Boosting 101
Boosting 101
Nathan here from MACkiteboarding.com, and today we're going to talk about jumping or "boosting" while kiteboarding. Jumping is a really neat and unique aspect of the sport because it allows you to leave the water at such an accelerated rate and jump so high that it's not like any other sport. Wakeboarding, surfing, paddleboarding, any of our other sports- snowboarding included- it's really difficult to be 50 feet off of the ground and maintain control and come back down in a decently safe manner.
At this point you should be riding in both directions very comfortably, upwind, and you should start working on riding a little bit powered up. To start out this trick, you're going to be riding in one direction (in the video footage I'm riding to the left) and then you'll slowly take your kite from about 45 degrees and bring it up above your head to noon. As it reaches the apex near noon, you're going to edge away from the kite and sheet in, and that's going to allow you to leave the water.
You shouldn't be jumping with your legs at all; you should feel the pull of your kite. This is where it's going to really help to be a bit powered up on your kite. The more dramatically you move the kite across the window, the more powered up you are and the harder you edge away from the kite. That's really going to allow you to go as high as possible. The neat thing is that you can reach heights of up to 50 feet nowadays, but you can control it very well, and you can jump and redirect and come back down in different manners.
Work on this and give us a shout if you've got any questions. Feel free to reach out to us at 1-800-622-4655. Good luck!