I have been kitesurfing for a while now, but still feel like an idiot sometimes.

Can someone please explain to me what the difference is between freestyle, freeride and wakestyle kiteboarding?

Also what do you call the style where they use the ramps and sliders?

I tried to find the answers on internet without much success.

freestyle: unhooked tricks + handle passes, powered tricks with powered rotations....
kite low.

freeride: ride anyway you want hooked in just cruse around and tricks mostly preformed when sending your kite.

wakestyle: sliders, ramps, kickers. kite low and bindings. can be confused easily with freestyle.

oldschool: board offs, dead man, big air with weird grabs and twicks...

wave riding:.... well i think u can figure that one out yourself


hope it helped.

i guess wakestyle is essentially doing tricks with the kite at a low angle- more like a cable or boat pole rather than like on a trapeze wire, unhooked. Wake boots and big rockers help soak up the harder landings.

Freestyle does not imply kite low.

Krivo wrote:


That cleared things up.

Now for the spanner - what is the style when using a wakeskate? (when they ride with shoes on, kickflips etc.)

I suppose it would be freestyle.

someone bring one of those nice looking new cabrinha wake skates down the beach! I wanna learn a bigspin!