Wakeboarding
Train Like a Pro: Meagan Ethell and Guenther Oka
Professional wakeboarders Meagan Ethell and Guenther Oka share insights on how they get into winning shape and stay healthy in a high- impact sport.
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The love for wakeboarding, which was born when they were kids, is still going strong.
Meagan Ethell and Guenther Oka are sitting in the living room of their home in Orlando. Gleaming, powerful his-and-hers towboats are moored in the canal just steps from the house. The couple lives and breathes wakeboarding.
Ethell, who grew up outside Chicago, took up the sport when she was 8. “It didn’t feel so serious at first, and I think I just made steady progression,” Ethell, now 28, recalls. But she turned pro when she was only 15 and made an immediate impact in the sport. “Wakeboarding doesn’t have a set of rules like most sports,” she says, describing her love of riding. “You can take it and do whatever you want with it. The freedom is kind of unlimited.”
Oka, meanwhile, grew up in Cincinnati and had his first experiences being towed behind a boat before he was in grade school. He moved to Orlando to pursue a pro career when he was just 17 and hasn’t looked back. “I love the art of doing an action sport where I’ve got full creativity over how I express myself,” says Oka, now 26. “And it’s this time when I can go out and my brain totally shuts off and I’m there, locked in in the present moment.”
Since those formative years, you could say their careers have worked out. Together they have 14 world championship titles and scores of other wins. And over the years, as the stakes got bigger and the injuries more consequential, they came to realize that passion, creativity and outsized talent would only take them so far—that they’d have to take their off-the-boat fitness, nutrition and mental training more seriously to get and stay on top.
Along the way, the two rising stars became a couple, and they got married this past fall. “What we have and share, being pro athletes who do the same sport but are also in a relationship, it is just such an uncommon thing,” Ethell says. “It just makes it so much easier to achieve what we want to because we know we have our partner’s support no matter what.”
Oka, beaming, agrees. “We’ve been on such an unbelievable journey throughout our careers—both separately and also together,” he says. “We’ve been able to travel the world and experience so much together. It’s just been the best ride ever.”
Meagan and Guenther share a high-five on the water.
© Ian Witlen
RIDING COMES FIRST
Oka and Ethell always try to start multidisciplinary training days on the water. “Even if I have a list of planned activites, I try to prioritize wakeboarding as the first one that gets taken care of,” Oka says. “The battery level on the body’s at 100 percent—it’s fully charged—and I can kind of give everything I can to my craft. I can use whatever’s left over at the gym, or in the ocean, or things like that.”
SEASONAL RHYTHM
Ethell says their on-the-water training shifts with the professional calendar. “During competition season, my focus is what I need to do in order to succeed at contests—things like perfecting new tricks,” she says. “But in the offseason, it’s a little bit less structured. I try to just go back to the feeling of having fun.” She adds that learning tricks that will stand out in a pro contest is mentally and physically taxing. “The process usually involves a bunch of highs and lows,” she admits. “But I ultimately find that process fun.”
Recovery is a huge part of what we do. Sometimes we spend more time recovering than we spend training in the water.
FUNCTIONAL STRENGTH
When they’re home in Orlando, the couple trains at a gym called New Dimensions that is popular with world-class wakeboarders. “We don’t spend time doing bench presses or squats because that doesn’t reflect what we’re doing on the water—out there we’re twisting, turning, jumping and flipping,” Oka says. “So the movements we do at the gym cover the way our bodies and specific muscles are moving to help us maintain strength and mobility out on the water.”
“Getting stronger is gratifying," says Ethell.
© Ian Witlen
Big movements in the gym parallel the movements in wakeboarding.
© Ian Witlen
Meagan Ethell and Guenther Oka were photographed in Orlando on November 6.
© Ian Witlen
Meagan and Guenther in their neighborhood gym in Orlando, Florida.
© Ian Witlen
Meagan and Guenther tag team their gym workouts.
© Ian Witlen
![“The movements at the gym cover the way [we] are moving on the water.”](https://img.redbull.com/images/c_crop,x_0,y_2,h_5263,w_7894/c_fill,w_100,h_67/q_20,f_webp,e_vectorize:30/redbullcom/2025/3/18/kkmippj2iudgckq9yefa/meagan-ethell-guenther-oka-fitness-wakeboarding-gym-stretches "“The movements at the gym cover the way [we] are moving on the water.”")
“The movements at the gym cover the way [we] are moving on the water.”
© Ian Witlen
Meagan Ethell catching some air in a practice session.
© Ian Witlen
Oka and Ethell try to start multidisciplinary training days on the water
© Ian Witlen
THE REHAB MINDSET
Both athletes have worked through serious injuries, so rebuilding function and preventing future issues is a focus at the gym. “Working in the gym has made me more mindful of my body,” Oka says. Ethell agrees. “Doing rehab on a torn ACL helped kick-start gym life for me and made me hyperaware about my body,” she adds, admitting that it’s more work than fun. “Getting stronger is gratifying, but it’s less exciting than wakeboarding.”
A PASSION FOR FOOD AND FUEL
Wakeboarding’s super duo are passionate home chefs. “Being a pro athlete has opened my eyes to nutrition,” Ethell says. “I’ve always loved to cook, and learning how to properly fuel my body has gotten me excited to learn new recipes. And having a partner who has an equal mindset about that just makes cooking healthy food that much easier.” Oka, a bit of a prep specialist, adds, “We’ve got the teamwork thing dialed!”
Having other hobbies is fun and lets us take a beginner mindset to bringing things back to our sport.
Meagan Ethell in red light therapy a part of her recovery practice.
© Ian Witlen
Guenther Oka in red light therapy
© Ian Witlen
“We’ve got the teamwork thing dialed!”
© Ian Witlen
Oka and Ethell tag team the kitchen prep.
© Ian Witlen
CROSS-TRAINING IS GOOD FUN
Both athletes like to explore other sports. Oka likes foiling, Ethell has been hitting the climbing gym for several years, and both like to surf. “We’re pretty much nonstop the entire summer, so we don’t really have time to do these other sports that we enjoy,” says Ethell, who thinks climbing is a good time—and good for upper-body strength. “It’s really nice in the offseason to give our minds a break from wakeboarding and focus on something fun, without pressure or expectations.”
Keep up with Meagan and Guenther!
Meagan Ethell
Instagram @meaganethell, TikTok @meaganethell
Guenther Oka
Instagram @guentheroka, TikTok @guentheroka
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