How Trampolines Work

disappoint good. I don't like disappointing you, Chuck. It feels really rotten. Yeah, especially since I'm wearing a T shirt that says You've disappointed me again, Josh. And it's got that pointing finger right at me. Oh my, Josh. Yet actually is three dimensional. It comes out of the shirt just so you know I'm pointing at you. I can see it. It's like a magic Guy poster. Oh goodness.

So speaking of goodness, Chuck, we're talking about trampolines. But it's funny that I would say goodness, because it turns out trampolines have a lot of badness to them. Yeah, they're danger pits. Yeah, they are big time pits. If it's one of those built into the ground things. Yeah, trampoline in a pit. Have you ever been on a trampoline? Sure? I had one in in high school. Really you owned one. It was inherited from the people who previously owned the house.

That old move and they took they took maybe half of the springs with them when they moved, apparently because you could make contact with the ground pretty easy on that one. And um and actually, if you go onto my Instagram josh um Clark, you can see a little photo spread of me bouncing around a trampoline park, totally oblivious to the amount of danger. I was actually in what what do you mean? What I mean I got

to look that up. I didn't know that existed. I talked to you about my Instagram account like every every couple of days. Well, I mean pictures of the trampoline A and B. I'm not on Instagram at all, so I gotta like, you know what you have to what? Well, I don't know, I mean, how do you find something on Instagram if you're not on Instagram? Can you? I think you have to go? You gotta know you can? You can? You can just Google it, I believe. I'll

show you later. I'll show you after this, but anyway, it's pretty great. You're gonna love it. But there was one point in time where I landed flat and this is in the photos, flat on the back of my head, upside down and there was a crack and everything, and I was like, whoa, that was crazy. But after researching this chuck, I was like, I can't wait to die and go to heaven. There is such a thing in a place. Um so I can be like, I've got to know how close was I to full body paralysis

that one time at that trampoline park. And I guarantee when they tell me, I'm gonna shut her with just um uh, I don't know, some sort of proximity fear maybe, I don't know what else you would call that kind of thing. Or what if they say, uh, here, I'm going to issue a ticket number and you're gonna have to go down that wing where they handle near death experiences. That's fine, I'd go. I go spend the time. It's eternity. After all, I've got time to kill. It feels like

it would be very bureaucratic. I could see that. Sure. A lot of pencil pushing. I haven't you know I had trampoline experience. In My only trampoline experience really was elementary school. Uh when we had a you know how an elementary school, at least at mine, they would have um, I don't know, you do like one sport for a month or something. Yeah, we did trampolines for a little while. And our our gym teacher was a legit um gymnast of some kind, and he could do all the things.

And we and we had the uh nineteen eighties you know rectangular Uh, they weren't even the mats, as we'll learn. We'll learn all about the trampoline a minute. But the little bouncy part you bounce on it was not solid. It was like a a checkerboard. I don't understand. Well, it wasn't a solid piece of of fabric. It was invisible. It was a weave, okay, but I mean like a little tiny with with little squares in between, so like a net. Yeah. I have never seen what you're describing. Wow,

but tokud go through it. So Chuck, let me ask you this thing. When did you in that when you would rotate out for new things like every month, did you guys ever do the thing where like everybody, you'd have a parachute and everybody would pull and lift the parachute up at once, and it would be somebody's turn to run underneath, and you had to make it to

the other side before the parachute covered you. I remember that sort of yes, okay, Now, had your gym teacher done the opposite of that, where you put somebody in the middle of the parachute on top and everybody pulls it taught so that the person has launched in the air. The Lebowski. Yes, yeah, the Lebowski. You would have been doing what is one of the only things that somebody can point to as a predecessor to the trampoline, because it is almost virtually its own invention. Yeah, I love

I love how you brought that around. Thank you. Um the Grabster wrote this for us, and he he does make a point that even before that, people just liked anything that could bounce on. It's just sort of, uh, it seems intuitive as a human that that's fun and thrilling. Whether it's like, hey, this this log that fell across the creek has some spring to it and that's fun, what you know? Sure, or this board that spans an opening. What was the opening called in that horror story? Have

you lost your mind? I remember the horror Halloween horror thing that we did with the creek in the what was that called? I don't oh, oh remember there was a word and you looked it up. Yeah, and it was a specific place anyway on the board spanning that you're talking about bridges, we're talking about trampolines today you realize we're talking trampoline like hallucinating. So it's coming through

loud and clear, buddy. UM. So so there's the the cloth or fabric that you could launch somebody up in the air. There was the log apparently that people jumped on. UM. But there was this kind of people figured out that it was kind of fun to get up into the air. And I saw it was one of those things. You know, we're always warning people when they ask us how to research that. If you see the same thing everywhere on the internet, it's probably wrong. I saw that about how

there was there's UM in China, Iran and Egypt. There's depictions of people using trampoline like devices. Didn't see anything beyond that, so it's probably made up. But UM we can point to when the trampoline was vented, and it was actually fairly recent like what we think of the tram plane came about, and I think like the nineteen thirties, over the period of a few years. Yeah, Now, are we gonna tell people what a trampoline is? First? Are

we going to talk about the history and then tell people? No, I'm glad you did this, Chuck, because yes, not only do we have what a trampoline is. I got a little a little bit of physics to to throw into I had a feeling. Okay, so a trampoline. If you've never driven out into rural Georgia, um, that's where I see them. Yeah, the people in the rural areas like the trampolines. There's not a lot to do out that's

the deal. I was kind of wondering, like why do I see those when I drive out to you know, the country, But I don't see him as much in urban areas, and I think of space A and B. It's just a very cheap way to be like here you go, kids, knock yourself out for the next ten years literally literally. Alright, So, trampoline is a frame, uh that has a bouncy surface in the middle of it.

The frame is a very rigid usually steal frame um and then the matt as it's called, is held together with these tight coiled springs are not held together but strapped to the frame. And it's not you know, it's those springs is where you get the bounce. It's it's not the actual material, although that could have a little bounce to it. It's got a little give because it's woven. It's like it's like a seatbelt. Yeah, so super tightly woven that that um fabric. That matt is right, and

that's the larger trampolines. They do have the little smaller like I guess people used to use them to exercise and stuff like that. Did you not have one of those? Now? We never had one of those. I think I had to do with jazz or size maybe or something. So I've seen those more often at like NBA games when they bring the guys out in between the time outs or whatever and they do the high flying dunks. Yeah, those are awesome to see. Do you like those? I

love watching this shot. I never get up during halftime because of that. Yeah, all right, I'm strapped to my seat you know what they should do to me, in my opinion, at every sports game ever during the halftime, the only thing they should do is have the little league teams play. Oh that gets you, huh. It's just the cutest thing ever. Like, I don't need to see

a dance routine or some corny anything. But whenever they have like the five year olds out there playing basketball in the big court or football, that's that's all I need. What about the guy who's who climbs an increasingly high stack of chairs. I like that guy a lot. It's not bad spinning a plate. No, no, he just sometimes he'll do handstands on the top. It's really thrilling. You

need you need to watch more halftime shows. But um, okay, So so that's basically what you described as a trampoline. That's a trampoline. There's like variations to it, for sure, there's competition trampoline's they tend to be rectangular. Um. They actually have specific dimensions because their competitions, so they have to all kind of have like a universal size, but usually something like ten feet by seventeen feet um. I think the ones that they use in college are a

little smaller, but not too much. Um, did you watch any of that stuff? Yeah, it's and it's it's entrancing. Yeah, it's kind of cool because it's it's in It's not slow motion when you're the one doing the bouncing, but when you're watching it from afar, because the mind kind of makes the point from when you bounce to when you next bounce again is kind of like one complete cycle. It it does kind of take a second, so it does kind of seem like the whole thing is happening

in slow motion to the mind. Is very Maybe that's why I'm tired. I think it is because you're lulled to sleep by trampoline watching. So yeah, the rectangular ones are the competition, but when you go out to the country is when you'll see the round ones, the octagonal ones,

and the hexagonal ones. Yeah, and the ones that you see like that people have bought for their home use, they're very frequently they're going to have um nets around the sides so that if you start to go off the side of the trampoline, the net catches you and throws you back into the center the mat of the trampoline, which we did not have when we were children. No, we did not. It was it was your off. It was it's called thinking the herd I think was the

model I had the herd thinner. Yeah. In fact, they even had a landmoat full of nails and sharp glass surrounding the trampoline. That's right, And Armadilla is with leprosy um. But the ones in competition they don't have nets. And there's a really good reason why. Not because they're they're they're devils and thrill seekers, but because the people in competitions tend to jump so high that the nets wouldn't do any good. They just go right over the side

unless they had super tall nets. I guess so. But I mean, once you get into nets that are too tall, it becomes kind of cost prohibitive, you know. Yeah, Plus it looks it ended up looking like one of those uh indoor skydide tubes, right, which we've done. That was fun. It was kind of fun. And that that footage is lost forever. I can't find it anyway. Oh thank god. Oh I like that one. It wasn't me or you that got thrown against the side at the end. It was me. For those of you that don't know we're

talking about, we did some Toyota commercials years ago. It was funny. We were much more marketable early on than we are now. Yeah, but yeah, they flew us out to California and we did Toyota commercial and as we were both indoor skydiving, and it was pretty interesting and fun. Yeah. I think my line was, you're just telling me that now, and then I lose control and bump into the side of the wall. That's it's harder than it looks. You don't just you know, it's very taxing on the muscles,

really is. It was fun though, too. I had a good time. Should we take a break? Uh no, no, no, because we're not We're not done with this part yet. Okay, Okay, you're ready, Yes, we're We're getting there, Chuck, we're gonna By the way, I should probably explain to everybody, Chuck thinks that this is going to be like the The jackhammera episode which he and I agree is our worst episode ever. I think that that's patently wrong, So let's

prove him wrong, everybody. Okay, So, um, there's one other thing I wanted to talk about before we go to break chalk, aside from where the trampoline is, which I feel like we've done a pretty good job of defining

it to this point, right. The physics of a trampoline are actually pretty fascinating because if you look at the outside of the trampoline, it's like you said, that matt, that fabric that you actually jump on has a little bit of give, But where the trampoline gets the most give is from those springs that are attaching the fabric matt to the frame. Correct. Okay, So what that means then is because there's all these springs working together, the

trampoline itself is actually, physics wise, a giant spring. And the reason why when you jump on a trampoline it shoots you back up into the air is because you're combining two kinds of energy. Kinetic energy, which is the movement, the energy from you jumping up and down on something, and then there's also potential elastic potential energy, which is the stored energy those springs have when they're extended and

they want to go back to their normal shape. And so as all of this energy gets stretched out and then goes back to its normal tension, uh, it directs all that stored energy and that energy that's turned into actual energy towards the center, which is where you happen to be, and it launches you back up into the air somewhere. Tracy Wilson is smiling right exactly. One more thing mouth parts. So, uh, I think now we can

take a break, don't you. Yes, Okay, So all right, Chuck, we're back, and I think it's time to talk a little history of trampoline. Yeah. So earlier you t s that this was sort of, um an invention of its own, like there was no predecessor really to the trampoline, aside from Inuit people tossing people up in the air Lebowski style. Uh So the credit for the trampoline is is roundly. I don't think there's anyone that disputes us, right, No, No,

it's it's George Nisson, for sure. Yeah. George Nisson and a man named Larry Clark Griswold, right, um, And and we'll we'll get to their story and how Larry figured in. But it was really George Nisson's brain child, um, between nineteen thirty and nineteen thirty six. Like you said earlier, it took a little while to get it just right. But when George was a little boy in nineteen thirty.

He was sixteen, I guess, medium sized boy, and he was watching the trapeze artist and you know how they have that net and they leap off the trapeze at the end and they do a flourish and they land on the net, and then they usually do a couple of little flips and then land on the net again and then that cool move where they hold onto the net and flip out and land on their feet very gracefully. Right right. Little George saw this and was like, everyone's

wild about this trappeeze. He's like, the best part is that end when they get on that net. I should make one of those. Yeah. He wanted one where you didn't just bounce once basically get one bounce, but that you could just keep bouncing and bouncing and bouncing. And he's like, I'm going to go home and make something like this because he was a he was a gymnast at the time already. Yeah, that makes a lot more

sense once you know that. I think exactly, he was a gymnast who went to circus performances and then was inspired by that net, and so he actually went home got I guess spare metal parts from like a junkyard from what I can tell, got his hands on a canvas mat and fixed the two things together, and um, he broke his ankles. Basically, it did not work very well at first. I mean, it had some bounce to it. It was as far as like an early proof of concept goes. It worked in that respect, but that was

about it. And he called it a bouncing rig and he put it down in his parents basement, I believe, and then went off to the University of Iowa to study business and joined the gymnastics team. And joining the gymnastics team at the University of Iowa turned out to be pretty faithful because it was there that he met who the man who would become his co inventor in

the trampoline, Larry Griswold. Yeah, I wonder if he if leaving that trampoline prototype and his parents basement was it had to be the first instance of what would be hundreds of thousands of many trampolines left in their parents basements. Yeah, apparently, um uh. George Nisson's dad was not all that happy about the trampoline. He was not a true lever as far as the trampoline was concerned, all right, so he

goes to school, Like you said, he met coach Larry Griswold. Uh, we call him Clark around here, and I guess he thought this was a good idea. He shared it with his coach and he's like, you know what, I'm a little older, have a little more experience. Why don't you let me help you with this thing? And they built a different prototype. This time. They had a nylon matt. They used groments, which obviously made a little sturdier, and the springs they subbed in bicycle inner tubes. Yeah, because

I'm not even sure that he used springs. He just somehow attached the canvas to the frame. So when they added bicycle tubes, that gave it way more give and and it worked a lot better. And they knew that they were onto something just with this they I'm sure they knew that could be improved, but they this was a pretty good first start that they worked on at

the University of Iowa. Yeah, so between then and I guess nineteen thirty seven, Um, they introduced the steel coils in nineteen thirty four, and they really had the trampoline going at this point. Um, although it was not called the trampoline until uh Nissen in nineteen thirty seven, traveled all over North America performing routines under the name with two of his friends under the name the Three Leonardo's,

which is very ninety seven thing to do. Uh. And they went to Mexico and they learned that there was a a name, a Spanish name for this bouncing rib rig like the springboard called a trampoline or I guess lean without the E on the end. And he said, Hey, I'm just gonna add an E on the end trademark that thing. And uh, I've appropriated something from another culture. I read I read on educator pages dot com that he while down in Mexico he learned the Mexican word

for springboard was trampoline. Yeah, the Mexican word. Oh, that's what they said on educator pages dot com. I was just disappointed enough that I wanted to point it out. Well, I mean, sure, there are Mexican specific words, this is not one of them. Okay, this is the Spanish word. I got you. I was just trying to make that clear. So, um so, George, this is like, this is great. I've been calling this thing a bouncing rig, but this tramplin word is way better. I'm going to call this a trampoline,

like Chuck said, and um in trade market. And that was a huge, huge improvement for this thing because they had something. By this time, they had a really great invention going. But now they had a name and kind of a catchy name and one that even made sense as well. A springboard, by the way, is one of those you know those little um things you jump on to get onto the pole or the pommel horse. Yeah, that's a springboard, yeah, or or what's it called the vault?

Is that what they used for the vault? Yes? Right, yeah, So this is kind of what what inspired him to say that is somewhat tied to this is a great name. I'll probably never sell one of these in Mexico. I'm just gonna take it and like you said, appropriate it. So now he had a great invention, he had a name, and he and griz Wald founded the griz Waldniss And Trampoline and Tumbling Company UM in nine two and started selling these things, not exactly like hot cakes at first.

I believe they sold ten in their first year, and George Nisson's dad suggested that they had satisfied the world's need for trampolines by this time. In the first ten I'm telling you he wasn't really on board. He's but his son ended up really rubbing the dog poop in his dad's face because trampoline started to take off pretty quick. So they both agreed though, the two partners, Griswaldnis and that in order to sell this thing, they had to

demonstrate it. It's not the kind of thing you can just it was so revolutionary, my friends, that they couldn't just throw an ad up. But at the time, Griswald, the former coach, had a little touring routine a diving. They were both divers. I don't think we mentioned that, like, uh, you know, competitive divers. George Nisson was too. Oh yeah, Thissen well, not a competitor or not a professional, but he was. He did two things he would did gymnastics

and diving. So Griswald was touring the country doing a comedy act, a diving board comedy act, uh called what was it? The drug the diving fool, The diving fool. It has to be seen to be believed. Yeah, so I kind of do the same routine every summer at neighborhood pools. Uh. He'd stagger around pretending to be like drunk at a pool and falling off the diving board and doing all these tricks and things like that. The differences. You're not pretending, right, I am a drunken diving pool.

Get a couple of bloody Caesar's in you, that's right, although you just calling bloody Mary right. Well, what was the caesar apart the cremato? Oh? Yeah, I never knew that, Yes you did. I told you that. I mean I never knew it until you told me years ago. Oka. Um. But in any case, the drunken or the diving fool was something that that Griswold was actually making a little bit of money at. And I guess he was, you know,

touring the country and wooing the ladies. So he was like, I kind of like this over trampolineing and so what you are you interested in buying out the shares of this company? Uh? And Thisison said sure, yeah, said thanks a lot, chump, Yeah, I will take over this company myself. And then thisis and started touring around and this is when the demonstrations really took hold. He and his wife, who was an acrobat name any debris. She's like a

Dutch high high wire artist, I believe, um. And you have to like you have to understand like now in the world we live, in the world we were born into. Chuk like the trampolines are are there's a thing that seems like they've always been around this set a time where you had to go take them places to demonstrate them.

Or when um, when uh, Larry Griswold was doing his his diving fool thing, when he gets to the end, it looks like he's going to dive into a pool and when he dives in, it turns out there's a trampoline hidden behind this thing that looks like a pool. So he bounced back up. That's probably pretty great if you're a kid. Yeah, but also I think even adults at the time, we're like, what just happening? He's just

produced magic so' and you can actually see it. Um, there's a bit of him doing it on the Sinatra Show in nine and you can hear the crowds going berserk over this kind of stuff. Um. But anyway, so he, like you said, he decides that that's that's he's better off doing that sells out to Nissan and then Nissan starts touring to demonstrate the trampoline, and he had a real flair for this. He studied business, like I said,

at University of Iowa. Um, I don't I'm sure the trampoline probably he would have taken off regardless, but thanks to um, George Nisson like it. Really he really did a good job at promoting it and making it catch on, especially in the sixties and the fifties. Yeah, he went around the world actually, and he would do things like, uh, in Central Park, he would bounce with a kangaroo. Um,

I'm sure that got some pretty pretty good attention. Yeah, he rented a kangaroo for this photo shoot and then basically shared shared the war, shared the photo with like the Associated Press who spread it around the world. Absolutely, he went to Russia. Um, he went to Egypt and

did tricks a top of the Pyramids. And as a result, and of course, because it's the nineteen fifties, that's kind of when something like this would really it just makes sense that it took hold then and that's when they became a legit fad and there were people buying trampolines. There were trampoline bounce centers, which apparently are big now again, which I didn't know. Have you ever been one of those? I told you that's where my Instagram photo spread was.

I thought yours was just a regular trampoline. No, no, it's at one of those bounce centers. So what are They're just trampolines everywhere, every whole floor trampoline. No, they're everywhere, built into the floors. There's places that you kind of walk in between them. But for the most part, it's like these giant um you know, the bags that like a stunt man falls onto from from high above. They have those built into the floor. They have trampolines everywhere,

trampolines and the walls at angles. It's I would say you gotta go, but don't, or if you go, just poke your head in and just leave. Yeah, I don't, I've got uh. I don't want to say weak ankles because that makes me I don't know how that makes me sound. Something makes you sound like a thoroughbred horse. But I don't like it. Okay, well thanks, but yeah, if I step off a curb wrong, it's it's not fun. So you don't need to be trampoline trampoline, not at

this age. You shouldn't. But earlier, UM, I guess we should mention that his his idea was, like all good business people, wasn't just so singular, like, hey, maybe we can sell these two kids. He thought, you know, because he was a gymnast, we can use these for training, uh in gymnastics, um, anything anything where there's tumbling or falling. We can we think we can like sell these, sell this,

including to the military into NASA. Yeah. Two there were two things that he really saw early on that they could be used forul for training, um, like you said, tumbling or that kind of thing, but also like diving, where you have where you're doing aerial tricks and it's not like you just know how to do those tricks. It takes a ton of practice. Well, it really sucks to have to go get out of the pool, climb back up the ladder, walk down and try it again

every time. Dry off, have a smoke, right, if you have UM, if you have like a harness on, you can practice this stuff in mid air just from a trampoline. With every bounce, you don't have to climb back up the ladder. You can practice bounce after bounce, and then

you could take it up onto the diving board. So that was one and then the other, like you said, the military and eventually NASA to get pilots adjusted to disorienting UM body positions like tumbling head over heels, yeah, through the air um and and learning how to keep their orientation even when their body is flipping all over the place. And the military bought into they said, yeah,

that's a really good idea. So much so that when UM George Nisson was assigned to a pre flight center in the Navy, I think St. Mary's College outside of Oakland, he found that they were already using trampolines for training before he even got there, So it had caught his invention, preceded him before he even showed up to to uh proselytize it. Yeah, And like if you think about getting on a trampoline, if it's been a lot of years, you probably remember like, yeah, it's easy to just get

on it and jump, dumb, dumb. But it's you know, if you're like seriously trampolining we were doing in elementary school, like we would learn tricks and stuff like that. It's aerobic, it's uh, it improves your agility and balance. Um, there's a lot of like muscle work going on, so it's not you know, sure, you can just jump up and down like in uh like Tom hankson Big, But if you want to do tricks and things like that and jumps and spins, there's there's athleticism involved for sure. Yeah,

you can get really good at it. In other words, Um, there's one other thing then you want to take a break in a second, So um, trampoline is one of my favorite things. Now it's a proprietary eponym, right, which means it's generic. But it used to be a trademark name, like you said, um, and then it got so popular that by the sixties George Nissen just got tired of trying to fight unauthorized use of it, so he stopped

enforcing his trademark and it became generic. But up to the sixties, anytime somebody in the news was describing a trampoline, they had to call it like um, bounce, tumbling, or just make up some words to get the point across without using the term trampoline because it was trademarked at the time. Rebound tumbling. That's a pretty good one. I thought, it's not bad. So how about that break Uh, yeah, let's do it. And I thought you're gonna get me

back and say no, all right, let's do it, all right, Chuck. So, trampolining is an actual sport, like you said, it requires a lot of like fitness and you can get really good at and there's a lot of tricks you can learn and do. Um And although it's not technically a UM an n c A A sport, you can find it competitively and colleges enough colleges so that there are colleges that compete against one another in trampoline matches. It's just not sanctioned by the the n c a A

like say basketball or softball or football. Is Yeah, I get the feeling. It's it's one of those fringe sports that if enough people and in this case it's probably uh gymnastics or gymnasts, they would say Hey. They go to the school and say, hey, we got like twelve people here who want to get on the trampoline and compete. Can we do this? And they'll say sure, we can allocate you like six dollars a year, and I've got trampoline at my house, right, But yeah, they compete and

that's great. Um. However, early on this was actually, uh, like that seems like something that would have happened more recently. All the way back in they held the World Championship in London at Royal Albert Hall of all places, and uh, this was when this one was still like still trying to you know, the fifties they really sold well, the sixties they were selling okay. But like all fads, I

think he saw the writing on the wall. So things like the World Championships and trying to get sports, legitimate sports, UM leagues or whatever going was pretty important at the thing to him. Yeah, I guess from that first fad though in the sixties, like the real heyday of trampolines, UM,

it did become it started to become a sport. But rather than people saying like this is a thing, let's get together, it's like you're saying, like one one school, Like one one group of gymnasts went to their school and said, hey, we want to do this, and that happened to other schools and other schools, and before you know there are enough schools to compete against one another UM and so there there is actual UM events there.

There are now like collegiate trampoline events that again aren't sanctioned by the n c a A as far as they know, or they didn't used to be. They maybe now because beginning in two thousand, like the biggest of the big happen of trampolining, and what started out is just a training thing became an actual Olympic event. There's now a trampoline event in the Olympics starting as of two thousand in Sydney. Yeah, which uh Nisson lived to

see that, which was kind of cool. The little kind of silly invention that he had so many years earlier became an Olympic sport and that was I'm sure very very big day for him, Yeah, because I mean, not only was he the inventor, he was like a tireless um uh what is it called when people yes, thank you, thank you, Chuck. You're not very good at that part either, now, So he was a tireless now that's or talking. He

was a tireless promoter of it too. So I think it meant quite a bit to him to see like his invention become an actual Olympic sport because he was a trained gymnast, like this was his this his thing. He wasn't you know, like the inventor of the atch just sketch or something like that, whereas he just accidentally happened to like come across this idea. This is like really important to him, and it became an Olympic sport, this thing that he invented. That. I think that's really cool.

Plus also he was such a gymnast through and through. I read that he was still able to do handstands in his eighties and head stands into his nineties. Wow, maybe they just couldn't tell his head from his butt at that point and they thought he was doing a headstand. Maybe. So that's usually how it goes by then. Oh boy. Uh so, if you're at a collegiate trampoline event, you

may see synchronized tramping. Did you watch that? Yeah, it's cool, Like any synchronized event, it's all about trying to exactly mirror one another doing the same thing side by side on two different trampolines. It's very I'm such a brad. I was watching them like, oh, they're not in sink on the whole game. Think again, you know I how to sink yep, And you're like, maybe I'm not watching

the synchronized I'm looking at it from the wrong angle. Um, it's my internet working because uh, these guys are not on the same page. UM in the Olympics, so they don't have that. They have two events. Uh, and you're not likely to see these on TV. This is not um burning up the airwaves. You probably have to have. I'm sure you can get some Olympic package where you get everything. But Olympic trampolineing has two events, the men's

and the women's individual. And like most sports like this, there's a compulsory routine where they say, all right, you've got to do these predetermined tricks, and then the voluntary routine where you really let your creative juices as a trampoline or show and shine. Uh, and you get ten bounces and you can do whatever you want. Well, I don't know about whatever you want, but you do, you know these fancy combinations of tricks in those ten bounces.

I also noticed on the Olympic trampoline that was like a target in the center and another box around that. And I didn't look it up, but I got the feeling that you kind of had to stay with and that unless that's just for the benefit of the jumper, because I saw them land outside of it a couple of times, and I heard the announcers go, oh, yes, I don't know if that's a penalty deduction like vaulting off the matter or something or yeah, no, I could

totally see that for sure. Yeah, I'm not really sure. But they are judged on uh, flight time, which is awesome, execution and difficulty, right, and then if they bounce, if they go through a bounce and and don't do a trick in on that bounce there, they lose points for that too. Yeah. Was they're like, what are you doing? What do you the rec center? It was a waste of everyone's time. Uh. And of course it's you know,

highest cumulative score wins yep. So originally it looked like Russia was going to be the big trampolineers in the world. The Russians won the men's and women's gold in Sydney, so the first ever gold for trampolineing the Russians one, and then all of a sudden, China comes out of nowhere and they start dominating. Um. I believe Dong Dong is the world's most decorated trampoline athlete, with gold, silver,

and bronze to his name, not bad. But if you're talking women's trampoline, you want to go to Canada because they are as good as it gets um starring Rosanna McClellan and Karen Cockburn, who are Canada's too big trampolinets, trampolineists, n't seeing trampoline or oh I think it's whatever you wanted to be. It's only very recently an Olympic events, so it's kind of a free for all to call

it whatever you like. Yeah, So before we get into the downer, which is injuries and and sadly deaths from trampoline, uh, we will mention a few other um kind of crazy sports that you know, like the NBA during halftime or time outs. People have tried to incorporate trampolines into other sports or maybe just invent it's it's out of whole cloth and they're always a little goofy a little So spaceball, which I had never heard of before, just YouTube this

and check it out. It's it's much less impressive than it sounds when you finally watch it. Yeah, because I mean, spaceball has nothing to do with anything other than the fact that it was like created during the height of the space race. It's the only reason I can possibly come up with it. It's called spaceball, yeah, and I said, uh,

and here it says spaceball had teams of two. I only saw one person at a time, So what they sub in and out I I don't know because I only saw I think we saw the same video, really off putting lee lighted black and white video. Yeah, and it's almost like I think one guy checks his watch in the middle of the match. Well, they were goofing around and one guy hid the ball under his shirt and was like, what what happened? Yeah, but they're all bouncing this whole time. The point is, so there's like

a trampoline. There's two different trampolines. Each guy's on a trampoline. In between their two trampolines, the thing they're facing is a net. In between the net is a tunnel, and that's where the ball goes through. And the point is to try to get the ball through the tunnel to hit the other guys backstop trampoline, which is from what I saw on that video and I guess you did too,

is utterly impossible to get it past the person. It's not a great game, no, but this is I don't know if George Nisson created it or helped develop it or what. But it was one of those things where it's like, you know, the fads starting to wane, let's come up with new uses for the trampoline. So spaceball didn't catch on, but then years later other people have been like, hey, hey, let's not give up the ghosts.

There are other things you can do with the trampoline, like slam ball, which actually is kind of awesome to watch now. See, I didn't find slam ball that all I saw was people doing dunks. I didn't see like real four on four basketball game. It's not exactly like four and four basketball in that you can like it's more like rugby mixed with basketball with trampolines. So you're not dribbling probably right, No, you're not, and somebody can just knock you right off your feet, um and and

stop the ball from moving. But the point is, and what everybody comes to see is right in front of the net, there's a big, you know, ground level trampoline that you jump on and do like an amazing dunk. Yeah, I'm not a fan, it's not bad. Um. Then there's boss a Ball. This is crazy, like literally it is crazy. Yeah, it is um one part volleyball, one part soccer, ten parts trampoline. Well, and there's trampoline, but also the whole imagine well you should just watch this one too, um,

but imagine a big inflatable volleyball court. So instead of sand, let's say the whole thing is like a big sort of bouncy inflatable area, and then the center part of that and around the net are actual trampolines built into that, right, So people are bouncing around the outside, they're doing sets and stuff. And then if you're on the trampoline part, you jump up and you can use your feet. That's where the soccer comes in. Yeah. So you can do like bicycle and rainbow kicks. Yeah, or you can use

your hands. Um, so you can spike it really hot hard from high up above the net. Yeah. And I get the impression that using your feet just gets you extra points or something. Yep, And otherwise why would you there's also well just to show off. I think there's a lot of glory involved there. But also the reason it's called Bossa Balls because it's named after Bossa Nova type of samba music, and it's like you have to play to Szomba music, so it's not an official boss

A ball match. So yeah, it's like you said, you just have to go watch it there and this in Spain, by the way, I don't think we pointed that out Spain. I think also Brazil to Yeah, well of course, yeah, but it's fun to watch. It's great. It's a it's another thing you can do with trampoline. It's the coolest of all of them, I think. I don't know, I like my slam ball. No one likes spaceball though. You know what I don't like about slam ball is it's

the same thing at the NBA games. These guys do these big dunks and they're all they're like beating their chests like yeah, and I'm just like, dude, like you used to trampoline. It's not like I mean, it's still impressive. I couldn't go out there and do that right off the bat, but take you two three try. I don't know. They're just acting like their ballers and stuff, and I'm sure the players in the court are just like, God, get these guys out of here. Yeah, no, I know

what you mean. So that's my gripe. I'm with you. I feel you man, but you're like, but it's just so fun. I like watching it, have you? How about this? This is why? This is how you'd like it. If they had elementary school basketball, it'd be into that. Yeah, so you would never want to put an LM. Menory school player on a slam ball trampoline or trampoline at all, at least according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. And by the way, I want to just puck my shirt

lapels a little bit here. My segways are killing it in this episode. I don't know if you've noticed. I know you have, but um, yeah, okay, so and I just stumbled all over my my segway just now with that. So, um. The American Academy of Pediatrics, get this, says, do not let kids six or under on a trampoline. Just don't. That's what they open with their guidelines for trampolines. If you're under six or six or under, don't go onto trampoline.

Your bones are too underdeveloped and a trampoline is too dangerous. And until I researched this, I had no I I knew trampolines are dangerous, but they're like funny haha. Dangerous like that one episode of The Simpsons where Homer gets a free trampoline and turns his backyard into a tramp lean park and every kid who jumps on it like breaks an arm or breaks their back or something like that.

So it's it's funny like that. No, actually it's it's like dangerous and about It's like law and Dart level dangerous basically. Yeah, I mean, nothing will drive that home like some eighteen year old statistics. Um. But in the early two thousands, this is what we have. I've got newer ones. Well, I imagine it's about the same. Over a four year period, there were ninety three thousand emergency room visits and I guess this is the United States

over a four year period. And here's the thing. Like a broken arm, that's not great, but it's not the worst thing in the world. But over two thousand of those nine thousand were traumatic brain injuries, and those are pretty bad. Yeah, between children between the ages of five and eighteen, and the American Academy pdat Eatrics basically says,

it's the risk, like the risk of catastrophic injury. It's the differentiator between this and just like playing baseball or whatever, Like, if you get hurt on a trampoline, it's it's a very good chance that you might really really be hurt. Yeah, because i mean, like nobody trampolines with a helmet on or with shoulder pads on. You're getting you know, you

can't be that kid at the park. You know, you can't your your parents should just be like, I'd rather get a brain injury than have to look like that kid on the trampoline at the trampoline park. Um. The padding that you put on the trampoline that goes around, like the springs and the frame and everything that's supposed to be replaced like every year too. No one ever does that. Um. So it's actually like a really dangerous in mention, like much more dangerous than than people realize.

And some people will point to it and say, you know, actually bike like bikes, swimming, these things put more kids in the hospital every year than trampolines. True, but it's much more likely that kids are going to be biking or swimming than they are going to be trampolining. And so it's possible that comparatively speaking, trampolines are the most

dangerous activity kids can engage in. It's possible. It's not proven, but it's it's the statistics are there that it would be not surprising to a lot of people if that panned out to be the case. Yeah, and by far the most dangerous thing uh as far as trampolines go, that you can let your kid do is get on there with five or six other kids and it's fun and it looks like a big party and kids love it. But eight percent of these injuries are when there are

multiple users on there at the same time. Yep, because you bounce into one another. Crack heads, you can get um. There's that you know, that errant bounce that you aren't expecting and it shoots you off in a direction that you want to try to do that as a kid exactly, you try and like double jump people so they'll jump higher.

And you know, kids don't understand angles in physics. They understand physics enough that they can they try to counteract and other kids bounce in time it perfectly so that the frequency is the opposite, so that the kid who's coming down and rather than bouncing, they're just hitting the upward momentum of that of that trampoline match. Just so

that it's like hitting the ground. Right. And there's actually something called trampoline ankle where um, in kids the growth plate, the plate where their um their ankle bones are growing together still. Um if that gets fractured, and it can get fractured from that kind of that very same kind of thing where um, the the bounce is going, it's

coming back as they're coming down. Apparently it can be like hitting, like landing on the concrete from a nine ft dropped Yeah, and these little fragile bones that are still growing can be broken, and when they they are um start to grow again, their development can be all kinds of messed up. So there's something called trampoline ankle that I think, um physicians in Ottawa and Canada have

identified that as an actual thing. Well American of me A pediatrics does have a list of things you already mentioned. No kids under six at all, Uh, safety netting of course, all that padding padding on the ground. Um, this is a good one. No ladders near the trampoline, people, because the little kid's gonna find that and climb up. Um. Don't try flips in big tricks like that unless you're trained to do so. And only one person at a time. That's the big, big, big rule. Get on there with

a bunch of kids. It's just you're just asking for it, right, which is why some people point to these trampoline parks. It's like, well, wait a minute, a lot of the kids here under six. The whole point is to stuff as many kids under a trampoline or bounce pit or whatever is possible. That's where most of the fund comes from.

And UM, there have been a lot of I don't want to say a lot, but there have been some very high profile deaths of mostly adults at these places where UM, like grown grown men have like broken their necks, suffered traumatic UM spinal injuries, injuries, UM have become paralyzed and died. UM. A New York Yankees picture had a compound fracture of his ankle and almost died from blood loss. So UM. There was an advocacy group that that went away. I think their last post is two thousand and sixteen.

But they're called UM Think before you bounce. But UM, even without looking them up, it's like, go to research this before you go to your next trampoline park, and I guarantee you will second guess it. I thought that group was for recommendations before you decide to leave a party. No, Nope, interesting dad joke. Alert. They're coming harder and faster these days. Have you noticed. Uh, by the way, I said, I

had more up to date statistics. Get this in Indiana University study found that between two thousand two and two thousand and eleven, not ninety three thousand and four years, a million plus e er visits in the US and nine period nine years, that's a lot of er visits from trampolines. Well, hopefully that number is going down because trampoline sales for people in homes have been going down

since two thousand four. Uh so maybe people are just realizing it's it's too dangerous, who knows, or at least sink them into the ground so you don't have as far to fall. That's that's one thing. It is one thing to Uh, Well, if you want to know more about trampoline's I guess go read up on it. I would say go jump on it, but just don't. Um And since I said just don't, it means it's time

for listener mail. Yeah. This is a two parter. Uh. The first part is just gonna be uh us issuing sort of retraction slash apology during the Michael Dylon episode recently transpioneer Michael Dillon, we decided, um, which was not a good idea to mirror Dylan his own experience in life and his own transition using the pronouns that he himself used, trying to make a point that there weren't

even names for this stuff back then. And we had quite a few trans listeners that wrote in, all very kind about it and said, hey, listen, what you do now is you refer to that person from their moment of birth, like it doesn't matter about their journey and and even what pronouns they used at the time, Like, what you really need to do is just refer to that person by the gender they identify with from conception

on or not conception, but you know, from birth on. Um. And yeah, like you said, everybody who wrote in was very um nice and gentle about it. Yeah they know we meant well right exactly, So um, thanks to everybody who wrote in to let us know for sure. Um. Okay, what's part two? Well, Part two is along the same lines. And this is just a good tip. I always love getting these um just sort of nudges about like current best practices for language. This is from Anne. Hey, guys

and Jerry. I've been listening for at least a decade, and I've really enjoyed learning so much over the years. I really appreciate how you handle language. I'm an English teacher, and you're always trying to use the most appropriate and

sensitive term for any group. Recently, I listened to the Black Loyalist episode and was reminded of something I read a little while ago, which recommended using the term enslaved person rather than slave, to help express that the state of slavery was not some quality of these humans, but the result of an action by enslavers. She said, I'd never thought of that, but had been trying to use that language in my classroom, and I thought i'd pass it along. Keep up the good work, and thanks for

all the knowledge. And that is from Anne. Thanks Anne. That's a good one and it really goes to the heart of like you know, h language does so much to like justify things, legitimize things, to to diminish people like It's it's crazy how how important language is. So that was a good tip too. Yeah, so uh to the people out there that think big deal, it's not important, like language is important. It's more than just words. That's

how we communicate chump. Yeah uh. You really shouldn't use the word chump though, because nowadays we say you chumped person a chumped person? Um, thank you, what were you going to say? I didn't have one. I'm glad you came through. I swooped in at the last moment. Yeah. Um. If you want to get in touch of this, like and did or like all the people who let us know what we got way way wrong on the Michael Dillon episode and again thanks for that, you can go

to our website. It's called stuff you Should Know dot com and there you will find all of our social links. Um. You can also send us all an email to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radios. How stuff works for more podcasts for my heart Radio because at the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite ships. M