Women In Sport: Learn How To Wakeboard With Award-Winning Athlete Sasha Christian

Did you know that wakeboarding is a hybrid of water skiing, surfing and snowboarding? Yup, wakeboarding meshes together three different aspects of these sports to create one very thrilling water sport. To give us an idea about the intricacies of the water board sport, 2009 ASEAN Wakeboarding Champion and our 'Woman In Sport' Sasha Christian walks us through her athletic beginnings and shows us some tips that rookies like presenter Naomi Yeo can do to ease into the world of wakeboarding.

Wakeboarding vs. wakesurfing – what’s the difference?

But before we delve in, we want to know: what's the difference between wakeboarding and wakesurfing? According to Sasha, there are two core differences between the two. "Your feet are attached to the board when you wakeboard and you're using the two wakes to do tricks. With wakesurfing, you're a little bit closer to the boat. The speed of the boat is slower so the wakes are bigger, and you don't actually have to use the handle," shared Sasha. "Wakesurfing kind of mimics surfing and wakeboarding, well, it's a board sport." Watch the video above and see how our rookie fared in her wakeboarding experience.

Sasha's warm-ups are insane!

Compared to basic warm-ups where you activate your muscles before engaging in the activity, Sasha's warm-up drills are done on her wakeboard. While being towed by a boat, Sasha does several 360-degree flips in the air and lands gracefully on her feet — all without having a single drop of water touch her forehead. 

Easy waterboarding tricks

Intimidated by 360-degree flips and turns? You can ease into wakeboarding by starting with simple tricks instead. Sasha demonstrated a common rookie wakeboarding trick called the surface 180. You can do the “surface spin” by having your right foot in front and slowly twisting your hips to place your left foot forward. Sounds pretty simple, doesn't it? With wakeboarding, all you really need to begin is to find your balance and the guts to try. After all, pros like Sasha are like us — people with full-time jobs and hectic days — so if she can do it, we can do it too.

Want to know more about wakeboarding? Watch the full video here to learn more about this fierce sport.

This story was created in partnership with SportSG.