Tips by David Ngiam
Video : David Ngiam
Photo : Roger Koa
The Cable Air Raley is arguably the easiet invert to master on the cable. It is easy to execute but may be difficult to understand at first.
Be sure that you are fairly confident using the cable system and can get round the course easily. Practice a lot of edging or surfing around so as to improve your edge control. Once you think that you got your edging dialed in, you should be ready. Remember, like raleys behind the boat, this trick is 90% mental.
To start, remember to always keep the line tight (or at least there’s no slack). As you come around the marker bouy (there’s one in every corner), hold your edge a little, perpendicular to the direction of travel. This is to keep the line tight with some tension. As the top of the cable clicks around the corner, this is when the action starts. After the ‘click’, you will notice a significant pull on the line. Now with your already tight line, edge in hard but progressive and concentrate on keeping your shoulders squared. Also, make sure you are digging your heels in on your edge. After about 1.5 – 2 seconds after edging in, you should be at your hardest pull, just dig in your heels a little harder and you will feel the line yank you up. Kick your front foot back a little to help with the release, relax your body and let the line pull you into a Raley. When in the Raley position, always look over your front arm to spot your landing. If you look down too much in between your arms, you might rotate in the air and you’ll end up landing on your back. Coming down is the easy part, just pull the handle towards your waist and your body will naturally drop back down with your board beneath you (unless you don’t get enough air).
You can practice this with a wakeskate first just to get the feel of the pull. Obviously, your wakeskate is going to fly away from you, but thats ok. just learn to pull yourself down with your feet underneath you. Once you’ve got that dialed in, try it with a wakeboard. The main difference between Raleys on a wakeboard & wakeskate is that the release off the water is trickier on the wakeboard, since its attached to you. For the release, a good tip I came across once was to imagine that you have a ball placed behind your front foot, and for the release, you need to pretend like you are kicking that ball backwards hard with your heels
Here are some things to remember…
Don’t break at the wasit too much on the approach. You want to have a tall approach and as you edge more, your upper body should likewise be leaning back more. A common mistake is that while the rider might be edging harder, he breaks at the waist and his upper body remains upright. When this happens all the tension is built around the waist. The pivot point for this trick is at your shoulders, so you really want to feel the load on your upper body.
Keep your edge on both feet with even weight or you’ll end up in spin in mid air.
Don’t look down when in the air, this will make you flip into a s-bend-backroll-to-disaster.
Don’t chicken out at the last minute and throw it like a wus, you will get little air and the crashes will be alot harder.
Don’t try to ollie up and throw the board behind you, the cable raley is a slingshot action, so you are actually swung into position automatically.
TRUST THE CABLE . It seems weird at first, but if you do it right, the cable will pull you up with ease.