History

In the early 1930s, George Nissen observed trapeze artistes performing tricks when bouncing off the safety net. He made the first modern trampoline in his garage to reproduce this on a smaller scale and used it to help with his diving and tumbling activities. He formed a company to build trampolines for sale and used a variant of the Spanish word trampolin (diving board) as a trademark. He used the trampoline to entertain audiences and also let them participate in his demonstrations as part of his marketing strategy. Thus were the beginnings of a new sport.

The nature of the activity is natural, easy and rhythmical, and the power of the bed enables participants to have fun and excitement by jumping higher than they would normally be able and to perform many skills landing on the feet, seat, front and back and also to take off from those varied landing positions.

In the USA, trampolining was quickly introduced into school physical education programmes and was also used in private entertainment centres. However, following a number of injuries and law suits caused by insufficient supervision and inadequate training, trampolining is now mostly conducted in specialist gyms with certified trainers. There are also many privately owned backyard trampolines which are the source of most trampolining injuries. Elsewhere in the world the sport was most strongly adopted in Europe and former Soviet Union. Since trampolining became an Olympic sport in 2000, many more countries have started developing programs and China is already producing very competitive athletes.