Yes, jumping on a trampoline exercises the whole body. The g-force that bouncing produced helps to build muscle and burn fat quickly.
This firms up every part of your body – including legs, thighs, arms, hips, and stomach. It also has the added benefit of improving agility and balance!
People generally associate, going to the gym or bike riding as exercise but today, we investigate all the trampoline health benefits and how jumping on a trampoline is good for weight loss among other things.
Health Benefits of Trampoline Exercise
Did you know that trampolining is 68% more effective than your half-hour jog? NASA’s Journal of Applied Physiology backs this up, showing how just more efficient rebound exercise compared to jogging. It may sound too good to be true, but the health benefits of jumping on a trampoline are no myth. Even a study by the American Council on Exercise (ACE) found that a 20-minute trampoline workout routine burns as many calories as running 10 km/h for the same amount of time.
Other reasons why jumping on a trampoline is good exercise include:
- Increased circulation
- Improved balance and coordination
- Better core strength
- Improved bone density
- Increased cardiovascular fitness
- Regulation of the metabolism
- Increased muscle strength
Trampolining is a vigorous aerobic workout, which means that it increases the rate at which your heart pumps blood, and therefore oxygen, around your body. This strengthens the muscles of your cardiovascular system, and the boost in oxygen levels will make you feel more alert! Preventing diseases such as type-2 diabetes by staying active is very important.
Not only that, but trampolining provides a rush of positive hormones and compounds—like adrenaline, dopamine, and serotonin. Also just as important, is a healthy lymphatic system, which maintains your body’s fluid levels, filters out toxic material, and is an integral part of your immune system—has no ‘pump’. It requires up-and-down body movement to move the lymph fluids throughout vessels inside your body. Trampolining can increase lymph flow by up to 30 times because you’re alternating between weightlessness and double gravitational force.
It reinforces your immune system and helps your body to transport nutrients and cleanse itself of waste.
All good reasons why you should buy a trampoline for exercise. Especially if your children are not old enough yet for kids bikes. You can also get your kids active by playing games on your trampoline.
Better For Your Joints & Bone Strength
Running is one of the most popular ways to exercise, but it can be hard on your joints and lead to orthopedic injuries. While trampolining involves very similar motions to running, the trampoline itself actually absorbs some of the shocks – resulting in less impact on your knees, feet, hips and spine. Repeated jumping also puts your bones under slight stress at regular intervals—after all, you are landing with twice the gravitational force!
Like how a vaccine uses a small amount of disease to protect you, later on, this small amount of stress will improve your bone density, and help prevent bone disorders—like osteoporosis—later in life.
However, there is a big difference between slight stress and high impact.
When you jog, play squash or perform regular jumping aerobics, there’s nothing to absorb the jarring force of your contact with the ground. On a trampoline, you still get the benefits of a cardiovascular and musculoskeletal workout, but the mat soaks up over 80% of the impact on your joints. Trampolines have perfect vertical bounce, so there’s also far less chance of sprains and twists.
Is Jumping on a Trampoline Good for Weight Loss
If just jumping for 30 minutes a day on a trampoline is good for weight loss. The higher your heart rate – think huffing, puffing, and sweating – the better the weight loss results. Instead of feeling overwhelmed at the thought of a long jogging session, jump onto your trampoline 30 minutes a day for weight loss.
When you have a trampoline for weight loss you can transform your overall fitness level and experience a whole range of health benefits. Let's not forget that bouncing is also far more enjoyable than other forms of exercise, and time flies when you’re having fun!
It's one of the biggest pros of trampolining - it's is easy to do, while also excellent for weight loss. Because jumping on a trampoline is considered a moderate-to-vigorous intensity exercise, you get results in the same physical effects as playing sport (like basketball or football), biking, or running at a relatively fast pace.
But this is why trampoline weight loss is so fantastic. When people rated how exerted they felt in an ACE study, their scores were consistent with light-to-moderate intensity exercise. You can then lose more weight while jumping on a trampoline as you can exercise for longer! Not only does it feel like less effort, but it's also super easy to get started. No special equipment, preparation, or instructors needed for your trampoline workout.
Just pop onto your trampoline and start bouncing – it really is that easy! To take your workout to the next level, you could even try out some exercises specifically tailored to trampolines. Just remember to take it easy at first start with 10 minutes of simple jumping.
Try to increase the frequency of your bounces to get your heart rate up, because robust bouncing for 10 minutes should have the same effect on your body as running or jogging for 30 minutes.
The Anatomy of Bouncing - Losing Weight
When you engage in bouncing, your body must provide fuel for your muscles to keep them working efficiently.
A series of reactions take place inside your cells, which use – in part – your stores of carbohydrates and fat as forms of energy (hello weight loss!):
- Your muscles tap into your stores of glucose and adenosine triphosphate (ATP) to kickstart your workout. Because your body must create ATP using oxygen, your breath rate goes up to increase the amount of oxygen filtering through your body.
- During this process, your lungs also get in on the action – making your breathing even heavier to further increase the amount of oxygen that you’re taking in.
- Your heart rate rises to supply more oxygen-filled blood to your muscles. The fitter you are, the easier that this process is.
- While your body is focusing on getting oxygen to the muscles, it slows down other unnecessary functions, i.e. digestion in the stomach.
- Your brain sparks up, becoming more focused and alert. It also recognises the exercise as a form of stress and releases a number of chemicals in response. These include endorphins and serotonin, responsible for giving you that natural buzz at the end of your workout.
- Your core temperature rises, resulting in the dilation of the blood vessels in the skin allowing you to cool down more quickly.
Running Vs Trampoline?
Running for 30 minutes can burn anywhere from 200 - 300 calories. Plain, up-and-down bouncing on your trampoline burns very similar numbers. However, if you incorporate other exercises during trampoline bouncing, you could potentially burn double that number.
What Muscles do Trampolines Work?
Jumping on a trampoline exercises the whole body, and the g-force that bouncing produces helps to build muscle and burn fat quickly. Muscles a trampoline works out include legs, thighs, arms, hips, and stomach. It also has the added benefit of improving agility and balance. Your leg muscles have to work hard to counteract gravity and push you skywards.
Intense, repetitive jumping means that your muscles contract and release more frequently than almost any other exercise. This increases their strength and tones them at the same time. And trampolining doesn’t just work out your leg muscles. Because you’re twisting yourself to stay balanced and move in the air, you also train your stomach and core muscles.
Abs and back muscles contract together each time you jump and land back on the mat. Throw in some simple trampoline exercises while you bounce, and you can fire up your entire body! Don't forget that trampoline works out more muscles including joints, tendons, and ligaments. It's also the perfect exercise for people with mild arthritis and can help lessen the pain of arthritic joints.
How a Trampoline Improves Your Flexibility
Has it been years since you’ve been able to touch your toes, or do you struggle to get up off the floor? Maybe you can’t remember when your body didn't feel stiff or tight. You likely have poor flexibility. No matter your age or weight, you can improve your flexibility easily at home!
What is Flexibility?
Flexibility refers to the range of motion in a joint or in the collection of joints; it's directly related to your body’s movements and how easily you can move. Our flexibility can vary throughout our body. It can become better or worse as we age, depending on circumstances like our levels of physical activity. Increasing your flexibility is be beneficial in a number of ways. It allows our bodies to move more freely, with a fuller range of motion, allowing us to go about day-to-day activities more easily. Improved flexibility can also reduce muscle pain and prevent injury by loosening up tight muscles and joints.
Using a Trampoline
You can boost your flexibility from the comfort of your own home, and without any professional guidance or cost, no matter who you are! A trampoline mat makes the perfect stretching surface thanks to its elasticity (as well as yoga and Pilates).
The key is completing small, consistent daily stretches. Remind yourself that you won't become a gymnast overnight, but you will see results from doing a little bit each day. You’re probably familiar with 'static stretching' – completing one stretch at a time and holding it for around 30 seconds. However, 'dynamic stretching, which involves movement, is also helpful.
You can even try it on your trampoline:
- Warm-up with some basic bouncing. Then, incorporate flexibility exercises – such as bounce squats or in-air leg splits into your dedicated trampoline sessions.
- Try focusing on dynamically stretching one muscle group at a time.
- Finish with a slow and steady static stretching session on your trampoline jump mat.
Rebounding Trampoline Exercise
As the world's obesity problem reaches epidemic proportions, many people are searching for fun ways to exercise that will improve their well-being. In addition to those people wanting to make lifestyle changes, workout enthusiasts of all ages are also looking towards trampoline-based workout plans, which are also known as rebounding plans.
It's commonly known that adopting rebounding trampoline exercise plans are excellent ways to rebound into a healthy size, but did you know that it could also increase bone density, detoxify the body, and stimulate the immune system?
According to Rubin and Bulwer, weight loss experts and authors of Perfect Weight America, “Jumping on a trampoline is one of the best and most complete anaerobic exercises you can do, since jumping strengthens muscles, tendons, and ligaments—and demands great energy.”
In their book, they go on to say, “The acceleration, deceleration, and gravity pull positively stress your bones, which results in higher bone density.”
Higher bone density has been linked to stronger bones and a decreased incidence of fractures, which is especially important for children and adolescents.
Growing bodies benefit from the active play and gentle weight training that trampolines provide.
Bruce Fife, the author of Rebound to Better Health, states that weight-bearing exercise, like rebounding on a trampoline, helps protect against osteoporosis later in life — a condition that is on the rise in America.
"Rebound exercise is "the most efficient and most effective form of exercise yet devised by man… (because) it does not just strengthen the muscles, but it strengthens every single cell of the body, both muscle and nonmuscle,” he says.
Purchase a Trampoline today!
Vuly offers a range of trampolines suitable for both adults and children. While you're at it, why not check out our other award-winning products like our swing sets and kids bike.
Sources
- Get the Gloss – www.getthegloss.com
- Ace Web Content – acewebcontent.azureedge.net
- American Physiological Society. – www.physiology.org
- Ace Fitness – www.acefitness.org
- Live Science – www.livescience.com
- Well Being Journal – www.wellbeingjournal.com
- Free Dieting – www.freedieting.com
- Good Reads – www.goodreads.com
