Surfing The intent of this paper is to introduce the reader to surfing. There are many things to learn about surfing such as its history, surf gear, and safety hints. Surfing is a water sport that involves planing, “in a controlled way,” on the sloping portion of a wave as it moves toward shore. The most basic form of the sport is body surfing. It is done without a board. A person first swims toward shore “to equal the wave speed.” Then the person stiffens the body in order to “plane” on the front of the wave. Surfing is basically the same as body surfing. The only difference is, instead of stiffening the body, the surfer must stand on a sur