3 top prone air tips
- Wave selection. Make sure you pick a wave that will make you fly! Steep powerful and punchy waves are 100% the waves you want.
- Practice your timing. Practice hitting the lip with pinpoint precision and accuracy. The better you can read the wave, the better your manoeuvre will be.
- Practice, fly, flop and practice again. It’s super fun!
A prone air is a vital intermediate move that needs to be mastered to enable you to progress onto all aerial manoeuvres. It’s also a seriously fun move, popping off the lip, flying through the air and landing in the white water… producing a guaranteed smile from ear to ear.
Like all bodyboarding manoeuvres – speed is the key to success. The easiest way to guarantee speed is to simply choose a wave that is a good shape and has plenty of power behind it. Ideally, you will need a bowling or wedging wave to pull off a well-projected prone air (see vid @ 0.28).
So, you’ve picked a wave you think is going to give you a good dose of speed and you’re trimming down the line, keeping your eyes locked onto the section you want to hit. Timing is crucial, hit the lip too early and you’re going to fly straight off the back of the wave. Hit the lip too late and you’ll be going no where as the section will have already broken. At this point you need to engage your inside rail whilst looking, leaning and lunging forward towards the section, drawing a smooth powerful line up towards the lip (see vid @ 0.47).
Whilst drawing the turn towards the lip, make sure not to over lean as this will cause your arm or elbow to drag in the waves face and kill your speed instantly.
Grip your board tight with both hands and as the nose of your board is just about to come into contact with the lip, arch your back, lean backwards and look over your outside shoulder, towards the beach as you pop off the lip of the wave and into the air. Bring your arms and the nose of the bodyboard around to point towards the beach and your body will follow (see vid @ 0.59).
The aim is to pop off the lip and land in the white water facing the beach.
So you’ve timed hitting the lip perfectly, you’ve popped off the lip and you are now flying through the air embracing the classic prone air position. Stoked! Time to think about the landing. Your body and board should be facing the beach. As you fall from the sky, you will need to make sure you pull the board back underneath your body and brace yourself using your arms for the impact. If you’ve timed the move correctly you should land with the breaking wave in the white water. This will cushion your landing. Hold on tight and brace yourself to make sure that you don’t head butt your board on impact.