Wakeboarding Trick Tips for Beginners

How to do Ollies

Synopsis: How to ollie on a wakeboard. Learn to jump without the wake using line tension created by edging.

Alright, so jumping the wake is a piece of cake, right? It's just like going off a ramp. There's not very much you can do to screw it up once you've got your edging down and your attitude right.

Ready to try something a little more technical? The ollie is it. An ollie is where you use solely the tension of the line to get air.

You will likely start off small, maybe getting a few inches off of the water. But with some practice, you can actually do some pretty cool tricks without using the wake at all (the air roll comes to mind).

You should have very good board control before you attemp to ollie. And you should be comfortable with your wake jumps.

Start off by cutting out on your heelside edge. Stop about ten feet outside of the wake.

Now cut fairly hard on your heelside edge again, building a lot of tension on the line and picking up a little bit of speed.

Bend your knees and then push against the water. You will want to use your back foot to do most of the pushing.

If you've done it right, you should get into the air. This works by using a combination of your line tension, your speed, and
the force of the water against the feet to propel you upwards.

To get the idea of the right motion for the "jumping" step, try bouncing up and down on your back foot. When you push down with your feet, the water will push back against you. This is the driving force behind the upward motion.

The ollie takes a little bit of practice, but with time you will get it. Now you can jump over dead fish floating in the water, buoys, floating cans, you name it.

So now you've got the basics of wakeboarding down. You have built the foundations and it's time to move onward. You may next want to try some spins or inverts.

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