Bodyboarding is a derivative of wave riding. The average bodyboard consists of a small, rectangular piece of hydrodynamic foam. The board can be shaped and adapted to different riding styles, and size of rider. Bodyboarding has been growing very rapidly over the last couple of decades and has now developed into one of the fastest growing extreme water sports in the world.

Bodyboarding is regarded as the earliest known form of surfing. Though existing for centuries before European contact, Lieutenant James King of the Discovery wrote the first European description of surfing in the ship's log upon seeing it for the first time in Hawai`i

"a diversion the most common is upon the Water, where there is a very great Sea, and surf breaking on the Shore. The Men sometimes 20 or 30 go without the Swell of the Surf, & lay themselves flat upon an oval piece of plan about their Size and breadth, they keep their legs close on top of it, & their Arms are us'd to guide the plank, they wait the time of the greatest Swell that sets on Shore, & altogether push forward with their Arms to keep on its top, it sends them in with a most astonishing Velocity, & the great art is to guide the plan so as always to keep it in a proper direction on the top of the Swell, & as it alters its direct. If the Swell drives him close to the rocks before he is overtaken by its break, he is much prais'd."