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Rebounding fitness emerged in the early 80s and brought us a new fun way to exercise! But it seemingly died down after a few years due to the low quality spring rebounders limiting the workout experience. Then, about 15 years ago Bellicon and JumpSport came onto the market with bungee rebounders and really tapped into all the potential rebounding has to offer!
Over the past few years (bungee) rebounding has boomed in popularity and people are getting to enjoy a ton of benefits from this cool yet challenging form of exercise. The biomechanics of movement plays out differently on a trampoline then cardio on the floor though. Our classes at Vibe carefully take this into account in how we design our rebounding workouts. Here are a few highlights:
How we jump...
Shoes off. The human foot contains 26 bones, 20 actively articulating joints, and more than a hundred muscles, tendons, and ligaments. We want to maintain movement in strength in our feet and the unstable surface of rebounding allows us to do that! Shoes are great to wear when we need protection from hard surfaces. But on a rebounder, the shoe is an unnecessary and rigid cast that locks up our foot, blocking the foot/ankle benefits and sending greater instability forces up the leg into the knee and hip in a not-ideal way. So we jump with naked feet!
Skip the bar. Some rebounders have bars and that can provide helpful assistance to people with balance concerns. But the bar also gets in the way (i.e. careful not to kick the bar!) and holding onto the bar interferes with the natural movement of the body, and diminishes the benefits of the workout. So we said no thanks to the bars.
Work the muscles. It's fun to jump up and down on a mini trampoline! But our ultimate goal is to give you a challenging and super-beneficial workout. So we consciously pick movements that maximize your muscle work while jumping, and build functional fitness skills like strength, balance, agility, power, and coordination. By the time class is done, you'll have flexed every muscle in a concentrated way.
Build the combos. Every Vibe rebounding class starts with doing several sets of each move so there's practice time to build coordination. But as the minutes pass and the muscles adapt, we cut it down and build combos with only 2-4 reps of each move. This is understandably more challenging! But it's sooooo beneficial. The transitions in between each exercise become new movements and skyrocket the benefits of the workout in terms of muscle work, control, mind-body coordination and more!
Create & cue. Variety is a key component of fitness. Learning new movement patterns has big benefits both physically and mentally so we create new choreography and combos for our clients with almost every class. That means you're learning from scratch. But we've got you! We're wicket sharp with cuing instructions at just the right time to lead you from move-to-more so you don't feel left behind and you become more coordinated with every class!
Whether you're hesitant and nervous, or jazzed and ready to go, come try it out! The intensity of the workout is completely adjustable. You can tap, march, and step to keep the intensity low and stay balanced as much as you want! Then with each class, your body adapts and grows stronger...and no matter what, you'll have a ton of fun along the way!