Hey All!
I've been riding cable for about 4-5 years now, the first two just really 2-4 times a year, while for the past 2.5 years would as often as 3-4 times a month since a world class cablepark opened up just an hour away.
Like most people, I really started out not expecting too much from myself and it took quite a while for me to launch consistently, turn/edge and make laps. A friend of mine got really into it and I tagged along until I got a board as a gift. For me initially, all I wanted was able to ride laps and not really ride up the obstacles until riding around got boring.
I eventually learned and got confident riding the obstacles within the last 2 years. Right now I can pretty much hit majority of the obstacles, though I lack style and I can't really do any spins, the most I can do is a backside or a frontside 180 on the ones I'm rather comfortable with (just rooftops and tabletops really
)
I can hit hard edge and progressive kicker hits, though I can only do simple grabs (indy, stalefish, tail)...
I'm not really rushing into my progression because I do plan to ride the cable for most of my life (as long as I can probably ride perhaps), since it grew into me and I somehow became passionate about it.
My short term to-do list would probably learning blind-outs, 360 spins on a tabletop or rooftop, and probably a few more kicker tricks (kicker raley and tantrums of the kicker look harder than they seem to be)... Then probably work on surface air tricks last.
Like most people, wakeboarding isn't my primary livelihood and I do fear of risking any traumatic injury. I try not to get peer pressured by some people in the park who've been riding for just a year but are significantly better than me (though sometimes it sucks
)
Perhaps my biggest hesistation in doing them is most the ones on my short term list are more prone to injury, especially 'cause I'm still working on executing and reacting faster out in the water.
ex. What freaks me out in trying out blind-outs is the risk of dislocating my shoulder with the wrong execution, or maybe stalling when trying to execute a tantrum off a kicker. Anyway, as we all know it's all in the mind and commitment once you've decided to try them out. (Any tips would be greatly appreciated by the way!)
Thanks for reading my rather long post, I hope to keep this thread alive as a sort of diary for most riders out there and find out how people keep up with their progression and how they pace it
Cheers!