Wakeboarding – grab your board shorts and get flying.

Tantrums. Hairy scarecrows. Ollies. Inverts. Grabs. Roast beefs. Whirlybirds. There’s lots of new language to learn in the Army and here’s some more. It’s from the adrenaline-packed world of wakeboarding.

The sport is a mash-up of snowboarding and water-skiing. You skim across lakes at speeds of up to 30km/h on a board that’s towed behind a boat. It’s fast, fun, thrilling – but what’s even better is that soldiers can apply to get time off work to get stuck in.

"You skim across lakes at speeds of up to 30km/h."

And this massive adrenaline rush it is all down to one man: Captain Kerry Gospel. I’ve always been into extreme sports like BMXing, but I wanted something that would spark the interest of young soldiers and that we could do easily in the UK," says team boss and self-confessed adrenaline junkie, Captain Kerry Gospel. We managed to get some funding from the Army and I was determined to make it a success," he says. "In the Army you can make most things happen if you put your mind to it."

While everyone else is hard at it on base, the Army wakeboarding team is given two weeks off each year to compete in the Army championships, and against the Navy and RAF.