Since early 2008 I’ve been riding bindings almost 100% of my time on the water.

They brought me tons of fun and I learned some wakestyle specific tricks and I will continue using them when the conditions are perfect, but today I feel as if I had build a wall around me by totally ignoring the advantages of straps.

While bindings are getting lighter every year it becomes easier and easier to do everything on bindings as well, but when it comes to learning new tricks that might not even exist yet in kiteboarding, boots tend to make you very lazy. I did learn the Bel-Air to blind and a couple of new tricks on boots before doing them on straps but in general, it’s easier on straps.

Marbella and Tarifa are also some of the choppiest places on earth, and chop is just deadly for boots.

Now the funny thing is, that I started to ride straps again, after hitting the cable regularly this summer. Part of the reason being that in bindings with chop you can’t get the same speed as on straps or on flat water behind the cable. So actually sometimes you’ll be able to ride more powerful in straps than in bindings!

So the message of the whole story is that kiteboarding isn’t one thing only.  I mean look at how good we have it: While skateboarders will always be limited to riding their skateboard, we can choose between a wakeskate, surfboard, twin-tip, wakeboard or even race-board.

So just go out there on whatever you like and have as much fun as you can!

Here’s a Mute 3 in bindings from earlier this summer (I still ride bindings with nice kickers, flat water or for rails):

This summer has been very quiet around Malaga and Marbella in terms of wind, so we had no choice but to go to the cable. That thing has no obstacles and most people are on knee boards, so it’s nothing like OWC Orlando or similar parks, but still better than nothing. Good thing about not having obstacles is your forced to do aerials. Alvaro and I rode like 5 times this summer and coming from kiteboarding the progression is really fast, Alvaro is already going for Double Sbend to blinds and landed a Hasselhoff, I have it a bit more difficult being Regular so I’m going for Pete Roses and I landed a Regular footed Frontroll to Blind and Batwing to blind among other easier goofy stuff, like Blind Judges, Back2Blinds, etc.

 

These aren’t my videos, but if you’re into Wakeboarding you should definitely check them out, unbelievable.

Tom Fooshee Pete 7:

Dominik Gührs (from Munich as well):

European Wake Championship: