How does it feel – to suddenly find yourself a few metres above the ground? Does your whole life flash before your eyes?
Of course my life flashes before my eyes. Absolutely. I’m scared of heights, every stunt I perform is a drama that I have to experience internally. (laughter)
Yes, it is quite an experience. Each time you step onto the trampoline, you have to get used to the rotational movement in one, second or third (sic!) axis, so that you can then free your brain from thinking about these basic elements and focus on more advanced ones that you want to introduce. In simple words – by doing a back flip, we are doing a one-axis rotation, there is no major philosophy here. However, when we are not accustomed to this move, the moment we add rotation around another axis to it, it will be complicated enough to get lost in the air.
Some moves, such as the back flip, after ten months of training, are so simple that I actually treat them like breathing – I do them without thinking about them. However, if it is something I am just learning, it really requires a lot of focus and thinking a few aspects through. You have to remember to tense up the whole body of yours, to be in control of your own muscles. You have to know which parts of the body the rotation comes out of, where to pull your hands to intensify it. Paradoxically, it is also the movement that gives us momentum! What's more, at some point, all this rotation we have given ourselves has to be slowed down – before the landing – because, in principle, we want to land on our feet and not, for example, on our face. Which is often the case.
A lot of physics here. Did trampolines get you to the Faculty of Physics and Applied Informatics, or the other way round?
There is actually a lot of physics here, but the fact that I started doing this sport is pure coincidence.
While studying at the faculty, I started to see the sport in a slightly different way – until we started linear algebra, I didn't describe things happening to me in the air in terms of rotation around a particular axis or relative to a coordinate system. Now, when I think about specific moves, spatial thinking is immediately activated in my head.
And can a humanist handle trampolines?
(laughter) I think they can – I am an example of that myself. Despite studying engineering, I am a humanist and indeed I feel a humanist. You don't need advanced technical knowledge to do this sport – basically, it all comes down to persistence and a willingness to break down barriers. All the pleasure in the case of this sport comes from the fact that you do the training without actually thinking about it, because you are so focused on having fun.
Actually, what sport are we talking about? What entry should I use to include trampoline jumping as an interest on my CV?
This is a question that has come up continuously since I started attending training sessions. It is incredibly difficult to define this sport. I refer to it as a syncretic discipline, which combines elements of sports gymnastics, aerial acrobatics, parkour and something called tricking. In simple words, I can define trampoline jumping as performing acrobatics in the air. Although some of the stunts are performed on a mattress with springs and air, I can also perform them on a normal hard surface. The simplest thing to say is that I just jump on a trampoline, and that's how I put it on my CV.
What does a standard training session look like? You enter the room – and what happens next?
Entering the trampoline park begins with a mandatory five-minute warm-up. In particular, it is worth warming up the ankle joints, neck and parts of the body that have already been injured. When it comes to the training itself – we have a great deal of freedom. I like to start with the trampoline. It is a distinctive white trampoline that we may associate, for example, with the Olympics. It is made of a special material that is more resilient, thanks to which it pushes us up harder. I start with a few layouts – back flips with my legs straight – to get used to the head-to-the-ground position, one-way rotation and to how the trampoline pushes me up. This allows me to move smoothly to more advanced tricks.
There is a lot of information here. Will you let us know where you get it from? As a layman, can I dig into the subject?
The problem is that it is quite a niche sport and we literally have one trampoline park in the whole Lodz. Obviously, to dig into the subject you can look for materials on YouTube or some relevant literature on the subject, but it seems to me that the best way is to find a community of people who are already functioning in the sport and arrange to train with them. Don't be afraid of the fact that they are better, but simply take advice from them or ask them to teach you something. You can get something for yourself out of every training and how much you learn depends entirely on how much you are able to overcome your fear and step out of your comfort zone. Let's be honest – the idea of jumping three metres up and making five turns in different axes is a moderately comfortable phenomenon.
A cosmic one!
A cosmic one, indeed. This is a very interesting aspect and, in my opinion, the sport can be categorised as an extreme sport. The moment we decide to perform a particular stunt, we get a cosmic dose of adrenaline. The body gets stressed, we are scared. And once we've performed the stunt – it doesn't matter if it was performed completely right or not – that's the moment of the equally cosmic satisfaction. We have overcome our own fear of heights, of falling down. Before thinking that we will do something bad to ourselves. Even despite the fact that earlier the mere thought of performing a stunt would cause us to bounce on the trampoline twenty times in preparation for performing the stunt and eventually to come off the trampoline thinking we couldn't do it. And I guess that's the element of the sport that makes me constantly want to do it, regardless of other more interesting alternatives.
Source: Kamila Samolej