Andrew,
First and most obvious is you need to relax your arms and let them extend. By doing this you will increase your lean away from the boat and the accompanying edge angle of your ski. Then, if you can keep the handle in close to your thigh as well, you'll be in a good leveraged position. Bent arms is a common hurdle for skiers on their offside cut across the wakes. You can practice this position in a static exercise out to the right side of the boat (as a lefty). Have someone watch you to let you know if you are good with your position (or not) and hold it for a bit. You can practice this in a more dynamic exercise by just cutting from the left side to the right side without worrying about the following turn - just cut then glide, then cut, then glide, repeat, repeat as room on your lake allows.

There's more, but that'd be a good start. Good luck!
Jim

Ya, exactly as written above for starters! Arms are way to tight and trying to "Pull". This is because you are Not trusting the Lean.
As stated, forget the corners and just make Good Strong pulls back into the 1st wake with Hips up and handle down. Then, simply Continue this same position and as you come off the 2nd wake you will notice the water automatically break on the other side of the ski upon landing off the 2nd wake, "If" you do it right!

As you begin to trust your Lean, your pulls will begin to get much easier and faster with much Less effort and much Less "pop" or Bounce off of the wakes...

Colin is probably dead on about your corners being rushed and too aggresive, causing too much line Load, too soon and hindering or eliminating your chance of a Good Lean or Pull position by the time you get to the wakes...

This is why is it so important to forget the corners for now and get the "Feel" of a proper pull. After practicing and drilling the pull you'll do yourself a favor by working on lazy, more rounded, smooth Open water turns before going back into the course.
Even when you finally go back to the course, I'd highly suggest only "Shadowing" the Buoys until you are smooth, fluid and consistantly ending up early and wide to the buoys, before trying to go around them. Or you will simply regress to rushed turns, Bad positioning and the snow ball effect that will follow...

Thanks for all the responses guys. All of which make sense. I also waited to ask this question until now because on Saturday I am leaving for a week and a half vacation to my cottage were I will only be able to open water ski so I figured the time spent there would be the perfect time to working on correcting some things.

Thanks for this post Andrew.  It's very similar to mine about crunching forward in the wakes.

My coach (Paul Roberts @ Summerski) recently had a look at my form on the static machine onshore and noted that one of my issues is that while my arms tend to be straight my shoulders are pulled forward.  He told me to pinch my shoulder blades together.  When I did this a whole bunch of things happened...

1.  My chest pushed forward
2.  My hips pushed forward
3.  The handle automatically dropped lower.
4.  I tucked my chin in more to maintain visual on the imaginary pylon.

Then he said, OK, now bend your knees more...and wallah, perfect lean position.

All sounds good, eh, but haven't yet tried it on the water.

Wondering what you guys think of this whole "pinching of the shoulder blades" idea.

Also, I realize that there is a lot to this whole concept of trusting the lean.  I think that mentally I struggle here the most and need to "just do it".

Anyway, that's my situation at the moment.

Andrew1988 wrote:

So after three days of open water skiing I can already feel both sides of my turns getting better. My onside is very smooth right now when I concentrate on rolling off the turn, keeping my eyes on the boat and skiing back to the handle instead of ripping around to it.

My offside is not as smooth but has made leaps and bounds of progress. It is not very consistent yet but when I do the things mentioned above for on my onside it is 3 times better then what it was three days ago. I still need to get it through my head to just edge through the damn wakes on my offside. Its partially mental, but I also know and can feel that I am trying to load the line to quickly instead of progressively.

I had another lesson at Summerski on Friday evening.  Practiced just slowly edging the ski from just outside the white water.  I am making the same mistake in that even with this exercise I am edging strongly right away and then as soon as I hit the wakes I back off my edge, arms pull forward, and I crunch at the waist, especially on my offside.

So, my coach tried shortening the line to 35 off with the theory that there would be no wake and just do the same exercise.  But this time I found that while the wake was less there was sort of a "bowl" behind the boat that threw me off and I had one OTF crash as a result.  I wasn't pulling hard though being 35 off....

After 6 passes I tried something new on one of my offside turns...I ignored the wake and stared at the pylon the whole time.  This seemed to help.  I agree with you 100% that this is a mental game.  I am getting somewhat discouraged that I will never get over this fear of the wakes thing and having 44 years of bad habit in wake crossing isn't helping.

What opinions on literally ignoring the wake and just staring at the pylon?  I am really scared of these OTF falls on my offside.  I feel like an absolute beginner.....

Wow, using the blue rope to build confidence crossing the wakes?  Something about that sounds like a ceremony for a fat lip.

I totally get where you're coming from on the dry land drills. They are great to get a mental picture, but the dynamics of standing on a moving ski are, or at least feel, completely different. It may be worth taking the time to spend on the pull out drill. You hook up to a shorter line (-35' is a good one), pull out and stay there. Go left and stay there for the entire pass. Then go right and stay there for the entire pass. As you go along the goal is to get yourself into a natural, stacked position while you get up and stay up on the boat.

When you track down better positioning on the ski, the wakes won't be a big deal. You'll get and keep the ski on edge so it will slice through the wakes instead of bounce over. You will also have a stronger more balanced postion over the ski so when it does bounce, you will not get chucked off.

keep your handle to the side of your hip with straight arms

Hi Benji,

Could you elaborate on this part a bit more, like which side of the hip?

Thank you.

Snow

Chef23 wrote:

dwallar, you should be looking at the pylon when you are crossing the wake and not at the wakes.  Looking at the pylon opens your chest to the boat and enables you to have better body position across the wakes.

I completely agree this. Like you already read dwallar my offside had improved already after 3-4 open water sets. But after another week it improved even more. And when I didn't have a good crossing the spotter in the boat told me i wasn't looking at the pylon. I could really start to notice the difference too as I became of comfortable with looking at the pylon I could really feel myself being open to the boat with give a much better pull as been stated.

Just trying to give some confidence to ya!