Showing Off

For over a decade or more Showing Off has been the visual Bible for freestylers of all ambitions – but especially to real world windsurfers. With a simple building block approach, it shows them how easily they can adapt their basic planing skills to nail some impressive moves without risking permanent injury.

I am joined in this program by a starry team of freestyle pioneers and champions – Brian Talma, Pete Volwater, Ant Baker, Karin Jaggi as well as my old twinkle-toed chum Dave White. The infamous ‘Nobby’ steals the show with his brutal ‘how not to …’ performance. In part 1 we look at the influence of kit and tuning before gathering few extra skills common to most tricks, like early planing, sailing back-winded, switch foot and clew first. The fist raft of tricks are those NOT involving a turn such as the body-drag and boomerang. We then move on to variations of the carving gybe, such as one handers, lay-downs, duck gybes and 360s one handed and clew first.

In part 2, we move upwind looking at tacking variations such as the helicopter tack, nose-sink tack, duck tack and upwind 360.

We then take it up a level and get aerial. We look at chop hops, with and without one handed grabs – and then go ‘new skool’ with in depth explanations of the spin loop, the willy-skipper, the vulcan and spock – the moves which form the basis of all the latest moves.

And it’s it not just about the boys showing off – we break all the moves down with beach demos, highlighting the keys that unlock the door to each move.

Filmed in Vassiliki in Greece by Acrobat TV, it’s not only highly informative but bloody funny. I think you’ll get an idea how much fun we had making it. Originally 2 separate DVDs, we’ve now packaged Showing Off 1 and 2 as box set for the same price.