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Bodyboarding is a form of wave riding. The board consists of a smallrectangular piece of foam, shaped to a hydrodynamic form. The board can be shaped to different riding styles, and size of rider. Bobyboarding has been growing very rapidly over the last couple of decades.
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While many Polynesians had probably ridden waves in a prone stance on thin wooden \'paipo\' boards for centuries, the modern foam bodyboard is a direct invention of Tom Morey in the early 1970s. Tom\'s original idea was to find a fun and friendly way to make waveriding more accessible to the wider community. Tom\'s invention was licensed to the toy company Wham-O, makers of the Frisbee, and was sold to the public as the Morey \'Boogie\' board. The subsequent mass production and embrace by the waveriding public led to the interest of the sport\'s early heroes such as Jack Lindholm, Ben Severson, Pat Caldwell, and Mike Stewart.
The bodyboard differs from a surfboard in that it is much shorter and made of foam. The board consists of a foam \'core\' encapsulated by a plastic bottom and a softer foam top known as the deck. The core is made up from dow/polyethylene, arcel or, more recently, polypropylene. Each type of foam gives the bodyboard a different amount of flex and control for the rider. Dow/polyethelene cores are best suited to cooler waters as they can be too flexible in warm water and the board does not flex properly. most boards these days contain a wood stringer, to prevent flex in all water conditions. somestringers are made of carbon to prevent heavy weighted boards.
Some boards add one or two rods (usually of carbon) called stringers to strengthen the board, reduce deformation, and add stiffness and recoil to the core, giving greater speed from bottom turns. If a single stringer is used, it is placed in the center of the board running parallel to the rails. If two are used, they are placed symmetrically about the y-axis. Knowing the number of stringers and their placements is important to prevent damage to the board when punching a hole for a leash plug. Adding a stringer to a polypropylene/arcel core can make it too stiff for cool water. Speed is created when a bodyboarder bottom turns and the board flexes and recoils, releasing energy. If the board flexes too little or too easily, speed is lost.
Like the surfboard, a bodyboard can be made with a stringer or two (usually constructed with carbon fiber and graphite in a hollow cylindrical shape) to further increase its stiffness. If one so desires, a skeg can be purchased and installed in about 1 minute. A skeg can minimize the looseness that is required for many tricks and this has led to a large decrease in the presence of skegs which are very rarely and almost exclusively used by drop-knee or stand-up bodyboarders.
Crescent tails provide the greatest amount of hold for a rider in steep waves, but can make it harder to make the tail slide deliberately. Crescent tails are also preferred by drop-knee riders because its shape is less restrictive than the alternatives. A square tail has the opposite properties to a crescent tail and a bat tail can give the hold of a crescent tail, but it\'s easier to slide the tail. The bat tail also makes the board slightly longer in the middle, which helps keeps the riders legs out of the water, reducing drag.
Glued, or more recently, bonded via a hot air lamination technique, to this core is a thick plastic bottom (known as the \'slick\') which gives the board strength and speed. Two main types of \'slick\' are present in modern day bodyboards, the first and the better performing of the two is surlyn providing much more strength and projection. Another cheaper type of slick is known as High Density Polyethylene or HDPE, which does not perform to the same standard.
The top of the board (the deck) is made from a softer foam to give grip and cushioning to the rider, you put wax on the board to stay on it.
Unlike a surfboard, there is no fin or skegs but most modern boards are equipped with channels that increase surface area in the critical parts of the board which, in turn allow it to have greater wave hold and control, the use of these channels also means that the tail of the board is free to move. Circa 2006 concave bottoms were being tested. These concave slicks are now available on boards such as the NMD Winchester Ltd. \'08, and appear to have been a great innovation.
The shape of the board greatly affects how it works. If the wide point of the board is near the nose, the board is best suited to prone riding as the riders weight is further up on the board. A board with a wide point near the middle of the board and a narrow nose is ideal for dropknee riding as the rider is further back when dropkneeing and a narrow nose makes the board behave more like a surfboard, making dropknee moves easier.
Mike Stewart, and Guilherme Tâmega were the only bodyboarders that made the transition from the old school and kept ranked in the world top 24 bodyboarders. Mike Stewart with 9 world titles and 11 Pipeline victories, is still regarded as the absolute master of the sport. Over the last few years, Australian riders such as Ben Player, Matt Lackey, Dave Winchester, Mitchell Rawlins and Ryan Hardy have brought the sport of bodyboarding more into the main stream. Many companies, such as NMD (Nick Mesritz Designs), Nomad, VS, 4Play and Pride
Old school bodyboarding praised a more fluid and easy going style of surfing. The standard tricks were spinners (360° spin) on the wave face either in normal or reverse direction, cut backs and the bodyboarding trademark El Rollo.
Modern bodyboarding, while still praising huge attention to style, is mainly focused on critical aerial manoeuvres in heavier and bigger waves, in which the waves become launching platforms for these manoeuvres. Spinners are now aerial, some bodyboarders managing to execute complete reverse 720° in the air (Jeff Hubbard and José Otávio are notable examples). El Rollos are mostly aerial too, and this basic trick evolved into critical variations, like the ARS (Air Roll Spin) pioneered by Michael Eppelstun (where the bodyboarder connects an ordinary aerial El Rollo with an 360° spinner in the air, Invert Airs and the Backflip.
The modern day bodyboarder aims to draw tighter lines and involve a montage of tricks on the one wave. Predominant moves of the modern day include inverts, forward and reverse spins in the air, reverse spins on the face, spins in the barrel, ARS\'s and backflips.
Note: Although the world tour and world women\'s tour changed names in the timespan the world titles below were recorded, this article assumes as world tour and world women\'s tour titles those earned after the establishment of the world tour by the current International Bodyboarding Association and its former incarnations.
Dropknee in another form of wave riding on a bodyboard. It consists of putting your preferred foot at the front of the board while the other knee rests on the tail of the board.
A few masters and near-masters of the drop-knee discipline are as follows:
Many surfing spots around the world are famous for their hollow, tube-like waves which are favored by bodyboarders. In general, spots favorable for longboard surfing make for poor bodyboarding, whereas most advanced- and expert-level surf spots are also good for bodyboarding. Some particularly hollow or dangerous waves such as Sydney Australia\'s Shark Island are ridden almost exclusively by advanced bodyboarders due to it being far harder to access such waves while needing to stand up.
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from Wikipedia
