Sport of the Month: Trampolining

Boing! Boing! Boing!

Trampolining is a great indoor sports, whereby Gymnasts compete against one another to do the best set of acrobatics, whilst bouncing up and down on a tramploline! Put it this way, it's going to get you in far less trouble than bouncing on your bed and giving your neighbours something to complain about!

Here's a little bit of background into the origins of trampolining...

In the early 1930s, George Nissen observed trapeze artistes performing tricks when bouncing off the safety net. He made the first modern trampoline in his garage to reproduce this on a smaller scale and used it to help with his diving and tumbling activities.

He formed a company to build trampolines for sale and used a variant of the Spanish word trampolin (diving board) as a trademark.

The nature of the activity is natural, easy and rhythmical, and the power of the bed enables participants to have fun and excitement by jumping higher than they would normally be able and to perform many skills landing on the feet, seat, front and back and also to take off from those varied landing positions.

Since trampolining became an Olympic sport in 2000, many more countries have started developing programs and Japan and China are already producing very competitive athletes

Here are some simple rules when it comes to trampolining:

• A routine must always start and finish on feet
• In competitions, moves must usually be performed in one of the following 3 basic shapes:
• Tucked - with knees clasped to chest by hands
• Piked - with hands touching close to feet and both arms and legs straight
• Straight - straight arms, body & legs

Jumps can include simple jumps in the pike, tuck or straddle position to more complex combinations of forward or backward somersaults and twists.