Beginners Guide - Back to Wrapped / Backmobe

What's up, guys? Rygo here from MACkite. Welcome back to our Unhooked playlist. For this week we're going to talk about the Back to Wrapped, or the Backmobe. We're going to be building off of our Fundamentals playlist where we covered every fundamental unhooked trick that you need to know before you move on to the second playlist. If you've done all of those videos and you've put in the work, you're absolutely going to be ready to give this video a try.

On the note of levels and perspectives, in that series I included a difficulty scale of 1 to 10, and I talked about how the Back to Toeside was basically a 1, so on that scale the Back to Wrapped might be a 2 or a 3. A lot of people misinterpret that scale as boasting or trying to say, "Oh, this trick is so easy," but the reason I actually put that in there is because beliefs and perspectives are so important in everything in life. If you think big, you're gonna go big, and if you think small, you're going to create self-imposed limits that are literally not there.

So before you attempt this, just make sure you go back and watch that video on the Backroll to Toeside because we're going to be doing another drill just like our Front to Blind video. Basically, you're going to do the Backroll to Toeside just like we did in that video, but when you land, I want you to land and do a surface pass, so we're bringing those two videos together, and that's literally the first step.

You don't want to go straight for a Backmobe; you're probably going to get smoked and you're not going to want to try it again. What you need to do is to build your muscle memory and your confidence and, while you're not going to impress anybody with the Backroll to Toeside with a surface pass, it's an incredibly practical drill, and over time you'll start landing more and more into that surface pass. You'll be almost landing wrapped, and before you know it, you'll be popping and literally just landing wrapped. It will be so natural.

Now, the key to this is the timing of your rotation. You start like the Back to Toe: you want to keep the kite low at a 45 degree angle. We're not doing anything with the kite; this is a load and pop trick, so your kite is going to be parked at a 45 degree angle. Come in with good speed, bear downwind, and then load into a good pop. With this one, just like the Back to Toe, you want to release late so you've almost completed half of a backroll before you pop off the water.

As soon as you pop off the water, lay your arms out just a little bit to give yourself some room, and as you come around about three-quarters of the way through that roll, you're going to pull your arms in aggressively. That's why it's important to let them out; you want to be able to pull them aggressively towards your new lead hip, which was your trailing hip. Almost land wrapped with two hands on the bar, and this will force you to keep the bar close.

One super useful tip on learning this trick that really helped me is to hold on with two hands way longer than you think. As you come around, you can almost be landing into that surface pass with two hands on the bar. Then let go, and your arm will naturally be pulled behind you. What happens is a lot of people pop a really big backroll, they try to go for the rotation, and then they just drop the bar or they pop the handle. It happens all the time, but if you hold that with two hands for almost the entire trick, it makes it a lot easier.

It feels a little bit weird, but one key thing is to look really aggressively over the shoulder and envision yourself going downwind. You don't have to come all the way around and ride back upwind; you only have to come around and land downwind. When you get in that toeside position, it's only another 180 degrees from that toeside position.

Just like the Front to Blind, you're going to be landing, it's going to be real surface passy for a long time, and when you do that enough it teaches you to not catch an edge and it helps build that muscle memory. Before you know it, this is going to feel incredibly natural. Probably somewhere around the 500th attempt, you're going to pop and literally land in the wrapped position.

This is one of those tricks that happens very progressively, and I would encourage you to just try the Backroll to Toe with a surface pass with two hands on the bar, and basically as soon as you touch the water, that's when you can let go with that front hand. With time, you can forget that step and you can just come around and do it with one hand, but you've got to build that strength, you've got to build that muscle memory, and you've got to get used to how to point your toes in a way that you don't catch the edge, and the surface pass will absolutely teach you those skills. It's something that everybody skips, and it's literally the key tip that holds everybody back from bridging in from a Back to Toe to a Back to Wrapped or a Backmobe.

If you have any questions on this one, let me know in the video comments, and if you found the video helpful, give it a thumbs up, hit that subscribe button, and if you get it let me know. I'd love to hear about it, so I'll catch you next time.

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