Bodyboarding

Bodyboarders typically use swim fins for additional propulsion and control while riding a breaking wave.

Indigenous Polynesians rode "alaia" (pronounced ah-lie-ah) boards either on their belly, knees, or feet (in rare instances).

Alaia boards were generally made from the wood of Acacia koa and varied in length and shape.

[3] Tom Morey hybridized this form of riding waves on one's belly on a paipo to his craft of shaping stand-up surfboards.

Unlike fiberglass stand-up surfboards, the bodyboards dropknee riders use don't have fins underneath to help maintain a line on the face of a wave or to stop them sliding out so dropknee riders rely on weight transition from rail to rail to hold a line on a wave and turn/snap.

Each type of foam core, deck, or bottom material gives a bodyboard a different amount of flex and control.

Arcel and Polypro (polypropylene) cores are best suited for warmer waters due to their increased overall stiffness.

However, progressive bodyboarding has rendered use of such skegs obsolete due to the looseness required for maneuverability on a wave.

In addition, bodyboarders place strong emphasis on aerial maneuvers on bigger, heavier sections of waves.

These include aerial 360s, ARS (Air Roll Spin), el rollos, inverts (tweaking the board with the momentum of the wave and then swinging it back), backflips, ATS (Aéreo Thiago Schmitd) and variations/hybrids of these maneuvers are also performed.

Phylis Dameron was the first person, man or woman, to ride big Waimea Bay on a bodyboard in the late 1970s.

During the early 1990s in Brazil, Mariana Nogueira, Glenda Koslowski, and Stephanie Petterson set standards that pushed women's bodyboarding to a world class level.

From 1982 to 1993, the winner of the International Morey Boogie Bodyboard Pro Championships at Pipeline, Hawaii was considered world champion.