Do you remember your very first time on a trampoline?

More importantly, do you remember walking off after your very first time on a trampoline?

I do, as I could hardly walk straight after.

My legs felt like they were made from silly strings, and I looked like this girl here…

Needless to say I could barely do a straight jump, let alone an entire tumbling pass!

And what about doing tumbling skills on the trampoline for the first time? Can you recall that experience?

Personally, I’m an old school kind of guy and I learnt my back handspring on the floor first, so when I first tried the back handspring on the trampoline, my timing was wayyy off.

Which brings me to the two main issues all athletes face when trying to transition from the trampoline to the floor (or vice-versa):

1. Your legs feel like they have turned into wet noodles.
2. You have lost your timing references so you either go too fast, too slow, too high, or too low.

So to help you make a smoother (and safer) transition from trampoline to floor, I’ve got some proven tips that will make your life easier.

1. Eliminate Wobbly Leg Syndrome

The solution to this is pretty simple: Add plyometric / explosive lower body exercises to your training routine and secondly (you’ll love this), spend more time on the trampoline not less!

Now you might be thinking: “but there are a million different exercises, which ones should I do?”

No worries, I’ve got you covered. First, be sure to check out my exercise video library — it’s got over 50 to choose from. Plus I’m always adding more, so be sure to check back periodically for more inspiration. My suggestion is to pick 2-3 that you like, or feel free to cycle through a variety of them every 2 weeks.

Here’s one of the exercises from that library and it’s a favorite of mine for developing leg power:

Now, when it comes to “spending more time” on the trampoline, you might be wondering if there’s a metric. 

Are we talking minutes, hours, days?

Unfortunately I can’t say exactly how long it’s going to take, because everyone’s nervous system responds & recovers at a difference rate (if it didn’t, we’d all basically be robot clones of each other). 

If I had to pick a number, I’d suggest spending the last 15 minutes of your training session on the trampoline. This may seem trivial — especially if you’re used to multi-hour training sessions — but I talking about 15 serious minutes. This means breaks are minimized and you’re actually pushing and rebounding against the trampoline, not just hopping around barely getting any airtime.

Assuming you train a few times a week, you’ll start to notice a difference in about 30 days. Give it a few months and you can literally walk off the trampoline and start tumbling like nothing happened!

Wobbly leg syndrome? Never heard of it!

2. It’s All About Timing

So once we’ve solved the problem of your legs no longer feeling like jello, the next thing we have to do is transition our skill off the trampoline and on to a harder surface such as the rod floor or sprung floor.

Here’s a golden rule to remember: whatever you do on a trampoline must be sped up when you move over to a harder surface.

The reason for this is simple — a trampoline gives you much more air time than something like a sprung floor, which means you have more time to complete a skill. However, you have to remember that once you’re in the air, you cannot modify the time that has been given to you.

The Earth’s gravitational pull is constant, which means regardless of how high you go, you will always fall at a predictable rate (assuming we ignore air resistance).

How this helps us: If you jump so high that you’re getting three seconds of air time (hypothetically speaking) then you must do a back tuck (or whatever skill) that rotates at a slow enough pace to fill that amount of time.

Any faster and you’ll over-rotate to your back. But any slower, and you’ll under-rotate to your face.

So if you practiced a back tuck which took 3 seconds to complete then when you transition to the floor, you should speed that up by at least three times, if not more.

Bottom Line: the more air-time you have, the longer a skill should take to execute from start to finish. And when air-time is minimized, the faster you’ll need to be.

Ok enough theory, let’s put a step-by-step plan together to put this into practice…

How To Transition Surfaces Like A Pro

It’s impossible for me to predict what equipment you’ll have available at your disposal, so I’m going to assume the best case scenario for the sake of completeness. This means if you don’t have access to something, you’ll simply have to skip that step (or bug your gym owner to invest in the particular piece of equipment).

1. Take Away Some Of The Bounce

If you just learnt a skill such as the back handspring on trampoline, put some sting mats or crash mats down and attempt it again. You’ll notice that you don’t have as much bounce as you did before. Thus, as you start taking away the bounce, you’ll be forced to speed things up.

2. Use A Tumble Trak (TTrack)

While not every gym has these, a Tumble Trak is a great transition point between the floor and a trampoline. I suggest you first attempt the skill off the Tumble Trak and on to a safety mat or crash mat. Then try it on the Trak itself (just be careful about landing on a bouncy surface; use sting mats as needed).

3. Floor Strip On Tumble Trak

Most coaches usually have their athletes go from the Tumble Trak straight to the floor with a spot. Or get them to tumble into the pit.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with this approach, but I prefer a smoother transition (assuming equipment availability allows).

So I like to take a strip of carpet bonded floor and place it directly on the Tumble Trak so it “feels” like floor, but with added bounce and safety.

4. Stiff AirTrack

The final step before taking things to the floor is an Air Track that’s inflated to it’s maximum capacity. To make it even more realistic, throw on a layer of carpet bonded foam strip on top.

In fact, this step is so crucial that you can remove step 3 from above and still have a high success rate of taking skills to floor. The beauty of an Air Track is when an athlete’s confidence or technique starts to dip, you just deflate it slightly to add in more bounce.

This modular approach is a very key ingredient that many coaches and programs fail to take advantage of.

Let’s Wrap This Up

It should be obvious by now that depending on the equipment available to you, taking skills from the trampoline to the floor can be a two, three or four step process. The important thing to remember is that the more steps you add, the more confident you’ll be, and the less of a “shock” it will be to your system when you attempt the skill on floor for the first time.

I’ve seen many athletes try to take their back tucks from a tramp straight to floor due to overconfidence, and they usually end up eating mat like they skipped breakfast.
Another upside to taking these small transition steps is that by the time you move over to the floor, there is a very small chance you’ll need a spot.

Now obviously, I still recommend you tumble under a coach’s supervision and getting a spot whenever you use a new surface for the first time. But should a spot not be available (or your coach simply cannot spot you) then you need to have a back up plan.

And that’s all there is to it! Train hard, be fierce and stay safe!