Intermediate Wakeboarding Tricks

How to do a Tantrum

Synopsis: How to land your first wakeboarding invert. A walkthrough of landing the most basic trip flip, the Tantrum. Learn how to do a flip the easy way.

Inverts are what set the sport of wakeboarding apart from other board sports. There are maybe one or two inverted tricks in the whole genre of board-sports other than wakeboarding. Wakeboarding is all about inverts. They're fun to watch and even more fun to perform.

The easiest invert (though others will tell you it's the Backroll) to learn is the Tantrum. I was able to land this trick my first day trying. And if you have a strong wake-to-wake jump and a little bit of guts, you will hopefully follow along that same path.

The tantrum is basically a back flip. You rotate in the same direction as you are moving. You can imagine it like this: you are rollerblading backwards and as you go off of a ramp, the heels of your skates hit a curb. So your feet initiate the rotation. This is basically what happens on a wakeboard. The wake is the ramp and the lip of the wake is the curb.

The thing to remember here is that you don't have to "hock" the flip at all. The wake will do all of the work for you. You just have to set it up correctly.

Setting up for this trick is one place where you don't want to use your progressive edge. Go ahead and cut hard towards the wake right from the start. When you get close to the base of the wake, let up on your edge just a little bit. You won't really have to think about this part, it should come naturally because of the next step.

When you get to the top of the wake, you'll need to let go with your back hand, twist so that your shoulders are parallel to the wake (your back is facing the wake) and arch your back like you're a teenage-girl trying to show-off your breasts.

If you do this right, your feet should come around and rotate around you. Once you get the hang of initiating the rotation, it's all just a matter of practicing until you get it right.

If you have been reading the other wakeboarding tutorials on this site, you should remember my tip about "going early" from the article about how to clear the wake. This is even more crucial on the tantrum. If you go early the trick will look ugly and you will risk breaking the talus bone in your ankle on a bad landing. Take it from me, I broke the talus in each of my ankles in two seperate borked tantrums attempts. Don't go early! Wait until the top of the wake before you let go and arch your back.

Stick with it and you'll stick one. The tantrum really is a pretty easy trick. And it looks awesome.

Once you're landing them consistently, try grabbing it indy or whipping it to blind. Or move on to learning your second invert, the Heelside Backroll.

As a valued reader, this page was brought to you ad-free by BoardStop. Please help keep this site running by buying your wakeboarding gear through our sponsor links. For a limited time only, get a FREE wake-boarding.org sticker when your order from BoardStop. Just forward us a copy of your receipt.

Need help on this trick? Visit our wakeboarding discussion board.