Can you ride with your right foot and your left foot forward? The change from riding right foot forward to riding left foot forward and vice versa is called Switch.
If you are riding right foot forward, you are a Goofy rider. If you’re riding with your left foot forward, you are a Regular rider. But you should learn to ride with the right foot and your left foot forward as soon as possible.
You can do the Switch directly under the running wire. Keep both hands at the handle, pull up your toes and rotate your board to the right or left, depending on you being a Regular or Goofy rider.
It’s important that you pull up your toes. Otherwise, you will just fall over to the front. If you have no fins under your board, the rotation will be much easier for you. Because riding with big fins is a little bit like riding on tracks. This can be very helpful if you need more stability, but it hinders you at the switch a lot, because you need to fight against the resistance.
You can either let go the back hand WHILE doing the switch or AFTER doing it. So, if you are a Goofy rider, you turn to the left and let go your right hand. If you are a Regular rider, you turn to the right and let go your left hand. By letting go the back hand you open your body and avoid turning back automatically.
Riding with the other foot forward is a weird feeling at first. But once you have the right feeling for it and you can stand somewhat safely, you rotate back.
Don’t forget to pull up your toes once again and bring your back hand to the handle.
I would also recommend doing your first Switches after the motor tower. Here you don’t have to swim or walk too far if you fall. In addition, at most cables this is the longest straight. So, you have enough time to switch back again before the next curve.
A small fun fact to finish this off. Unfortunately, the term Switch has multiple meanings in wakeboarding. We already discussed the first meaning, which is the change of right foot to left foot forward and vice versa. Nevertheless, there is one more meaning. If you do a trick with the, let’s say “wrong” foot forward, the TERM OF THE TRICK has the prefix Switch. For instance, if you are a Goofy rider and do an Ollie with the left foot forward, then this is called Switch Ollie. However, this doesn’t mean, that you do a Switch while doing an Ollie, but you do an Ollie with your weak foot forward.
It gets even a little bit more complicated. You need to cut first for the most tricks to be executed. In general, these tricks are easier if you do them to the outside, so at a cable, which runs counterclockwise, to the right. So, if you do an Ollie to the inside, this can be called Switch Ollie as well, regardless if you are a Regular or Goofy rider.
These multiple meanings of the term Switch confused me a lot first and they don’t even get used consistently. So, if someone talks about a Switch you need to check the context first to get the correct meaning of it.
