Do you want to be the hottest rider out there? There are different kinds of wakeboarders. Some of them play it safe and ride the little swells, while others want a good challenge. Serious wakeboards want to take that challenging route, or at least most of them will. And what does it take to do all those cool wakeboard tricks? Time, patience, and practice. Better get a move on if you haven't started yet!

There are so many great tricks out there just waiting for you. There are spins, slides, inverts, blinds, and loops, just to name a few. But to begin with, you should probably stick with the surface tricks while you're still learning to maintain your balance as well as control your board and navigation.

As you start off on your journey through the wakeboarding world, be patient with yourself; you're going to make mistakes and there's just no way around it. Some of the better known surface tricks include potato peelers, backside butterslide, backside butterslide 180, perez, surf carve, powerslide, surface 180, surface 360, and tumble turn.

If you feel like you are ready to get a little bit of air, you might want to try some board grabs and simple rotational wakeboard tricks. If you feel at ease with your balance and control, you should be ready to tackle some of these popular wakeboard tricks: The method grab, switching, progressive heelside edge, progressive toeside edge, 180s, butterslides, toeside frontside grab 180, and ollie backside.

Now once you get down some of the more basic grabs and rotational tricks, you can get fancy and try something a bit more challenging. Intermediate riders should consider practicing some of these wakeboard tricks: tantrum, heelside off-axis 360, heelside 540, roll to revert, indy backside 180 (blind), back roll, and toeside frontside 540.

But then you have the advanced riders, who can pretty much do whatever they set their minds to. Some of the most notorious wakeboard tricks for progressed riders include more difficult moves such as complicated inverts and spins. These tricks are often mingled with cool grabs.

If you qualify as an advanced rider, you ought to try these on for size: Wrapped KGB, crow mobe, front flip, tantrum to blind, whirlybird, elephant, and heelside mobe.

You don't have to be a follower and stick only with what other people came up with. Once you've been doing some of these tricks and feel comfortable with them, it's time to move on to your next personal level of achievement.