And wakeboarding is all about having fun. Accentuated cambers allow you to ride more easily on the water, go faster, generate more pop off the wake, and minimize the risk of face planting at high speeds. But not all cambers are created equally. For general riding, the camber tends to be continuous. That means that you could trace it on graph paper, plot a couple points, plug them into a fancy Texas Instrument graphing calculator, and derive a quadratic equation from it all.
In simpler terms, the camber maintains a consistent curve—there are no angles to it. The three stage camber is more blocky than a continuous one.
Instead of a steady curve, the nose and tail turn up abruptly from a shallow curve below your feet. Why, you might ask, would anyone design such a board? The answer is that, with a 3-stage camber, you can really maximize your air off the wake. With a 3-stager, the impact with a wall of water forces you up. When you get more air, you generally have more fun.
There are, unfortunately, a few downsides to this design. They tend to plow instead of glide. Plowing means more friction, and friction means it takes more energy to hold onto that tow rope. Boards with a 3-stage camber also tend to be less forgiving.
If you stumble a bit and your weight shifts too far forward, that nose will catch easier than a continuous camber, and if anyone on the boat is taking video, you will have an epic face-plant clip to show your friends. Countless hybrid designs exist. These designs go under various names, such as blended 3-stage, hybrid 3-stage, hybrid camber, and abrupt continuous.
It really all comes down to personal preference. If you go to bed at night and dream that, as you pop big off the wake, you release the towrope and transform into a glorious albatross with a foot wingspan and then soar across the world at will, we recommend an aggressive 3-stager.
If you like to impress the ladies with your laid-back easy-riding carving style, go with a continuous camber. Most of us fall somewhere in between. When it comes to ability level, continuous cambers are easier to ride. The boards available today feature some surprising, even counterintuitive features.
Just about every wakeboard employs a combination of a foam core, fiberglass, resins and different plastics in their construction. Most boards and for most of wakeboarding history, all boards are built to be fairly still, allowing you to cut through choppy waters and get a solid pop off the wake.
With these boards, the primary structural support comes from fiberglass that extends both along top and base but also on along the thin sides of a board. If you were to look straight at the nose with x-ray vision, you would see a rectangle of fiberglass. Some board designers recently have given a nod to snowboard design and made their boards with more flex in certain areas. Instead of the rectangle of fiberglass, they instead laid two independent sheets of fiberglass on the top and bottom with similar foam cores in between.
This makes for a much bendier, flexier board. What are the advantages of a flex board? It all comes down to your style of riding. Flex boards for boat riding tend to have a rigid portion beneath the feet with a flexible tail and nose.
This lets the rider maintain the pop of the board while also providing some ability to ollie off the wake or over it for style points.
In the cable park, one sure fire way to impress the ladies is with a massive buttered-out nose or tail slide by balancing on one flexed-out portion of the board while sliding over non-water.
Try one out if you get the chance. With all this in mind, wakeboard designers have combined several of these features with general different types of riding in mind. The first kind is what all newcomers expect. Try on several and make most of your decision based on comfort.
Perhaps the biggest part of the board buying process is testing a few different styles and types to see what feels best. Wide board or narrow? Hard edges or rounded? Single-tip or twin-tip? The good news is that more and more board shops are allowing riders to demo boards prior to purchase. Sometimes there can be a fee, but if you end up buying the board, the shop will often take your testing fee out of the final sale price.
Meaning you have a bigger board which has a slower response when you want to go from you toeside to your heelside. The extra weight you get due to choosing a bigger board makes it harder to flip and spin a board. Harder for inverts Not only does a bigger board weigh more, the large surface area also tends to "stick" more to the water.
In general, shorter boards are slower and take more effort to push through the water. This is because, the more surface area the board has on the water, the faster it will move across the surface. Also, landings are a bit harder on a shorter board, than on a longer board. Smaller board are good for invert riding and behind the boat. This is because this kind of riding requires you being in the air a lot.
A lot of jumps of the wake and invert riding takes up a lot of strength and a smaller board is better to ride for this kind of use. The pros of a shorter wakeboard 1. Better for inverts and more air time Less weight means more airtime, plain and simple as that! A brick will fall down heavier than a feather. Same goes for big vs smaller board, the smaller board will grant you a little bit of extra airtime when sending it of the wake or kickers.
Fast edge to edge A smaller board is also less wide, which means faster and better edge-to-edge control. You have less surface to put pressure on which makes is faster to switch from edge-to-edge. At the end off the day, no one likes to flip with a heavy brick on their feet. This basically means that the part of your board which is still in the water is smaller and therefore has less drag on its edge.
Less drag equals more speed! We recommend that beginners start out with a mellow 3-stage rocker board that has rounded center rails. A board like this will give you a more forgiving ride on the water and help you progress. Boards designed for beginners will provide a stable and forgiving ride. Intermediate riders have toeside and heelside edging down, jumping the wake and starting to work on their bag of tricks. You want a board that will help you progress but that you won't quickly outgrow as your riding improves.
Liquid Force Classic : An extremely versatile 3-stage rocker shape. At one time or another nearly every Liquid Force pro rider has rode the Classic. This shape was designed to improve a rider's skills and have fun learning the fundamentals of wakeboarding. A mellower rockerline is great for those learning to launch off the wake. The 3-stage rocker provides plenty of pop off the wake while its spiral v double concave hull helps to break the water and create soft landings after taking flight.
A great board for intermediate riders looking to take their game to the next level. Stomping spins and inverts already? These are usually pro model boards that are designed to create a fast, aggressive ride on the water. These boards offer the latest and greatest in wakeboarding technology, designed for those that are absolutely crushing it behind the boat.
Tired of the same 'ol stuff? Looking for something fresh and new to bring new life into your wakeboarding? Make wakeboarding fun again on this old school directional shape. The rocker is the difference in shape between the board's belly and it's tips.
You can easily recognize the rocker by laying the board on the ground or viewing the side profile. The two most common rocker types are continuous rocker and 3-stage rocker. However, in recent years wakeboarding has seen an uptick in cambered wakeboards. The next section will discuss how each of the rocker types affects the board's overall feel on the water and riding style.
A continuous rocker board is just what it sounds like, its a long continuous curve from tip to tail.
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