This summer I’ve been spending a lot of time trying new moves! That way when winter time comes around I’ll have a good amount of moves to perfect! After going over some video of a move and also watching some pros live I’m ready to try this new trick.

     Trying new moves is really a big mental thing, if you go into trying a move mentally unprepared you’re probably not going to have much succes. Before going out I always try to clear my head and focus on the task at hand. Even if the move I’m going for isn’t a scary move I still need to have a clear head so that I can figure out how I can tweek it to land the move. If it is one of those mind over matter moves then I go into a whole new realm of getting pumped up and, sometimes, even a little pissed off!  

     Now that I’m on the water with determination and focus I have to start trying the move. The easiest way to succeed is to try the move non-stop! I see people that want to learn how to jibe but then sail out for miles at a time so that they only try a jibe once every fifteen minutes! This is important because once you try a move, you often have an idea of what you did wrong!  So if you can try the move again while the correction you need to make is fresh in your head you can test it out and get that much closer to landing it!  And that prosess is a lot like Scientific Investigation! 

     So I’m heading out through the break with gusto and I hit a vertical ramp to go for a back loop!  And then I land flat on my back.  That’s my first attempt or my Control.  My control is basically what I did wrong, now its time to tweek the move so I can land it!

     That tweek is going to be my Independent Variable.  So I figured out that I wasn’t spotting my landing on my backloop and now I need to sheet in and look at where I want to land in order to make it around!

     But did it work?  What was my Dependent Variable or my data?  My data says I’m happily backlooping because I’m looking right where I want to stick my nose!

     So after watching video and figuring out how to do a move I head down to the beach and mentally prepare myself for greatness!  Then I launch and go for broke on my first attempt!  Of course I crash and burn but I have an idea why so the next time I try the move, which should be soon, I will try something different!  That “something different” will either help me land the move or it won’t work at all but that’s just testing, sometimes you’ll get good results and sometimes you’ll get bad results.  Either way, I’ll be that much closer to landing this new move!