Welcome to the 5th edition of The Bodyboard Report! 🤙

Most sports spend their entire existence trying to get bigger, louder, cleaner, more visible, chasing sponsors and audiences and airtime as if that’s the natural end goal.

As if success is measured by how close you can get to the centre of attention…

Bodyboarding never quite followed that path, and even when it looked like it might, something always pulled it back…

Because if you really step back and look at it without bias, it has everything a mainstream sport should need, from the raw intensity of the waves it rides to the level of progression that, in many cases, goes far beyond what most people see in surfing. On the right day like eg. Fronton 2010 and 2012 - Sheer spectacle!

With pioneers like Mike Stewart laying down a foundation that still holds strong today, and modern riders like Jeff Hubbard continuing to push boundaries in ways that most audiences don’t fully understand or appreciate.

As a two-headed coin, we have to throw a DK bone to the big dogs like Jay Reale, Paul Roach and David Hubbard (Along with a laundry list of more favorites I’m sure you’re screaming at you’re screen right now).

So the question isn’t whether the boogie had the ingredients…

It clearly did, and still does! 🤙

The question is why it never translated into something bigger on a global, mainstream scale, yet with the so much more people moving to devoloping coastal areas, taking to the water in a new age where health and fitness are indeed mainstreem, on top of a growing global population…

If anyone is keeping score…

We should have many more bodyboarders now than ever before.

But, I turst we can all agree: Bodyboarding is scattered.

Accross the globe and the interwebs. 🌏🌐

So, I ask you to do your part to unite the global tribe and share this newsletter.

If this email was forwarded to you, be sure to join the global tribe and 👇

Part of the answer might sit right at the beginning, in how the sport was born and how it positioned itself.

Boogieboarding came in as something more accessible, more immediate, something you could pick up and and get hooked on almost instantly without months of learning how to stand or style yourself into a certain image.

While that made it inclusive and real, it also quietly removed one of the barriers that mainstream culture often uses to assign value.

Surfing, whether intentionally or not, built its identity around difficulty and aesthetic, around standing tall, around a certain look and feel that translated well into media and marketing.

From travelling, waveriding potheads and beach bums (perception wise), to world class, well-paid and respected athletes. Hey, you could be both. If the board fits… floats…

Bodyboarding skipped that entire layer and went straight into the most critical part of the wave…

Deeper, steeper, heavier, which ironically made it both more intense and perhaps less “sellable” at the same time…

Maybe that’s where the first disconnect happened, not in performance, but in perception. 🤔

As the sport evolved, it didn’t consolidate into one clean, unified movement but instead fractured into pockets of culture, small crews, tight circles, and underground projects.

Like No Friends that leaned into something raw and unfiltered rather than polished and commercial.

While that created a strong sense of identity for those inside it, it also meant that the outside world never really had a single, consistent story to follow.

It became something you discovered rather than something that was presented to you, something that lived in shared video tapes / DVDs and word of mouth, which builds depth but doesn’t necessarily build scale.

When No Friends hit the scene Air Hubb was on the rise, flying higher and more upside down than anyone before. New words like “stretching” were mentioned… whatever that is… Then this thing called “yoga”… When most of us were still just “yogging” to keep our bellies flat.

The No Friends videos captured a change and time of fast progression in the sport and new era of riders that introduced it, and themselves, to us as heroes.

It set a high standard that had never been seen before in bodyboarding flicks and placed a stylish feel towards bodyboarding that had been lacking previously.

In the Bodyboard Report’s welcome letter, I mentioned the profound influence RAW had on yours truly. If RAW was the jump start, then the No Friends👇were the gas that kept me moving, spinning, flying, and bleeding.

(Love your work Pierre Lucifer Costes. The Morey campaign is hot stuff, and I have been looking for an excuse for this one…😉🔥)

No Friends kicked off in 1998 and, for the next decade, helped redefine what bodyboarding looked and felt like.

Through sharp visuals, new board and gear developments, and a team pushing progression, it built something separate from the usual surf narrative.

The name said it plainly.

This wasn’t about fitting in.

It was about standing proud, even if it meant alone.

(Like the Dark Lord Heartbreaker and his signature Morey Mach 7-7👆 )

But we are never alone. 🤙

They're too busy reading it.

Arnold Schwarzenegger. Codie Sanchez. Scott Galloway. Colin & Samir. Shaan Puri. Jay Shetty. They all figured out the same thing: owned audiences compound, rented ones disappear. beehiiv is where they built theirs.

30% off your first 3 months with code PLATFORM30. Start building today.

Then you look at places like Brazil, and suddenly the narrative shifts again, because over there bodyboarding hasn’t played second fiddle in the same way.

You see a completely different level of visibility, participation, and cultural integration, producing world champions like 6 x Guilherme Tamega and 2 x Uri Valadão.

It is particularly on the women’s side where Brazil has consistently dominated, not because of luck but because of volume, access, and a culture that embraced the sport early and fully.

Brazil hasn’t just produced champions. The country produced eras, with Neymara Carvalho and Isabela Sousa alone stacking up double-digit world titles and holding the top of the sport for nearly two decades.

Which raises another question entirely, because if bodyboarding can thrive like that in one region, does that mean the sport itself is limited, or does it simply depend on the environment it grows in?

In Europe, Australia, South Africa and other parts of the world, it often feels like something more contained, more localised, where the energy is strong but the reach is perhaps a bit narrower…

You’ll find dedicated crews and serious talent but not the broader ecosystem that pushes something into the mainstream.

And when you step back and connect all of this, it starts to look less like a missed opportunity and more like a pattern, almost as if bodyboarding never aligned itself with the structures that typically drive mass growth.

Because the moment something goes fully mainstream, it doesn’t just grow, it transforms, it smooths out its rough edges, it becomes easier to explain, easier to sell, easier to package for people who aren’t already part of it, and in that process something always gets lost, whether it’s authenticity, intensity, or the very thing that made it different in the first place.

And maybe, without ever formally deciding it, bodyboarding resisted that process, not through strategy but through culture, through the way it evolved, through the people who shaped it and the environments it thrived in.

We are a bunch of “I don’t care what others think” and “hold my beer and check this move” -s, for the most part, aren’t we?😉

So maybe the real question isn’t why bodyboarding never became mainstream.

Maybe it’s whether it was ever supposed to...🤔

You know the body follows the mind into that giant pit… the kind of pit we seek and the kind we dont.

Bobby Ford discusses mental health and a range of other topics from a philosophical lens. 🧠🔎

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Have a look at Bobby’s journey of the mind 👇

Previous publicatons. 👇

1st Edition 🌊

2nd Edition 🌊

3rd Edition 🌊

4th Edition 🌊

Disclaimer: The Bodyboard Report is published for informational and entertainment purposes only. All images, media, and referenced content remain the copyright of their respective owners and are used for editorial commentary and community sharing. The Bodyboard Report does not claim ownership of any third party content.