Do you remember, as a small child, having to THINK about exercise? Did your parents have to beg you to go outside and play? Did your teachers have to beg you to go outside for playtime? The answer, undoubtedly, is NO! Play gave way to exercise and it was for the pure enjoyment of whatever activity you chose. Cardiovascular and muscular benefits were just side effects that never crossed your mind.
Fast forward to today… what has happened to us? As we have aged, other priorities, schoolwork, jobs, relationships, bill paying and the like have eaten up time. Stress levels have risen and free time has subsided. Exercise for a lot of people is now a chore and no longer always FUN. Rebounding (bouncing on a mini trampoline) is one way to take you and your participants back in time, back to a time when exercise was fun.
Rebound Fitness will have you “Jumping for Joy” with our high quality home rebounders and online video workouts with plenty of workout variety for the whole family to have FUN whilst working out.
There are many scientifically proven health and fitness benefits of rebounding and it is important to choose a high quality mini-trampoline if these benefits are to be achieved.
Our great Rebound Fitness workouts incorporate important exercises and movement patterns such as squats, lunges, twists, pushes and sprints between bursts of jogging and bouncing, all on a low impact surface. The “basic bounce” move is the foundation move to all our workouts.
Read on to see how your balance is challenged and improved through working out on the unstable surface of the rebounder, how the proper exercise technique is so important to realising the health and fitness benefits, and the amazing positive effect that gravity has on the body when doing rebound exercise.
1. Incredible Weightloss
By exercising on a well-sprung professional rebounder, with good technique (see our basic bounce for the correct rebound posture) and following a well-designed exercise programme you will kick start your metabolism, burn unwanted fat and improve cardio-vascular health. Just 30 minutes of rebounding a day could help you lose 1 stone in 3 weeks, burning more calories than you would by running for the same period – without all the strain on your joints!
Consider when you are running on a treadmill and it asks you to enter your body weight to determine how many calories you have burnt during your run. If you were to enter a much heavier body weight than you actually are, it will show a significantly higher calorie burn.
Rebounding achieves the higher calorie burn because as you bounce your body needs to work harder to push down into the mat then then jump up out of the mat. This continual bouncing movement creates G-Force that causes your exercising body weight to be heavier (up to 3.24 times than normal) which in turn causes your body to burn more calories more quickly and so aids very effective weight loss.
2. Lymphatic Drainage
The lymphatic system makes up part of your immune system & plays a vital role in defending your body against harmful bacteria, viruses, parasites and toxins. Spread throughout your body, like blood vessels, the lymphatic system removes excess fluid and waste from your tissues and returns it to your bloodstream via the heart which are then excreted out of the body via the lungs, skin, kidneys and bowels.
Periods of poor diet, relative inactivity and stress can put a strain on the lymphatic system and contribute to it becoming sluggish thus lowering the immune system. The best way to stimulate the lymphatic system, give it a boost, and get it working efficiently again is to exercise – Exercising on a high quality mini trampoline, in particular, is incredible for achieving this!
The energising and bio-mechanical effects of Rebounding on your lymphatic system helps flush harmful toxins, bacteria and other waste from your body. By constantly opposing gravity and the up-and-down rhythmic gravitational force caused by jumping on a mini trampoline, the one-way valves of the lymphatic system are forced to open at the top of the jump and close at the bottom of each bounce creating an invigorating lymphatic flush.
Marion has primary Lymphoedema and explains why Rebounding is essential in her daily routine.
3. Kind on Joints
Prehab not rehab is a motto we live (and bounce) by.
Traditional forms of exercise such as running, cycling and power walking place a lot of stress on the joints of the knees, hips, ankles and feet. Low impact exercise or fitness activities are those that do not require you to place one of your limbs in contact with a hard surface. Typical low impact activities are swimming, cycling, rebounding and trampolining.
Rebounding is the “King” of low impact exercise – not only does rebounding reduce 87% of the shock of impact when using a high quality, well sprung rebounder, compared to working out on a hard surface, it is also a weight bearing activity and therefore strengthens bones, larger muscles and stimulates the smaller stabilising muscles in and around our joints improving muscle strength and tone, flexibility and overall joint health.
This means that you can work out even harder and for longer periods with a much reduced risk of injury.
Research has also found that low impact fitness activities may actually promote the healing and recovery of damaged joints, thereby allowing you to return to higher impact activities at a later date.
Read here to find out how to get the HIIT workout without the impact… Low Impact HIIT – or LIIT as we call it!.
4. Changes Body Shape
Rebound Fitness trampoline workouts utilise all the fundamental movement patterns needed to stimulate all of our limbs, joints and muscles in a very healthy and balanced way. These functional movement patterns and exercises performed on the professional rebounder can consist of squats, lunges, twists, bends, pushes and gait patterns including postural exercise that force every muscle in the body to continually contract simultaneously and then relax. This results in our joints and muscles working and moving together a we do in everyday life and whilst playing sport, resulting in a more functional full body workout. This makes us becoming stronger, leaner and more flexible.
Rebounding also strengthens the pelvic floor muscles and deep abdominal muscles (the muscles that help give us a flat tummy!). Increasing the muscle tone and volume will result in making our skin appear smoother, and younger. The human body has roughly 56 – 80 trillion cells. As you are bouncing on the rebounder every single cell is under additional stress because of gravity’s additional force on the body. At the top of the bounce, each cell is weightless and is “floating”. At the bottom of the bounce, each cell feels the increased pressure from the increase in G-force – there is a gentle “squeeze” on each cell. The cells have to adapt to being placed in this environment and therefore become stronger. Since the cells are the body’s living building blocks any positive change to the cells cascades up to the tissues, organs and systemic functions giving increased overall health and well-being.
5. Strengthen Core
We have been conditioned and brain washed to train our core muscles lying on our backs doing variations of an abdominal crunch or curl exercise. This is in fact dysfunctional with limited benefits, targeting only external superficial muscles rather than important deeper core muscles. Probably the only time of day we need to do this type of sit up movement is when we get out of bed in the morning!
A better and more functional way to train our core muscles is in the vertical position, which is how these muscles are used most of the time, to stabilise our spine so it can cope with normal “life activities”, improving our posture and keeping us upright.
Exercising on an unstable surface, such as a low impact rebounder, provides a very healthy and constant balance challenge forcing the involuntary contraction (meaning we don’t have to think about it!) of the very important ‘deeper core muscles’ that surround and protect our joints and organs. Stimulating these important muscles in this way can protect us from injury, strengthen the spine, improve posture and are responsible for giving a flatter belly in appearance.
6. Strengthen Pelvic Floor & Bladder
Having a baby, being overweight, age, illness – there are many things that can adversely affect the pelvic floor and bladder control, and many can feel quite embarrassed by the situation. Exercise can therefore be the last thing on your mind – in fact, rebounding works wonders for improving the pelvic floor and bladder weakness. The sphincter on the bladder is an annular (circular in shape) muscle which, through opening and closing, controls the flow of urine out of the body. Pregnancy and birth can weaken the sphincter muscles; they can lose strength, elasticity and their original shape.
Through low impact exercise, like rebounding, pelvic floor strength can be regained. Rebounding will exert a force on the cell walls of the pelvic floor & bladder, encouraging it to become more elastic and durable resulting in a more comfortable, healthier and freer lifestyle.
Working on the unstable surface of the rebounder will also constantly challenge the deep core muscles thereby strengthening the important muscles of the pelvic floor and sphincter which improves bladder control.
”1 in 3 women suffer the issue of pelvic floor weakness.
Mary ComberHealth & Fitness Editor
7. Increase Bone Density
As we get older, we lose bone mass and mineral content from our bones which means they become frail and porous leading to osteoporosis and other degenerative skeletal conditions. Osteoporosis affects over three million people in the UK and over 200 million worldwide. The cell in the body that is bone forming is known as “osteoblast”. Rebounding causes osteoblastic activity thereby stimulating bone growth and restoring bone density.
NASA discovered that astronauts who went off to the moon lost 15% of their bone density in just 14 days because there was no gravitational pull to positively stress their bones – rebounding was the solution. In the NASA Report published in the Journal of Applied Physiology 49(5): 881-887, 1980 they state:
“. . . for similar levels of heart rate and oxygen consumption,the magnitude of the bio mechanical stimuli is greater with jumping on a trampoline than with running, a finding that might help identify acceleration parameters needed for the design of remedial procedures to avert deconditioning in persons exposed to weightlessness.”
Rebounding can be used both as a preventative measure, and as relief for those already suffering from these conditions.
8. Improved Sporting Performance
Following a well-designed exercise programme performed on a high quality and very low impact rebounder, can have a carry over on to the playing filed and give you that vital edge over your opponent. By mimicking movement patterns used in our chosen sport or fitness activity whist on an unstable surface such as a swiss ball or rebounder, you can increase muscles stimulation, improve balance and increase joint stability by making them more difficult to perform than when done on a rigid surface.
The effects of unstable surfaces on strength and performance is quite easy to measure by doing some pre and post exercise testing. Also, biomechanical laboratories, sports science departments in universities and hospitals are equipped with electromyography machines, which use skin-mounted electrodes to measure electrical signals sent to your muscles through your nerves. By measuring the intensity of these signals, we can get a pretty clear idea of how strongly a particular exercise engages the muscles being tested.
Training our muscles in an unstable environment is even more important if our chosen sport involves moving on or over an unstable or undulating surface such as skiing, cross country running, and football as these sports require high levels of balance co-ordination and joint stability. By incorporating exercises on equipment such as a rebounder with an unstable surface will train the muscles and joints in a similar way to how they are used in these activities making them ‘sport specific exercises’.
In all sports to perform at our best we need good postural strength. By exercising on a rebounder we stimulate all our stabilising muscles involuntary, which hold our joints in an optimum position and intern improve our posture. Good proper postural alignment allows us to work more efficiently with less fatigue and strain on your body’s ligaments and muscles.
If we add in the benefits that can be gained in the way of rebounding for injury prevention as well as being a brilliant rehabilitation device all in all I think rebounding has its place in helping our sporting performance!
Racing to a new running PB? Read our blog on how Rebounding can help to improve your Running
9. Exercise for All
Rebounding, or mini trampoline exercise, is great fun and suitable for all ages, genders and fitness levels. You are in control of how hard you work by how hard you push into the mat surface through your legs. This controls the intensity of your workout and allows you to increase your fitness levels gradually. In the beginning 5 minutes might be sufficient for you to work up a sweat and you can gradually increase the time of your workout, and the more you push into the mat of the rebounder the harder you will work
So whether you are a complete beginner or elite athlete you can tailor your rebounding programme to suit your requirements. The Rebound Fitness team have produced a whole mixed genre of exciting mini trampoline workouts available in our Bounce & Burn membership for everyone to enjoy and benefit from.
We have designed fantastic rebound workouts specifically for weight loss and burning 100s of calories, sports and fitness based workouts and holistic detoxifying rebounding sessions. We also have themed workouts that incorporate combat and martial arts moves, dance based workouts, children’s rebound and extreme bootcamp HIIT style sessions.
Our sporting workouts include squats, lunges, twists, jumps, pushing patterns and sprints are performed between bursts of jogging and bouncing, all on the low impact surface of the rebounder. You can also complete HIIT rebound and sport specific workouts, performing explosive plyometric exercises combined with athletic strength and conditioning moves such as squat jumps and upper body exercises. For extra resistance use our specially designed weighted gloves or resistance bands that clip on to our rebounders securely.
