Speed is key for any sort of aerial maneuver. Be sure to put in a good solid bottom turn and angle your board flat on to the oncoming section of the wave. Your timing is the most crucial part of this step to allow you to rocket forward rather than being too late and getting an embarrassing lip to the bounce.

If you're doing things right you should now be airborne and twisting your body in to the invert. Your head should be pretty much upside down and your arms should be holding your board inverted. Try to remember that the slower you get into this position, the more stylish it will look to all the other gay guys checking you out.

The hardest stunt is the next step as you should now be in the invert position and your natural reaction is to pull your board back around to land but nstead of this pause your body for a second. This should allow you to keep getting more air as your body points upwards.

Once you feel your legs come out of the wave, begin to slowly bring your board back around yourself. If you have timed it right the waves lip should impact the flats just before you do so, breaking your fall.

As you're landing remember to hold on tight, brace your body so that you don’t head butt your board, then regain trim position as soon as you can. This will help you ride out of the manuever and right in to the next one.

REVERSE AIRS

How to complete a rotation before you impact

Like so many of today’s moves its pioneer was Thom Stewart, but more recently it’s been taken to the next level by that aerial freak Matt Hubbard. Matt's the first guy to consistently pull the whole spin in the air which demonstrates his freakish ability in this sick sequence. Speed is the most important element to this move, if it is to be completed on target, than almost any other. Look for a steep, wedge-like wave, preferably with a horse-shoeing air-section, which will give you the best possible chance at attempting and landing one.

Shot 1

Matt has gone through about 50% of the fundamentals needed for this move; he’s bottom-turned, getting every ounce of speed he can from the wave, he’s already got his eye on the spot that he wants to hit, and with right on timing he’s initiated the first part of his move. At this point Matt is 100% into the move; his back is fully arched, and he is looking in the direction he wishes to spin.

Shot 2

Due to his timing and speed, Matt's been catapulted up and out of the lip. Other guys would end up doing an off-the-lip reverse, but it’s Matt's ability to ‘pop it’ and put vast amounts of air between him and the wave, that makes him different from many of his peers. You’ll notice that his legs are crossed – making the move look more refined – and he is, after having completed 40% of the rotation, again looking in the direction in which he is spinning – keeping that speed going.

Shot 3

Whereas many air reverses are half completed in the air and half completed battling with the white-water, in this particular case Matt's determination has seen him complete 100% of the rotation in the air. It is almost as if he’s actively wrenched his board around mid-air to do this; the down side being the landing, check how heavy it is! It is worth noting that in the third shot Matt's legs are now uncrossed, helping him to stabilize his flight, and prepare for the landing by moving further down the board and eyeing-up a landing spot.

Shot 4

We asked Bodyboarder Magazine's publisher Simon Ramses to explain: "One could hypothesize that the roots of this conflict lie with the birth of surfboard riding itself. We all have heard surfing referred to as 'the sport of kings,' as it was the royalty of the Pacific Islanders who probably were the first people riding surfboards on waves for pleasure. Being a part of something that seems descended from the leisure time of royalty seems something worth being proud about, right? Surfers seem to have earned the right to lay claim to the ocean's fringes as theirs alone because they're out there in the water even when the conditions suck and all the other beach goers are tucked away in their warm little beach condos.

But it was Tom Morey, a surfer, who was seeking a way to bring that rush to the masses who invented the first Boogie board. Before that, it was the Polynesians again who rode waves in the prone position, on hand carved boards known as paipo boards.

Tom's invention revolutionized things because it made riding waves easy, fun and safe because of the soft material boogie boards were made of. And he made it cheap too -- the barriers to being a surfer are many and varied, some of them simply economic. Let's face it: it's not easy to become a surfer. Boards and gear are expensive, it takes a lot of time at the beach to learn to ride a wave standing up, and you could get hurt in the process. You have to be a certain kind of person, many surfers say. So it's the sport of kings, something to be proud of, a sport for the privileged few -- and many surfers want to keep it that way. Just like localism.

But here's the problem: here's a sport and lifestyle that surfers are very passionate about, and here's this guy coming along and completely demystifying it so that anyone -- some city bound kid who can't afford board racks or a surfboard even -- can experience the joy of riding waves! Anarchy! All the time you've spent learning to stand up, to turn, and your kid brother gets his first tube laying down two weeks after he first rides a whitewater!

But from Tom's point of view, what he did was create a form of surfing for the every person, for the non-royalty. Look at it this way, and body boarding can be seen as the sport of the people. But surfer's aren't cool with that. Some people would like to keep the lineup for themselves. But hey, if you can join the crew, why can't your midwest cousin? Wait, he has to stand up to earn the right to a spot on the peak, even if he knows the rules, waits his turn, treats everyone with respect and all the rest of the 'gentleman's rules?' That borders on blind prejudice, don't you think? Switch the word ' boogie boarder' for your favorite racist slur and all of a sudden it takes on a new, more insidious perspective.

Snowboarding went through the same kind of thing with the skiers, but somehow -- 'cause they stand up maybe -- their sport became cool. Roller bladers cop static from skateboarders all the time. Why? 'Cause people like to stick with their tribes. Wave riding is, in theory, beyond all that. But as usual the real world is a different place.

To be honest no one knows when it started, and it probably won't go away. My guess is it started when the first wave of kids hit the beach en masse, turning placid line-ups into zoos and freaking out a bunch of surfers who'd gotten used to having the place all to themselves. Body boarding had no soul, they'd claim, the boards are mass marketed and popped out of molds to generate a million dick-dragging clones come to clog line-ups everywhere. But a high-end body board is more hand-shaped than a skate deck. Or those cool new computer-shaped sticks coming out of the bigger surfboard manufacturers these days. If you were looking for a practical reason to hate body boarders, you won't find it there. They're more environmentally friendly to make than surfboards, too.