Hello, I just really started to board this year and I need to learn how to ride fakie. Should I start off fakie or try to bunny hope and do a 180, or do a 180 on the surface? I tried the 180 on the surface and all that ended up happining was me grinding the wake the going back to regular. I can do a bunny hop, but I never tried a 180 off that. Can you experts please help me.<img src="http://www.wakeworld.com/MB/Discus/clipart/proud.gif" border=0>

It might be a good idea to try getting up fakie and just do the whole set that way. It will feel wierd, but the sooner you can ride both ways the better!! BTW all of the other options above work too. Bunny hop or surface slide is what I usually do.

Thanks!

Huge tip I've seen help out a ton of riders getting comfortable riding fakie and surface 180s. It's from the Higher Education video. Slow the boat to about 12 or 13... practice switching (surface 180) back and forth between normal and switch. As you become more and more comfortable, speed up. The bottomline is, just start riding switch as much as possible. That's the only way to learn, but I've seen the speed tip help out a TON of people.

Getting up fakie is probably the easiest, but if you don't know how to slide the board around it will be hard to get back to regular. And hitting rollers or turning around can be really hard when riding switch the first few times. So I recommend trying to do a bunny hop 180 and also surface 180s just so you can do them both ways.

Thanks everyone, I can now get up on fakie and do a 180 (although I haven't tried the bunny hop yet). I have to learn how to edge good on my toe-side now and my jumps. Hopefully I will soon get strong on that so I can try a few tricks in the air.

I'm an old trick skier (well, not THAT old) so this may not be the best advice for everyone, but one thing that helped me was just taking the fins off my board. That way you don't have to worry about breaking the fins loose to swing the board around on surface 180s. It was especially having trouble coming from switch back to my normal left foot forward stance. Not having a fin in the water also helps you learn how to use the edge to stabilize the board. Of course it also makes the board really slippy, so a beginner may have more trouble riding this way than it's worth. But I thought I'd suggest none the less...

an easy way to break your fins loose is to cut out heelside really far, then pull your arms down hard to your waiste..... this gives u a huge amount of slack, in which your board slows down a lot and surface spins are easy to do (as long as u are comfortable riding fakie). with my board setup, i can only do surface spins when i do this with the rope, however its easy, and do them all the time. <BR> <BR>now all i need to learn how to bunny hop 180! i cant get the hang of it. any tips? <BR> <BR>(Message edited by INAdrummer on August 28, 2003)

Haha, this was a while ago when I posted this. I can do all the 180 stuff now, no proplems. For the bunny hop 180 I just push down on the back of my bored and when both fins are out of the water I then pull the rope to my back hip (the one that isn't leading). It works for me, I don't know if it is the "proper" way though.

sounds right... lol i had a delayed reaction to this post! dont make fun!