yeah dude, with tumble turns it's all about the handle placement along your waist line. if you start with the handle to your right hip, that will initiate a turn to your left. as you get to 180 degrees, you move the handle to the middle of your waist line. If you continue to move the handle towards your left hip, that will bring you the rest of the way around. as you get all the way around, you'll want to square that handle back up to center and stand back up!
that's pretty much the mechanics of the tumble - what you're doing that you don't realize you're doing. that handle motion from side to side/hip to hip along the waist line completely controls how fast or slow you spin the tumble turn. as you get more comfortable doing them, you can stall a tumble at 90 or 270 & then spin it back the other direction....all just by adjusting the handle position between your hips.
as far as other advice....practice practice practice.....rough water, calm water, & everything in between. you'll take a lot of headers as you learn, but eventually you kind of learn how to fall and it doesn't even really hurt anymore. it's hard to give specific advice without seeing you rip a run...if you're throwing down tumbles long line, I'd suspect that you're becoming a pretty solid footer! you should shoot videos of your runs though so you can...A) assemble a collection of awesome crash videos as you learn. everybody loves to watch someone get rag dolled across the water at 40 mph. and B) review your runs to help you dial in your tricks. mostly just A) though.
and a toe up is when you do a deepwater toe hold barefoot start. (How do you start? Are you stepping off of a ski, or do you do deeps?) you basically put your toe in the toe hold, get speed, and stand up one footed....this is more of a trick to do off of a 5 foot extension on a boom.....they're a real bitch long line...
one last thing....by all means don't ever hesitate to shoot me a pm if you've got any footin'/waterskiing questions! always happy to offer any advice that I can!
