If you had to think about something you could do that's maybe one of the greatest forms of exercise in general, that could build strength in parts of your body. You didn't even know you needed strength. And also it was crazy, crazy fun. What would it be?
Don't try to even answer it because I'm going to tell you just a moment. On this episode of the movement movement, the podcast, where people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body starting feet versus, you know, those things are your foundation. And we break down the propaganda and the mythology. And sometimes the flan out lies you've been told about what it takes to walk or run or hike or play or do yogurt or crossfit or even the thing I'm going to be talking about on this episode.
And to do that, enjoyably and effectively and efficiently. Did I say enjoy it? I'm not going to say enjoyably. Trick question.
Of course I know I did because if you're not having fun, do something different so you are because you're not going to keep it up if you're not enjoying it. I'm Stephen Sashan from ZeroShoes.com, your host of the movement movement podcast and we call it that because we are creating a movement that involves you. I'll tell you how and it's about natural movement, letting your body do what it's made to do, not getting in the way because there are very few things that actually can improve what your body does, but there are a lot of things that can make it worse. And the way the thing you can do is have some fun.
Go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com. There's nothing you need to do to join. That's just a domain I got. You'll find the previous episodes, all the places you can find the podcast and all the ways you can interact with us on social media.
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Tell people who you are and what you do. My name is Paul Hagen. I'm with Max Air Tramp, a founder of the company. We started about 11 years ago and sort of my claim to fame was an Olympic style trampoline to seven feet by 14, seven by 14.
I decided to make a 14 foot by 14 foot trampoline for the ex-games athletes. And it really took off. You know, it's one of the world's highest bouncing trampolines. You can get into your triples, your quadruple flips, you know, with a thing like this and make sure you're not going to be landing in the pads.
You can always land on the trampoline because it's so darn big and so much fun. So you seem to be, and first of all, I know most of people listen to this are not going to be throwing triples and quads and maybe have never even thought about being on a trampoline. And I want to talk about that, about why trampoline can be really good, even if people have never been on and are not gymnasts and are not thinking about that. But I have to start by saying this.
You just gave me a flashback to when I was at the Woodbridge and NASA's camp in 1978, 1979, which, and they just got in the first Aussie bed tramp. And that was an amazing thing. So in the process of you describing what you've done to not only make the trampoline bigger, which has physics problems attached to it, but make it better and high bouncing. Can you talk about the physics now before we launch into why people might want to play on one of these?
Well, the trampoline is a string bed trampoline that allows the air go through. So the first thing is if you take a tennis racket, air goes through it really quick. If you wrap a newspaper route, you can feel that resistance, that wind resistance. That's why the backyard black trampoline doesn't have any air going through it.
So it's got a lot of resistance. So it doesn't throw you very high. So ours allows the air to go through, but still be comfortable in the feet and the elbows and the knees when you do your body skills. The other thing is to get a high quality, high tensile material to make the springs out of which we use in music wire and put a lot of tension into that.
And we get the best quality we can possibly get on the market because we want the highest bouncing trampoline because all the Olympic training centers use our stuff, the movie industry users, our stuff, Woodward camp. We just got a new order from them. They use our stuff. You know, and just, you know, it's so much fun.
The other thing with trampoline, one of the quickest things that will bring up real quick is the astronauts use the trampoline when they come back from Earth because they've been in this weightless area and their bones get lighter and brittle. Well, they put them on little jogging trampolines and trampolines to increase bone density. So when you jump on a trampoline, especially a world-class athlete, their bones get stronger. And so if you have a real bad fall, unfortunately, your bones don't break, your ligaments go.
And the ligament industry injury is much worse than a bone injury. You bone are eight weeks, you're back in the leg, and then it's a lot longer healing time. That's interesting. I'm not from Texas, so not from gymnastics and trampoline, but well, that was definitely part of it.
But I've been a sprinter now for the last 15 years and when I had a DEX scan and they look at my bone density from basically my navel down, just like steel rods. And many people don't know. In fact, here I'll let you do it. Can you talk about what it is about that, about bouncing that helps with bone density?
Well, it's just that pounding that you get that trampoline, it feels like it's not very violent. Like when you had concrete, you're running, you know, especially if you're not running, right, you're putting a lot of jar into there. So you'll end up getting shinsed, things like that. If you do it properly, you're building the bone density in your legs and your body.
So trampoline allows you to do that. Our top guys have pulled almost nine Gs at the bottom of the bouncing going up, which is incredible. You're at 200 pound trampoline. This is showing 20 feet in the air, pulling eight, nine Gs.
That is an incredible force on the body. And if you weren't bouncing and building that bone density, your body couldn't hold up, you know, so learning. That is phenomenal. And people haven't watched, you know, most people think about trampoline since they're backyard or friends backyard, you know, one of those circular or black bed things with a net around it.
But they haven't seen what people are doing on tramps. And again, before we get into why, why, how's my concern experimenting with this and experiencing it? Talk about, well, how do I want to say this? You got a hat of thought until I coughed and then it flew right on my head.
It was there a second. You asked me, well, go on to something else. Okay. For people who've never thought about getting on a trampoline, which is not part of their mindset, give me your elevator pitch about why they might want to try that and how they could get started.
Well, getting a trampoline, you know, is all good. But to really enjoy the trampoline, if you get a top quality, you know, anything like a bicycle, you get a top quality trampoline, it's going to be a lot more plausible. It's going to be a lot of fun. If you get a coach to tell you how to go through the proper progressions, you reduce the fear level that we have in trampoline because that was one of the things that I'd have problems with is if somebody got really scared, it kind of meant the end of their career, right?
So having fun and having proper instruction takes the fear from bouncing high and then you can just get always add another flip, always add another whisk. So if your audience goes and looks at like Olympic style trampolining or looks at anybody in the lips, they will not believe how high these guys and girls are going. Girls are going nearly 20 feet in the air. Guys are going 25 feet in the air.
They're doing three and four flips. Every trick has got a twist in it with a triple or a double. You know, it's just incredible what they're doing on the trampoline these days. So they are super fit athletes.
Oh, no, it's amazing. I've gotten into watching certain things on YouTube and YouTube, of course, makes recommendations. And once it thinks it knows what you want to watch, it just keeps showing you more and more and watching all the trampoline stuff, both just regular trampoline or mini tramp stuff, it's unbelievable what people are doing. And I imagine that someone watches that.
It could be intimidating, but you don't have to be doing all of those insane things to be getting the benefits and also having fun doing it. If somebody was going to start from scratch, they'd never been on trampoline before. What would you tell them? It's just working on your bounce in control and just learning to get that balance and get that feeling from your feet all the way to your head that you're in control, you can bounce up and down, and then you want to start with just basic body skills, the seat drop, the stomach drop, the doggy drop.
And from there, you're adding twists, you're adding turns, and then working on the technique because you're toes pointed or you're having good body lines. If you're not, you know, if core is tight, you're going to snap your back. It's going to jerk back. So, you know, all have learning to have everything in line while you're bouncing.
And then just kind of experimental play, I think, is important with trampoline, you know, and just enjoy this year fun of it. People, so the tramp that you'll go by, you know, at a toy store, I don't know, they still have toy stores, wherever you would buy sort of a backyard tramp, they put a net around it to in theory, making it safer. What's your take on nets and safety? Well, the nets, you know, if you have an above ground trampoline, you do want a net because you don't have spotters, they're catching people and pushing one old school when you're in PE class, and every stand around to push every back to the center, right?
Well, here at Max Air, what we did was we made a trampoline with a padding around four feet from the bed of the trampoline. So, you got four feet of safety landing here, and then we put a net up, you know, because the nets, if they're real close to the bed, you can flip and land on the post, into the net, and you don't get injured that way. So, we try to design ours, so have that a lot further away from bouncing surface. So, if you take a fall, you're more like rolling into the pads and then the nets.
Well, in all pad situations changed, I mean, you know, the high school tramps that people may remember, you're basically having a thin, relatively hard pad just over a bunch of metal. And so, I mentioned yours is a whole different technology there, too. And that's, we did, we listened to our customer, you know, one of our first customers is like, we want bigger pads, make them thicker, thicker, and I'm like, wow, that's all going to be a lot of money. But we started going that route, and everybody went, wow, they're not doing this still today on an international trampoline.
The side pads are only one inch thick. The end pads on the end, they add what's called index, and those are nine inches thick, and then you've got a trampoline bottom to it, because you tend to fall off internationally and competitive. You fall off the end, the front end or the back end. You don't really hit the side too much.
It happens once in a while. But you imagine jumping from 18 feet an year and landing on a one inch pad on steel frame. You don't get a lot of padding there, so you're going to be really strong, really fit and brave. Yes, brave, crazy.
You can call it what you will. Literally when you just watch these guys just jumping, it can be terrifying. You just can't, because all the things that could go wrong from that, but of course, you don't just start trying to jump 20 feet an year. So, not something to worry about.
We talked about, and I want to dive in a little more about just the various things that get stronger when you're using trampoline, even if literally all you do is just bounce on it, and not one of those little round things that you stick in your living room. So, talk about, because people don't really get the physics of trampoline. I want to dive into that a little bit more, because there's some uses of the metaphor that people don't think is a metaphor, that something's like a trampoline when it's actually not something that literally is why I remember bringing it up again. But just talk about what happens and what gets stronger when you're just bouncing around a little and doing a bunch of tricks.
Well, you're going to get some flexibility out of trampoline when you're doing your body with stomach drops, because your stomach is going to sink and you're going to basically do a back bend or arch. So, it's really geared when you're younger, it's easy to do. If you've never been on a trampoline and you're 60 years old and you get on a trampoline, I can't do a stomach drop anymore and I can barely do a seat drop anymore, because my body haven't done enough stretching lately. You can be in a gym all the time stretching.
No, I'm not in a gym stretching. So, it bends me in ways I haven't done in many, many years. So, it will increase your flexibility. Really, it's better to start younger or be older and make sure you're doing all your flexibility before you get on the trampoline.
The other thing is, we talk about bone density, muscle and core strength to make sure that everything tight in the line to jump high, a trampoline is like a bone arrow. So, when you pull a bone arrow and you aim it up and you shoot it up, that's what a trampoline does. It shoots up. So, arrows they've developed over the years with an arrow.
It used to be the wooden arrow and it fly through the air and a wiggle. And then they ended up going to luminaero. It was less wiggle, goes faster through the air. And then they went to carbon fiber and those things don't bend them all through the air and so they cut through the air faster.
So, that's having a good core strength and good tight body to ride up out of that trampoline to get maximum height up there so you can do your skills. All right, you can go more flips and twists, you can add into it. Well, the other thing about trampoline and just bouncing that many people don't know is that when you put that little strain on your veins and arteries, they produce nitric oxide, which is a muscle relaxant and it actually has many, many benefits and literally just comes from bouncing. You can get that on one of those tiny little tramps that you can see in your living room.
In fact, some hospitals, people who are in bed for a long time, they just percuss their feet. They just have something that just hits their feet regularly because that little bit of force has that impact in addition to the bone density we talk about. But there's an illusion that people have that the trampoline is somehow magically, that's the thing that's making you go high. They don't get that it's just all about your legs that are interfacing with this trampoline bed.
Yeah, I'll tell you a quick story. We have a thing because our guys like to bounce on these string bed trampolines in bare feet so they can feel and get the better balance and they like that control. And then but they have to compete on these webbeds where they have to wear shoes, right? And they're like weights you and everything, but they're a little tighter around the feet where like your shoes give you more width in the front part of your foot and everything.
So and having a more flexible helps a lot with balance and stuff. So we have a thing when you're bouncing, you know, 16, 18 hours a week on the trampoline, the material foot would sink in and it would rub up the heel. And if you're bouncing a lot, it would get little blood listers in there and we named it the blalice, right? Because it'd get painful and you'd have to take a file and file down that chalice that would be on the side and then we'd get little blood listers inside.
So we said it's a blalice and to keep the pain down and keep the balance and everything, you'd have to file and take care of your feet. And so I get a saying as a trampoline coach, it's take care of your feet at all time, not walk around in arena barefoot because they're like, I'm used to running around the gender at well, that floor is padded. Now you're on concrete, you're going to stand in there 12 hours a day and you're going to take the energy out. So with some nice, lightweight and something that feels you're protecting your feet at all time.
Well, this is a really interesting thing because my what we've heard from thousands and thousands of people is they can stand all day in our shoes and bare feet without a problem. But that's because they're making all these little micro movements and whatnot and they're actually using their feet. And so the point is in this case, it's not like they can't handle being on concrete. It's that you don't want to just be, it's amazing how much energy you actually expand just walking around.
And if you're going to be on the trampoline, you really need your feet to be functional. You just want to chill out. It's going to be a funny flashback. I was in the world champion world track and field championships when you say bolts at the world record.
And before the race, he comes out, Tyson Gay and the Suffolk Palace and the other guys in the race and they all, they had this little podium thing behind in each lane and they just sat on it and it looked like they were going to fall asleep. I mean, they were just doing nothing and it took a while for the race to actually start and they spent like 20 minutes just sitting there doing nothing. They weren't stretching. I mean, just like, I'm not going to do anything with my legs because I'm about to use them.
And similar thing, if you're a professional trampoline athlete, you want to save it up for when you're on the tramp, not that you, you know, you're going to be building stronger feet from using them, but you don't want to have to use that when you don't have to use that. Right. Right. The trampoline metaphor came up a lot lately and I'm very curious to hear what your thoughts are on this.
When people talked about all these new shoes with their maximally cushioned shoes, which is tons and tons of foam and everyone's, there's a couple of, I'll put air quotes around the word footwear experts who said, Oh, that those shoes are acting like a trampoline. Now I'm not going to try and poison the well by telling you what I thought when I heard that. But I'm curious what you think when you hear that and we have not talked about this before. We never met before.
It's like being a magician. You never met before, correct? I'll pick a card. So we've never met before.
I'm not going to say that that padding in shoes is acting like a trampoline. I tell them there's a book called Born to Run. They talk about running basically barefoot or with very thin, like with things and they better do some more research because you can always find an expert that tell you what you want to hear, but listen to other people too and then make up your own mind. So I read the Born to Run and it's about thin ultra marathon runners and kind of the opposite of what everybody's telling you.
Get these big clunky fat shoes and but you can't get your bailots in there if they're stiff and hard. And you know, so okay, well, I'm going to throw my answer at you now. The first thing literally the first thing I thought when someone said, I think about trampoline is a trampoline works because you're using your legs. So you're not getting anything magical out of the tramp.
The tramp is just allowing you to maximize what you can do with your legs. The second thing is the trampoline works because the springs are out there. They're not right underneath you. They're out there and that's how the whole that's the physics of how it works.
So unless you had something further out, like if you had a shoe that was literally a trampoline, that's one thing, but just having foam underneath your foot doesn't act like a trampoline. And then people say, well, it's just like the Harvard track. So Harvard has an indoor track that is known for having people set world records on it because it actually is like a trampoline because they have these wide planks that are supported on the outside. And if anyone decides to look it up, I'll have to see if I can find the paper.
But the guys who designed the track talked about the physics of it and they say, yeah, we try to make the track a slightly tighter spring than the spring of the athlete themselves, which might quickly rebound and that throws you down the floor faster. If you're the right weight running at the right speed, and that's the other part that you know, I kept saying all these maximum-cluition shoes, the foam is tuned to a particular weight and speed. And if you're not that speed and you're not that weight, then it's going to get in the way. And I've been saying this now for nine years and happily like two or three weeks ago, the Washington Post printed all the research showing that that's exactly true.
If you're not that weight, that speed, this stuff actually gets in the way and causes real problems, which maybe think about a question that I never thought to ask about trampolines. Obviously, in the Olympics, you're not tuning the springs. And everyone, you know, and athletics tend to gravitate like swimmers all look the same not because they end up being built that way because the ones who are built that way tend to become better swimmers. Right.
Is it the same thing with trampoline athletes where they're all fundamentally in that same kind of weight and strength ratio? Or do you ever tune a tramp to an individual? No, you don't really tune a trampoline to the individual. Actually, I've been experimenting with that trying to get that to happen for certain people.
I'm going to get a dial up with different springs and do that to it. But with the international trampoline, you know, they use in the Olympics, everybody has the exact same thing. So it's who does their dieting correctly? Who does their weight lifting correctly?
Because I had a gentleman, you know, one of the best guys I ever trained, he jumped highest can be and he went to, he got an injury. So he went in the weight room, his brother's a professional football player, very athletic family. And he starts hitting the weights big time. He comes in, he smells from 195.
He's now 225 ball muscle and he can't jump his high because he weighs too much. Right? So I'm like, listen, you're changing the way you're changing, you know, the way you exercise and I want you down in the next four months before you start getting into competition, you got to get down to 185 pounds. So darn it, he's one of the few athletes that was able to diet, exercise, listen to his coach and get his weight down there.
And all of a sudden his bouncing went three feet higher. Wow. So is there, you know, doesn't fly either. It's a similar thing.
If you look at sprinters, it's really interesting to see how the sprinter body has changed because a lot of sprinters came out of, not only track and field, but also football. And these guys were just massive. And now you're watching these sprinters who, if you met them on the street, you think you could knock them over with a feather. They apply force into the ground brilliantly.
They're super strong, but they're just not as big. And actually I'd set up a funny flashback to the Olympic trials a few years ago. All the American sprinters look huge. And then a couple of weeks later at the Olympics, they look less huge.
It's like, oh, clearly the Americans weren't testing for things that they test when they were. There's that. Now, I remember going to a cross-fit gym for the first time and having a whole lot of fun and then thinking about the competition part because I like to compete, it's very entertaining, gives me something to work towards. It became very clear that that wasn't going to work because they don't adjust the weights or anything based on how much you weigh.
So I was going to have to deadlift the same 300 pounds as a guy who was, you know, 65, 250. Now I can deadlift 300 pounds, but it's not the same as someone who almost weighs 300 pounds. Is there an ideal, like cross-fit body? Is there an ideal tramp body as well?
There is, but there's people that break that norm. So the ideal weight would be about 165 pound male. Okay. That's about five, five.
Okay. But there's been some guys out there that have been six feet tall and weighed 195 and been able to compete in wind gold medals and stuff and they're just outside the norm. So you see seven little guys and one big guy and the big guy might win that meet. Well, I'm the core.
Is it tends to be a smaller man sport? Yeah. I'm the opposite when I show up at a track beat because I line up the line and I'm five, five and then the other guys are six feet tall and running against and I beat most of not all of them. The ones that are my age, the ones that are 20 years younger than me, they crush me.
But nonetheless, my goals as a sprinter changed when I first started, it was like I want to win races and now I just want to freak people out. I want people to go, what's he doing here? And then I'm raising a hat that happened. So it's a whole different goal.
The other, the tuning thing is very interesting to me when it comes to feet and shoes in general, but I had that question about tramps. Because again, like I mentioned at the top of our conversation, the Aussie bed was like the first time that it wasn't just big, big strips of fabric that were woven together, it just felt like magic. But also, after not too long, your legs are exhausted. Yeah.
And our trampolines, very similar to the Aussie bed trampoline, it's a string, two string by two string weave. Let's the air go through. We talked about that. But what we did talk is I got parents that call me out and go, I cannot believe what I paid for this trampoline.
We got motorcycles, we got jet skis, we got boats, we got everything. Our kids spent eight hours a day on the trampoline. As a matter of fact, I've set a band time that they can not jump trampoline after 10 o'clock at night. These kids are having so much fun.
Then they become super athletes. I got four daughters, three of them were high school poll voters, two of them got track scholarships for poll voting and hurdles and stuff like that. Because trampoline is plyometrics. When you get stronger, you might get quicker.
Do your plyometrics. Well, if you're playing on the trampoline having so much fun, you're just doing plyometrics over an overall day long, right? And then, apparently, I just, you know, like kind of awkward kid, now they, you know, are very talented and just live on the trampoline. Okay.
Well, since you brought it up, I'm going to ask. So, talking about what it costs to get a really good trampoline, I mean, not initially one that you made just for the fun of it, but I want to hear sort of what the price range looks like, what happens as you go up or down a price? Yeah. Well, you're poly bed trampolines.
You're going to pay anywhere from under $4,000 all the way down to, I think, you get one for $250, right? And they'll put little tiny springs on it. It'll be big. And then the kids will lay on it for a while and then play on it and then lay on it, get tan on it, and they'll never use it again.
But like our Max Air trampoline or an international trampoline, that's a high performance, you're going to be at that $10,000 range going up to our top selling units, almost $30,000, right? And these parents go, I cannot believe I wrote a check for that much. And then I check back with them, you're, how's your kids doing? How's things going?
What do we need? Trampoline doing okay? Anything, any replays? Whatever.
And they're like, best thing I ever bought for my family. Best thing ever, you know. So, you know, and you pay for what you get, you get a high quality, anything, and it lasts longer. It's built to last, it's built, you know, to be more enjoyable, you know, if it's shoes, bicycles, trampolines, you get high quality.
And you know the difference right away the first time you're on it. Well, there is a difference when it comes to shoes in that there's been a ton of research showing that the more expensive the shoe, typically the worse it is, I mean, after a certain point. So, because it's got a whole bunch of crap in there that just gets in the way. But if you're using better quality materials that do last longer, like you're saying, that's a true story, that can bring the price.
But there are situations where more expensive doesn't mean better. And footwear is like definitely one. There are probably others that I don't think about them too much because I just live in around footwear. And so you make, I mean, you're making above ground and in ground, what's it like when you're installing it?
My God, how deep of a hole do you need to dig for making a in ground? In the center, we can swoop them down to the curb down in the center because that's where it's going to sink the most. So you're almost at five feet. So we don't have anybody at the bottom.
So we make ours a little bit deeper. So above ground trampoline is almost five feet off the ground. Oh, wow. Yeah.
So you're way up there. So the net helps you not fall the five feet. It's like hit the pass roll into the net and oh, I didn't fall the extra five feet on the ground. So if we're including the pads and everything else, how much space do you need?
Well, I mean, our big deluxe 14 foot by 14 foot is 22 feet by 22 feet. So it's a big giant thing, you know, but talk about enjoyment. You know, like I said, my customers keep coming back and saying, I can't believe I did it and they love it and they spend more time on that than any other piece of equipment that we've owned or any bicycles, jet skis, you know, motorcycles, all that stuff. Yes, it's much less likely to be a clothes hanger like many home gyms become.
Right. Right. Where are you located? I can't remember.
Where are you grand Rapids, Michigan? So do people, if people, before they were going to drop 30 grand, I imagine, or even 10 grand, or even five grand, I imagine they're going to want to know what they're getting themselves into. How do people do that? Well, they contact us at maxertranquellings.com.
And then we'll go through the whole thing, kind of the conversation we have our sales between Steve and I do all our sales here at maxertranquellings.com and I was a professional trampoline coach for 25 years. Steve worked as one of my assistants and ran his own team at our facility. So not only did we coach trampoline, we bounced trampoline and then we manufactured trampoline because we didn't like what we were bouncing on and wanted better. And then the world came calling once they found out our stuff is better than everybody else.
So you know, we're getting a big presence out there. But again, I mean, I imagine looking at it was me, ignoring the fact that I'm going to be 61 and I got whatever's going on with my spine and whatnot. I still like to bounce. It's still super fun.
But you know, if I'm going to drop any amount of money, I'm definitely going to want to go feel it first, which of course it's the puppy dog clothes. Like you don't have to, you know, to take the puppy now. Our puppy, it was when we got our dog, which we got him almost a year ago, we landed at my wife and I never had a dog. They said, we don't do like a meet and greet thing.
Just come take the dog for a week and let us know what you think. And we knew that we were suckers as soon as we said yes to that. At the same time, we had the rescue dog lottery. They said, it might take your dog, you know, a couple of weeks to get used to you in your house.
Maybe a minute before it was his place and he was part of the family. It's gotten better and better over time, but nonetheless, it was great. But nonetheless, you know, I would want to do the puppy dog clothes. I'd want to go somewhere, bounce on the thing for two days, et cetera.
So a lot of our trampoline parks, the Sky Zones, we have a few in the Sky Zones, not a lot, but there's another company called DeFi and Circus Tricks. And there's a lot of those trampoline parks that are opening up and they're starting to put high performance areas in there. So if people check in their neighborhood for the trampoline park and see if they have a max air trampoline in there, we do them all over the world. And that's usually once the people bounce on that trampoline for a while, you know, go to the park and they're like, I'm tired of paying money at that park.
Let's just get one in our backyard. So we get a lot of that. And then if we sell a family, then their cousins come over and bounce on it and then they buy one, you know, and it's just our word of mouth has been really our main thing over our website is word of mouth when you have such a great product. Like we have word of mouth is everything, you know, and probably same thing as the shooting community and the running community.
They got to say, yeah, exactly the same way as well. Yeah, it's, you know, my favorite one is we hear this version is I bought your shoes and then I have five pairs. And now my mom and my dad who are in their 70s or 80s or whatever bought them and they won't wear anything else and they have 10 pairs. And so it really word of mouth has been the number one driver of our business as well, which is super, super fun.
You know, for people again who've never bounced on a tramp or think it could be scary or, you know, that doing anything might be difficult. What do you do for any sort of coaching or recommending coaching or something? So that people, here's my favorite thing is people discovering they can do something that they didn't think they can do. And I just hung out with a bunch of guys at this gym that I was in last week where if people haven't seen it, I will have to include a link.
So almost 61 to a standing back flip and which is incredible. That's very impressive. And I've been in a gym my whole life. And I gave up the one flips at 50.
I'm like, no more. Well, look, here's the deal. First of all, I had a bad one. No one that trampling, not on the ground.
You did your standing on the ground. That's a whole different animal. Well, that's true. But I did the first few on the tramp just to make sure I still knew where I was.
And then I did a few where I stood on the edge of the tramp and just used the tramp to land on. And then I went through it on the floor and had someone, you know, spot me just in case. And he said, I didn't touch you. I said, all right.
So then I did much more. But part of this was because I had a bet from when I was in high school with my coach about who was going to be the oldest doing a standing back. And so I just won that bet. I didn't get anything for it, unfortunately, but, you know, other than the satisfaction.
But now the question is, who's the oldest guy who's ever done a standing backflip? And annoyingly, the Guinness Book of World Records is a guy who's like 94 and changed, but he did it off the edge of a pool into the pool. And that's I don't call it a record. Exactly.
So I have no doubt that there's a couple of guys, you know, Dorkey or the me who were older than me, who were maybe in their mid 60s, who were still throwing them. So I got to find out, you know, and we got to start this competition and see if it was going to be the last one standing or flipping as the case may be. To do it. And I'm a fairly fit guy, right?
When I go out snow skiing, you know, I love the snow ski and I ski 30 miles by the end of the day, from start of the day, which is a lot of miles, you know, so my fitness is really high. I'm not doing a standing back time. Your fitness has got to be at another level because I mean, did you feel it the next day in your stomach? This time, I'm not going to ask because it's a lot of core people.
It's all in the legs. No, it was a lot of core to get those legs up over your head quickly. That's your stuff. It was 48 hours later when my lower abs were like, oh, yeah, it wasn't actually too bad.
But I definitely, you know, I only did like seven or eight of them. And then I was feeling like never abductors, abductors in my legs, inside of my legs. Surprisingly, the inside of my legs, my glutes, which was really made me happy because glutes were super important for sprinting and then abs and then you and I talked about this before we got on my hands. I mean, from immediately immediately when I did the standing back flip, you know, you're throwing your arms really hard and the blood just goes to your hands and I undeniably, you know, busted a couple of capillaries in there somewhere.
And that lasted for about an hour, very painfully. And then over the course of the day, it went away. So, but all that made me think is I got to do more of these. I got to get to the point where my body can handle that again.
I used to know like 40 or 50 at a time, just as part of a workout. I'm not. Well, that was my conditioning for the team. We call the circle of death and we put 20 people in a circle and everybody just had to keep going around and once somebody was out, didn't make their back flip and fall forward, then this is your out and they go around a hundred times, you know, the good athletes.
And but that's instead of doing 500, 800 sit-ups, right? 50, 100 standing back tucks and get more of work out because you really got to snap and engage that core and get the stomach muscles fired. There's another part to it because it's not just about being able to tuck quickly, which you could do if you're doing like hanging leg raises or something, you can kind of get that. It's actually that the first movement when you're doing the standing back flip is a little back extension.
So you're stretching your abs before you pull them in and there's a guy who I adorn him Nick Nilsen, he calls himself the man's scientist and muscle. And one of his ab exercises is put a roll up a towel and put it underneath your lower back. So you're starting with that stretch position and then you do the crunch and you don't try to go all the way up. So there's a lot of research coming out lately about how the stretch position is better for building muscle for hypertrophy and you're not going to build a lot of muscle in your abs.
That's not the thing but the stretch position literally just being stretched actually is building strength and building muscle tissue, which is pretty wild. But then you look at some of the old school bodybuilders and they did a lot of stuff just partial reps in that stretch position. Right. And that ends up limiting range of motion too.
So they get full stretch, you get a full range of motion during your body and if you shorten that up, yeah, you might get a bigger muscle. Well, you know, you're not doing just the partial in the stretch. That's just like the last part they do. There was some research that showed if you just stood with your toes elevated like you're doing a like you're doing a toe raises or calf raises and just stood there for some exorbitant amount of time.
But literally just stood there with your stretching your calves. That was building strength and muscle as well. So no range of motion at all. And I don't know how functional it was, but it was just interesting to see.
And this actually came from a bird study where they would just stretch a bird's wing and it got stronger and bigger muscles. So it was a really interesting thing. But I can't we can't finish this conversation without talking about by far the craziest thing I've ever seen and trampolines that make your seam, you know, like those little round things that you put in your living room. The guys who were quote freestyle trampolines, guys who were like 40 feet in the air, 50 feet in the air doing nine, one guy just did nine flips.
Well, I got to say, hold on a second. Okay. I did nine flips and he did not land on his feet. So like a standing back tuck off into a pool, it's no record until he puts it on his feet.
That's the record. So other stuff guessing where you are in the air because you're spinning so fast and lucky you didn't kill yourself on the trampoline. They throw in a mat and everybody goes, he's not dead. You're a big hug.
Well, let me say this. I agree with you. I had the same thought and be let's be clear. We're arguing about whether a guy just threw eight and a half or nine or eight three quarters.
Yeah. This is a purest argument. Yeah. I'm worried about those young men because they're missing a lot of progressions.
And they're just chucking it and going at they're very brave. They're very stupid. Yeah. And they can't do a lot of the intermediate skills to make them truly great.
I get it. We used to do this in the pool or we do it into a pit. It's like an flip to your land. And that's basically what they're doing on a trampoline, which is it's undeniably crazy, undeniably dangerous.
And it's also, it's also one of those things that, you know, from when you and I were competing, the things that we were doing now, you know, five year olds are doing. I mean, the things that people were doing now, we never even dreamed of doing. So I'm hoping that what these guys do does add some amount of inspiration about what's possible or they find a way that, you know, it becomes not so insane. So there's always someone who's pushing the envelope.
Look, I remember being in high school and watching, I just blanked on the name of who it was, Russian gymnast, who was the first guy who threw a triple back off of high bar. And everyone thought he was completely insane and it was the dumbest thing in the world. They didn't want to allow it in competition because all the people would die. And now if you can't throw a triple in high school, you don't get a college scholarship.
Right. Right. So I got a quick story ahead of mom, call up. She's asking about her trampolines and she's like, well, it says here that you're trampolines, you can jump 25 feet in the air, but I don't want my three year old jumping 25 feet.
You're three year olds. You're never going to be strong enough to go that high. But look, more power to her. I think that's great that she's that protective.
Well, still wanting to have a good time and build a better system. What if anything, I mean, given all this, what if anything, do you see as next, either for you or trampolines and trampolining in general? Well, one of the things we're inventing new trampoline that has a pulley system, right? So we got it, our prototypes are going to be made right now and we'll get it on our website here pretty soon.
But sometimes we have somebody where they've got a small space and they want a large jumping surface. So we put a pulley on the end and have a rope go around the pulley and then the springs work up and down. Oh, so what we've done is taken a spring weighs about one pound. You got 118 springs on a Olympic trampoline.
So we took 118 pounds off the jumping surface. So now it's coming up quicker and a lot faster. Now the spring is only working straight up and down and gravity is helping. So a little tweaks like that, we'll get a little more bounce out of it.
We'll jump a little higher, but it makes the trampoline a little more expensive. So we sell that to the surface people or the, you know, Olympic coats that really needs to get that extra two feet higher, you know, they're already going 25. Well, that's an interesting question though. I mean, you know, if you are bouncing on a tramp, your training for the Olympics, you're bouncing on a tramp that's just giving you much more than you get in the standard Olympic trampoline.
How are people kind of making that transition? It would be really easy to use to something that you then not on. I mean, obviously you're not going to stay on just one tramp, but nonetheless. No, your body will adjust our top guys.
You know, we go to meet after meet every trampoline is somewhat different. It just is. And if you get enough warm up time in there, you adjust pretty quickly. You know, I would say a world class athlete could go out and around trampoline and still be everybody in the neighborhood, you know, because he knows the right technique, the nice form, you know, and just how to do everything correctly.
So, you know, you go on the power tumblers and gymnasts, you know, the best one from the Olympics on these nice 40 by 40 bouncy floors and everything. That guy's still going to probably win if the thing was done out in a parking lot. Right. You gave me a funny memory.
I met a guy who was a professional bowler and he said, oh, yeah, when we're like going to warm up, I can tell you if there's not enough oil on that one piece of wood, it's two inches wide and four feet long in this part of the lane. So I want to either avoid that piece of wood or hit that piece of wood. The idea of being that attuned to your equipment in bowling was mind blowing. Absolutely.
I'm backing up to your pulley trampoline thing. Who thought that idea? That is super cool. I was mine.
I thought about that for years and years and years because we went and talked about the bow and arrow and shooting it up and I looked at a compound bow and I went, wow, a compound bow really launches. I'm going to make a trampoline like a compound bow and I did it. That is really, I'm still in the playing stage of it and won't be ready for another year and a half. That is super, super clever.
I totally love it. All right. I got one more thing to do. One of the new, yeah, sorry.
One of the new trampolines we did is a round high performance trampoline and nobody has ever done that before. So we took our fabric that lets the air go through and we made a round trampoline. So we have an in-ground model that will be released in the spring that's round and high performance. We just have some people that are like, nope, it's got to be round.
It's where rectangle bounce are. No, I got to have a round one. Aesthetics in my backyard. Whatever it is, the movie industry.
We do stuff with them and they're like, got to have a round trampoline that bounces high. Like, okay, we can do it now. What diameter? We have a 11 foot 7 and a 13 foot 7 and that's the bouncing surface.
So it's a little bit. It's a little bit more than 16 feet. I love it. You've actually, I do want to ask this one question though.
I almost got to before. So someone's going to start anew and again, trampoline is one of the things where you really can learn to do things that you never imagined you could do. Who thought they could do a backflip and you find it? It's not as hard as you think, but it's not what you think.
People think you have to throw yourself backwards to do it or frontflip. You throw your body down to do it. It's definitely not what you think and discovering that there's movement patterns that work differently than what you imagine. I think it's really interesting.
But if they're going to get started from scratch, what do you recommend in terms of coaching? If you can go to your local gymnastics center or get with one of the organizations, there's a lot of them out there that are the trampoline federations. There's AAU tramp entumbling, there's USDA tramp entumbling, and then USA gymnastics are the governing bodies in the United States for that and finding a good quality coach that's been certified through either one of those federations. Especially if you're doing the stomach drop back drops and that, but once you want to start doing the single flips and double flips and stuff like that, to be safe, you really want quality coaching, they will make it fun for you.
They'll show you the way that you can think and learn yourself and be able to see and know where you're at in the year all the time. We don't lose sight of the trampoline bed when you're doing a triple twisting, double layout. Your eyes are looking at that trampoline the whole time. They don't.
Learning from a coach telling you the right things to do, where to look, how to balance, how to be in shape, all that stuff, and give you the drills and follow proper progressions, will make it a safe fun sport for everybody. I can't think of a better way, a better note to end on. Paul, first of all, thank you. It's been a total pleasure.
Secondly, while you've mentioned it a number of times, please tell people if they want to find out more how they can find you and get in touch with you. Maxairtrampolines.com, we have a really great website and come and take a look at it. Beautiful. For everyone else, thank you so much.
If you decide to start trampolining, whether you're getting on a Maxair tramp, or I recommend anything, let us know. This will be fun. I'm hoping someone gets inspired to go try something new because that's part of the fun doing things and having a natural movement. It's discovering there are things that are fundamentally natural that you didn't know.
Actually, I got to say this, I just remembered this. Some people say to me, they argue, well, we didn't evolve to run on concrete for 26 miles. My response is that we didn't evolve to do double twisting double backflips either. I guess what I can learn to do.
I love your shoes. I've been going to the ones in the background and some of the ones on your website and everything. You've got a nice concept in your shoe and I'll be getting mine real soon. I know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who hooked up.
Thanks, Steven. I really appreciate having you on your show. I'm going to do a quick sign up for everyone else's reminder. Go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com.
You can find all the previous episodes, find all the ways you can interact with us on social media. In fact, if you have any questions or comments or people that you think I should be chatting with on the podcast, you can drop me an email, move at jointhemovementmovement.com. If you think that I have a case of cranial rectory orientation syndrome, you can let me know that. In fact, it's my goal.
It hasn't happened yet to find so many things. I'm completely full of it to have a conversation with them and see what happens. I know what will happen, which is I know why they don't shop on the podcast. But nonetheless, we'll be a blast.
I'm going to stop and have to try and take me on. All that said, most importantly, just go out, have fun, and live life-feet first.