trick) you can see how different tricks can be initiated with different edging and pop styles. Yes, handle placement and pull in the air is obviously important for different tricks but the edge/pop style is also important.
Different tricks typically work better with different edge styles - some require more of an aggressive load while others can be a littler flatter like spins. Usually a more aggressive load leads to more line tension, which is not necessarily good or bad, just depends on what you're trying. Also a wider approach taking your air path into the flats will typically have more line tension in the air.
So after saying all that, yes you must develop a progressive edge where you start mellow and edge harder up through the wake. You also have to make sure you don't over cut. Sometimes people will try to over cut and lose all control. So this progressive edge is only good for you if you keep it in control.
Another thing I find helpful, especially when learning toeside stuff, is to make sure you don't lose leverage on your line tension at the wake - you don't necessarily have to push super hard with your legs but keep your hips up/forward and not break at the waist. A lot of people will will edge in hunched over and bend at the waist as they hit the wake, losing the tension and load that's building in the edge up the wake. Pros do this all the time BUT they have their edging all figured out and understand how to keep tension, they're just using different positioning for various tricks so they might not be the best to always copy when you're figuring it out yourself. Heelside is less touchy with this because you're in an easier position to lean back with your shoulders into the line keeping it tight and your edge deep. Toeside though, is harder to keep that leverage so you really have to intentionally keep your shoulders back, hips forward and lean back into the line with your rear shoulder. You're trying to keep tension through the line, pulling back against the line with that rear shoulder and standing tall enough that you're not folding at the waist when you hit the wake. DO NOT become a heelside hero! It's tempting, because heelside feels so much more comfortable when you're starting but it's like riding a halfpipe snowboarding - it becomes way more fun when you can hit both the frontside and backside walls, it doesn't really work well until you can use both sides. It's kind of similar in wakeboarding. Even if you can't take them wake to wake, for every heelside hit in your set you should mirror it with a toeside hit even if it's single wake (just take a closer approach to practice your pop without casing the second wake).

A good drill to develop this loading and line tension is to start really close to the wake and try to get a lot of upwards height without that wide approach. You can try to get wake to wake with only a 5' approach. If that's too ambitious to start, you could ride full line length and do this single wake so you don't have to worry about casing the second wake. This short approach forces you to build your edge speed quickly - start slow then roll into a hard edge through the top of the wake. You'll also notice that this should create a straight up and down air path as opposed to high speed low and far (which is not what you want). Getting wake to wake on a low, fast and far air path is not going to be fun or helpful. You have to develop that poppy straight up air path. It's more important to first develop that correct pop and load before being overly concerned with clearing the second wake.
As said before, ride at a slow speed (as long as the wake is clean and you don't feel like you're dragging) because it's easier to load your edge and falls are obviously more mellow. Keep the line short to start so you can focus on popping straight up and not far to clear the other wake.
Lastly, ride with a lot of ballast, a bigger wake is easier to pop off of (obviously) and easier to time out. A small wake is so abrupt and requires more precise timing. As you get into REALLY big wakes you can actually cheat a little and just cruise off of them like a ramp instead of developing a proper progressive edge and line tension. So you may not want to start with a sacked out G but definitely ride with SOME weight, it'll make jumping way easier and more fun. As long as you're riding a short line and slow speed it's probably a little safer than trying to blast high off a tiny curb wake.