How Trampolines Work

The world’s loved trampolines since they were invented by a pair of acrobats in Iowa in the 30s – so much so, trampolining is now an Olympic event. What people don’t love about trampolines is their propensity to cause paralysis, brain injuries and death.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of My
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles w Chuck, Brian, there's
Jerry over there, and we're just bouncing around with giddiness
about this episode on trampolines. That's all that coming from

(00:23):
a mile away. You did not. I knew there would
be some jumpy, bouncy metaphor. Well, you know me very
well after these eleven years eleven years, good, you didn't
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

(00:46):
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,

(01:08):
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

(01:29):
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

(01:51):
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?

(02:14):
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

(02:36):
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

(02:57):
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

(03:20):
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

(03:41):
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,

(04:03):
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

(04:24):
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

(04:44):
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

(05:05):
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.

(05:28):
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

(05:48):
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

(06:12):
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,

(06:33):
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

(06:54):
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

(07:15):
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,

(07:37):
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

(07:59):
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

(08:23):
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

(08:46):
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,

(09:08):
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

(09:29):
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,

(09:51):
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

(10:12):
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.

(10:34):
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,

(10:55):
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,

(11:16):
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

(11:36):
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

(11:57):
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

(12:19):
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

(12:41):
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

(13:02):
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

(13:25):
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

(13:47):
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

(14:10):
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

(14:30):
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,

(15:04):
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.

(15:26):
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

(15:48):
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

(16:09):
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

(16:31):
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

(16:53):
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

(17:14):
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

(17:34):
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

(17:57):
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

(18:18):
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

(18:38):
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

(19:02):
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

(19:24):
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.

(19:47):
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

(20:10):
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

(20:30):
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,

(20:51):
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,

(21:13):
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

(21:35):
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

(21:56):
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,

(22:18):
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

(22:40):
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

(23:01):
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,

(23:22):
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,

(23:43):
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.

(24:05):
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

(24:26):
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

(24:47):
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,

(25:09):
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,

(25:32):
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.

(25:52):
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,

(26:13):
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

(26:34):
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

(26:57):
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,

(27:19):
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

(27:41):
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

(28:02):
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

(28:22):
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,

(28:42):
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,

(29:05):
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,

(29:26):
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

(29:50):
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,

(30:15):
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,

(30:44):
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

(31:05):
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

(31:25):
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,

(31:48):
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

(32:09):
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

(32:30):
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

(32:54):
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

(33:15):
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,

(33:36):
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

(33:59):
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,

(34:19):
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

(34:40):
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

(35:01):
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,

(35:24):
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

(35:45):
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,

(36:05):
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

(36:28):
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.

(36:49):
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

(37:12):
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

(37:32):
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

(37:54):
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

(38:17):
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

(38:38):
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

(39:01):
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,

(39:22):
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,

(39:44):
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

(40:06):
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

(40:29):
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,

(40:53):
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

(41:14):
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

(41:34):
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

(41:54):
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

(42:15):
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

(42:36):
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,

(42:58):
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

(43:22):
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.

(43:43):
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.

(44:06):
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

(44:27):
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

(44:47):
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

(45:08):
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

(45:29):
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

(45:50):
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

(46:11):
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

(46:32):
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

(46:54):
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

(47:14):
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

(47:36):
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

(48:00):
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

(48:20):
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

(48:41):
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

(49:03):
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

(49:26):
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

(49:46):
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

(50:08):
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

(50:29):
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

(50:52):
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

(51:14):
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.

(51:36):
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

(51:58):
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

(52:19):
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.

(52:42):
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,

(53:04):
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.

(53:26):
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

(53:52):
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