Disciplines within Surfing

To use the words surfing and discipline in the same sentance feels a bit foreign to us, the sport is famed for its laid back and relaxed attitudes and the Waveriders, although a military association, fully believe and support this ethos!

However, this page is meant to explain the various "disciplines" of the sport in general and what we at the Waveriders practice.

The club has two main areas of expertise, Surfing and Bodyboarding. Surfing being where you stand up whilst riding a wave, and Bodyboarding is carried out, in the main, lying down on your chest.

Surfing is carried out on hard boards, whereas Bodyboarders generally use foam boards.

There are two main styles of Surfboard, these being a Longboard and a Shortboard. These two are joined by various others being a mixture of the two, or anything else any designer can come up with!

Longboard

The longboard is primarily a single finned surfboard with large rounded nose and length of 9 to 12 feet (2.7 to 3.7 m). Noseriders are a class of longboards which enable the rider to walk to the tip and nose ride.

Longboards (also known as Malibu boards) range 8 to 14 feet (2.4 to 4.3 m) long, or 3 feet (0.91 m) taller than the rider in overall length. Its advantage is its substantial buoyancy and planing surface, which enables most surfers using it to ride waves generally deemed too small to propel a shortboard, as well as anything else. Longboards are universally common among both beginners and skilled surfers alike. The main reason why longboards are more suitable for beginners is because of the board's size and frequency of catching waves. In the proper conditions, a skilled surfer can ride a wave standing on the nose of a longboard, and put his toes over the nose's edge. By literally putting his "toes on the nose" the surfer can "hang ten".

Shortboard

Since the late 1960s, many of the surfboards in common use have been of the shortboard variety between 5 feet (five'o) and 7 feet in length, with a pointed nose and a rounded or squarish tail, typically with three fins but sometimes with two or as many as five. Surfers generally find a shortboard very quick to manoeuver compared with other types of surfboards. Because of a lack of flotation due to the smaller size however, shortboards are harder to catch waves with, often requiring steeper, larger and more powerful waves and very late takeoffs, where the surfer catches the wave at the critical moment before it breaks.

Bodyboard

A 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 can be made up from different types of foam, each type of foam gives the bodyboard a different amount of flex and control for the rider.