dock starts

im starting comps soon and i need to learn my dock starts please help thanks

I do sitting dock starts, so I guess I'll share what I do. I'm sure there'll be others on here who can offer some better explanations about hopping off, or otherwise but here's what I do.

1) Sit on the edge with your board on the water angled to your heelside edge.
2) Keep the handle in close while the boat is taking up the slack, so you won't get yanked.
3) Keep a slight lean backwards when the slack is just about gone so when you get pulled off, your already set on edge.
4) When the line loses it's slack, the boat should start truckin. Slip off, keep on your heel edge, and keep that nose outta the water. Depending on the boats acceleration, you may need to put more weight on your back foot to keep from nosing down.

Hope that helped... that's kinda the checklist I have. Hope that helped.

It's harder to drive a dock start than it is to actually do one. Basically your simply taking away one step from the start up, the part where you are in the water. If you take the point where you pop up on the water and you're standing on the board, that's basically how your dock start is. Just stay sideways, knees slightly bent and heels back like you would for a regular start up.
Hoping off takes slightly more skill, but isn't much harder. Jump off as the boat starts pulling you, Just have to keep the board under yourself, don't let it float back behind you.

you don't actually HAVE to do a dock start in contests...

Steve is correct for sure! You don't have to do a dock start. Seems you find the Intermediate, advanced, and outlaw class dock starting and the others deep water start. It's no biggy and nobody is going to make fun of you. Most of the people at these comps are just happy that you came out to have fun with everyone else.

BUT, if you want to dock start......then you need to make sure you jump off the dock with good timing. Mostly it's the boat driver that can mess things up. Either way, you always let the rope start to tighten, and as it's just about to get at "max line tention", you time it by jumping in the water and KEEPing your knees bent while leaning back a little bit. If you lean back too much then you will sink. However, if you start to sink, just stay seated with your knees bent (leaning back a little bit) and you will pop back out. I see most people jump off the dock with good timing, but they always lean to far forward and face plant or they lean to far back and fall on their arse.

Of course you can just wait Super late and let the boat pull you into a railey right off the dock and get mad points.