Time spent surfing will not be time you consider wasted, so the first thing to do is go to the beach and either get some lessons or take the plunge and rent a board.

Standing up is the key
Lie on your stomach and chest, face up, focused straight ahead. Position your hands palm down by your shoulders, as if you were about to do a push up. Now’s the crucial bit that may need some practice. Swiftly get up off your stomach so that you’re in a crouching or sumo wrestler-like stance by pushing your upper body up while you sweep your feet in under you. You want to be balanced with your feet in the middle of your board.

Don’t look down at your board – it’ll make you lose your balance, so make sure you keep looking ahead. Keep low in your crouching stance position after you have come up, straightening up slowly to the point that you need to. But you’re always going to be in a crouched like sumo wrestler with your feet shoulder width apart and using your feet to grip the board.

Helpful hints and etiquette
You’ll pick up everything you need to know gradually the more you get out there but here are a couple of helpful hints to get you started.

Don’t ride your board all the way into the shallow so that it ends up skimming along the sand as this will damage your board. You want to be thinking about getting off your board once the water depth is shallower than a meter.

Don’t drop in. Dropping in on someone means stealing their wave, it’s not appreciated and can start nasty brawls so don’t do it. The first standing surfer closest to the wave that’s breaking has the right of way on the wave. Any others paddling out in an attempt to catch the wave must yield, holding back from the wave.

That’s surfing in a nutshell. Not only is it a blast, but it’ll keep you fit and toned.

This sport has come along way from the days of the days of snurf. Snurf was the name originally assigned in the 1960s to the discipline promising an experience of ‘snow surfing’. Today it’s known as snowboarding. Riders ride a shaped plank (attached to their feet) down a snow-covered slope. Special boots are used, set into flexible bindings, as opposed to skiing which uses rigid boots. Snowboarding also differs from skiing in that the boot angle is set sideways, whereas skiers’ boots are set forwards.

In 1998 it became a winter Olympic sport and by 2004 its popularity had peaked with the punters lending its chilly embrace to 6.6 million participants.

When snowboarding first arrived on the scene, the boards weren’t readily available in every part of the world. We have reliable first-hand reports of people trying to use surfboards on snowy slopes in New Zealand’s South Island…and not being very successful (there’s no edge to carve into the snow).

It can be one of the more dangerous extreme sports, with many off-piste riders being caught in avalanches. Wrists are the most commonly injured body part when snowboarding (behind pride!)

Image Credit: Wikipedia

Freestyle Motocross, or FMX as it’s more commonly known, is a variation of the more traditional motocross, which is off-road motorbike racing. The name motocross came from the combination of motorbike and cross-country that the sport consists of. The obvious difference between motocross and FMX is that FMX puts more focus on the daredevil tricks and stunts done while the bike is airborne as oppose to motocross, which is more, focused on the speed and race element.

The two main types of freestyle events are the Big Air and FMX. Big Air is also known as Best Trick and is usually performed on one or two ramps. The tricks are evaluated by a panel of judges who take into account style, difficulty, and course use. The score is then given out of 100. Only the rider’s best score of the three is compared and the top score brings home the bacon.

In FMX the riders are usually in an arena covering about two acres made up of multiple corners and ramps. Again, a panel of judges assesses each rider’s performance considering variation of jumps, technique, flair, and stunt difficulty and awards the rider a score out of 100. The time of the routines can range anywhere from 90 seconds to 14 minutes.

Freeriding is the original freestyle motocross and consists of similar tricks, but performed on public land using the earth’s natural features. This is not usually competitive.

Notable FMX games include: X-Games, Big-X, Moto-X Freestyle national Championship, Dew Action Sports Tour, Night of the Jumps, and Gravity Games.

Prolific international FMX Riders: Carey Hart, Travis Pastrana, Mike Metzger, Brian Deegan and Nate Adams.

BMX is an acronym for bicycle motocross. That makes sense because motocross that was the source of inspiration for the young daredevil kids in Californian kids in the 70’s that started the phenomenon.

Coming a long way since then BMX is now a legitimate Olympic sport having debuted in 2008 Beijing Olympics. The inclusion into the Olympic realm has since swayed public attention of the sport with newcomers fast partaking in the sport.

BMX is both the bike and the sport and covers both racing and freestyle.

There are six domains of the freestyle BMX: dirt, flatland, park, vert, street and a newer discipline of big air. The latter is usually contested in a stadium using a large drop-in ramp. Apart from vert, these all imply the type of surface used for jumps and tricks. Vert BMX uses a ramp, such as a half pipe or quarter pipe to make large jumps called aerials.

BMX dirt racing is held on non-paved circuits of around 350 metres in length with man made obstacles like ramps, jumps and banked. Usually races are short and sweet but as each rider is obviously there competing against the other they’re geared up for a good amount of action.

Flatland BMX focuses on balance and smoothness of execution of complex tricks.

Park BMX is performed in a closed of area with multiple types of ramps and rails.

Street BMX sees the rider using readily available obstacles on the street, such as handrails, buildings, kerbs and banking, to pull stunts.

So, there’s a huge amount of scope for you to get into BMX, depending on your area of interest.