The Many Benefits of Rebounding*

 




 

 

Jogging In Place

Photograph 1. Shown is a deluxe NEEDAKŪ rebounding device on which and exerciser is jogging without feeling the jarring effect of landing on pavement.

 

 

Rebounding Benefits the Body in 30 Healthful ways

Rebounding is an exercise that reduces your body fat; firms your legs, thighs, abdomen, arms, and hips; increases your agility; improves your sense of balance; strengthens your muscles over all; provides an aerobic effect for your heart; rejuvenates your body when it's tired, and generally puts you in a state of health and fitness.

You can easily perform this exercise in your living room, your office, and your yard. The traveler may wish to carry a portable rebounder aboard an airliner for use in a hotel room. It's the most convenient, metabolically effective form of exercise around.

 

 

 

There are 30 health advantages of regular rebounding, including the following:

1. It increases the capacity for respiration.
2. It circulates more oxygen to the tissues.
3. It establishes a better equilibrium between the oxygen required by the tissues and the oxygen made available.
4. It causes muscles to perform work in moving fluids through the body to lighten the heart's load.
5. It tends to reduce the height to which the arterial pressures rise during exertion.
6. It lessens the time during which blood pressure remains abnormal after severe activity.
7. It holds off the incidence of cardiovascular disease.
8. It increases the functional activity of the red bone marrow in the production of red blood cells.
9. It aids lymphatic circulation, as well as the flow in the veins of the circulatory system.
10. It encourages collateral circulation.
11. It strengthens the heart and other muscles in the body so that they work more efficiently.
12. It allows the resting heart to beat less often.
13. It lowers elevated cholesterol and triglyceride levels.
14. It stimulates the metabolism.
15. It promotes body growth and repair.
16. It tones up the glandular system, especially the thyroid to increase its output.
17. It adds to the alkaline reserve of the body which may be of significance in an emergency requiring prolonged effort.
18. It chemically attains absolute potential of the cells.
19. It reserves bodily strength and physical efficiency.
20. It expands the body's capacity for fuel storage and endurance.
21. It improves coordination through the transmission of nerve impulses and responsiveness of the muscle fibers.
22. It affords muscular vigor from increased muscle fiber tone.
23. It offers relief from neck and back pains, headaches, and other pain caused by lack of exercise.
24. It enhances digestion and elimination processes.
25. It allows for better and easier relaxation and sleep.
26. It results in a better mental performance, with keener learning processes.
27. It curtails fatigue and menstrual discomfort for women.
28. It minimizes the number of colds, allergies, digestive disturbances, and abdominal problems.
29. It tends to slow down aging.
30. It reduces the likelihood of obesity.

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How Rebound Exercise Accomplishes Its Benefits

Rebounding involves aerobic movements performed on a bouncing device that looks like a small trampoline. It has you jumping up and down for health and fitness. As an ideal jumping device, the mini-trampoline or "rebounder," has a strong woven mat attached by coiled steel springs to a circular steel frame. The rebounder usually is round, although some models have been made oval, rectangular, square or polygonal. The entire jumping surface of the mat is twenty-eight inches in diameter, stands on six legs with spring coils of their own, which are seven to nine inches high.

Sometimes, for people who feel unsteady on their feet or for the elderly, handicapped, and disabled, a stabilizing bar may be added to the rebounder's frame (see Photograph 2). It's attached to two of the frame's legs so that the individual needing more security can hold onto this bar and still bounce aerobically.

Stabilizer Bar

Photograph 2. Shown is the NEEDAKŪ Soft Bounce™ rebounder with a stabilizing bar attached. This bar offers those who feel unsteady on their feet a greater sense of security while rebounding.

In jumping on a well-made rebounder, the exerciser usually feels invigorated and filled with a sense of well-being. People who rebound find they're able to work longer, sleep better, and feel less tense and nervous. The effect is not just psychological, because the action of bouncing up and down against gravity, without trauma to the musculoskeletal system, is one of the most beneficial aerobic exercises ever developed.

Rebounding aerobics is working with gravity to cleanse your tissue cells and act as an oxygenator, which, in turn, lightens the load on the heart. Also it's fun to bounce! Much more than fun, however, rebounding provides a number of physiological pick-me-ups for the person who sustains this activity for at least ten minutes, four times a day, or for a single daily session for 40 minutes. As you bounce, your feet hit the mat with twice the force of gravity. Then just as the astronauts experience while floating in space, your body is in a state of weightlessness at the top of the bounce.

Jumping on the mini-trampoline is remarkably un-strenuous on the Joints. There's no solid ground to suddenly stop the bouncing of your feet. Your movements are perfectly safe, and they make the effect of gravity beneficial. By working against constant gravitational pressure while bouncing, you resist the Earth's pull. Your resistance is subtle, but it builds cellular strength. Rebounding's alternating weightlessness and doublegravity produce a pumping action which pulls out waste products from the cells and forces into them, oxygen and nutrition from the bloodstream.

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Jumping's Oxygenating Effect

If you have a resting heart rate of less than 60 beats a minute, don't smoke, don't have chest pain, live a healthful lifestyle, and engage in rebounding for 40 minutes or more each day, at least five days a week, theoretically it's not likely that you'll ever develop a heart problem if you have none now. Jumping on a rebounder helps you to attain your heart rate target zone every day that you rebound for the recommended 40 minutes.

Rebound exercise strengthens your heart in two ways: It improves the tone and quality of the muscle itself, and it increases the coordination of the fibers as they wring blood out of the heart during each beat. The aerobic effect while you are rebound-jumping equals and often surpasses that of running.

Your rate of rebounding will vary, depending on how vigorously you bounce and how high you lift your feet off the mat. Rebound exercise offers the ideal aerobic effect with almost any rate of performance, because it fills all the requisites of an oxygenating exercise.  Rebounding might be considered a precursor movement for better achieving the oxygen therapies.

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Burning Calories

Rebounding offers a less stressful means of reducing body fat and simultaneously firming body tissues. Running in place on the rebounder burns calories effectively. According to a person's body weight, Table A shows how many calories from running on the rebounder may be expended per specified period of time in minutes.

Table A
Total Calories Spent Per Minutes of Running on the Rebounder (1)

Lbs. Body Weight 90 100 110 120 130 140 150 160 170 180 190
1 Min. 2.9 3.4 3.9 4.4 4.9 5.4 6.0 6.5 7.0 7.5 8.0
5 Min. 14.5 17.0 19.5 22.0 24.5 27.0 30.0 32.5 35.0 37.5 40.0
10 Min. 29.0 34.0 39.0 44.0 49.0 54.0 60.0 65.0 70.0 75.0 80.0
15 Min. 43.5 51.0 58.5 66.0 73.5 81.0 90.0 97.5 105.0 112.5 120.0
20 Min. 58.0 68.0 78.0 88.0 98.0 108.0 120.0 130.0 140.0 150.0 160.0

(1) The chart comes from research performed by Victor L. Katch, Ph.D., Dept. of Physical Education, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

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The Detoxification Effect of Rebounding

The lymphatic system is the metabolic garbage can of the body. It rids you of toxins such as dead and cancerous cells, nitrogenous wastes, fat, infectious viruses, heavy metals, and other assorted junk cast off by the cells. The movement performed in rebounding provides the stimulus for a free-flowing system that drains away these potential poisons.

Unlike the arterial system, the lymphatic system does not have its own pump. It has no heart muscle to move the fluid around through its lymph vessels. There are just three ways to activate the flow of lymph away from the tissues it serves and back into the main pulmonary circulation. Lymphatic flow requires muscular contraction from exercise and movement, gravitational pressure, and internal massage to the valves of lymph ducts.

Rebounding supplies all three methods of removing waste products from the cells and from the body. Then arterial blood enters the capillaries in order to furnish the cells with fresh tissue fluid containing food and oxygen. The bouncing motion effectively moves and recycles the lymph and the entire blood supply through the circulatory system many times during the course of the rebounding session.

Rebounding is a lymphatic exercise. As stated earlier, it has the same effect on your body as jumping rope, but without any jarring effect to the ankles, knees, and lower back that comes from hitting the ground. Better than rope jumping, however, the lymphatic channels get put under hydraulic pressure to move fluids containing waste products of metabolism around and out of the body through the left subclavian vein.

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Rebounding's Stabilizing Effect on the Nervous System

Bouncing on a rebounder is an excellent method of reducing stress. It can put the bouncing person into a trance like state and totally relax him or her. Jumping for health and fitness not only stabilizes the nervous system during the exercise period, but continues to help maintain equilibrium after one steps off the device. The result is increased resistance to environmental, physical, emotional, and mental stress. It may possibly help an individual to avoid psychosomatic disease and mental or behavioral instability.

Rebounding may be enjoyed for a lifetime and adjusted to your own particular level of fitness. It is safe, convenient and inexpensive, and its protective effects against degenerative diseases make it one of the most effective forms of motion in the work place, in recreational pursuits, or in simply exercising for the care of your body and mind.

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The Physical Muscular Effect of Rebounding

James White, Ph.D., director of research and rehabilitation in the physical education department at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD), has explained how jumping for health offers a true physical strengthening effect to the muscles. He said, "Rebounding allows the muscles to go through the full range of motion at equal force. It helps people learn to shift their weight properly and to be aware of body positions and balance."

An advocate of rebounding for athletic conditioning, Dr. White uses the rebounder in his rehabilitation program at UCSD. "When you jump, jog, and twist on this (jumping) device you can exercise for hours without getting tired. It's great practice for skiing (see Photograph 9), it improves your tennis stroke, and it's a good way to burn off calories and lose weight," said Dr. White (see Table A). "My students tell me it's so much fun that they often exercise on the rebounders for their own enjoyment."

Dr. White added that jumping for health is more effective for fitness and weight loss than cycling, running or jogging (see Table B), and it has the added advantage of producing fewer injuries.

As illustrated and explained in my book, Jumping for Health, there are 33 different exercises that may be performed advantageously on the rebounding device.

Eight popular rebound movements are shown below (see Photographs 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10).

The gentle bounce of rebounding is effective in returning natural, regular bowel movements to chronically constipated persons. The steady bounce sets up a pulsating rhythm transmitted by the nervous system to the brain area responsible for regulating the intestinal system, which reestablishes one's rhythmical bowel activity. Digestion is improved as well.

 

Table B
Total Calories Spent Comparing Jogging @ 5 MPH to Rebounding (2)

Lbs Body Weight

12 Minutes Jogging
@ 5 MPH

12 Minutes Rebounding

100

47

58

105

49

60
110 52 63
115 54 65
120 56 67
125 59 70
130 61 72
135 64 75
140 66 77
145 68 79
150 71 82
155 73 84
160 75 86
165 78 89
170 80 91
175 82 93
180 85 96
185 87 98
190 89 100
195 92 103
200 94 105

(2) The chart comes from research performed by Victor. L. Katch, Ph.D., Dept. of Physical Education, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

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Low Bounce

Photograph 3. Shown is the author standing on a rebounder and engaged in a low bounce. This Health Bounce is a good warm-up exercise. In the center of the rebounder, move up and down by using the toes and calf muscles. Your feet shouldn't leave the mat.
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Jumping Jacks

Photograph 4. Jumping Jacks. Shown is the high bounce exercise of jumping jacks. Stand in the center of the rebounder with your feet together, hands at your sides. Jump to a position of feet apart, swinging arms to the side and up over your head. Keep arms straight. Return to starting position and repeat. 
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Running In Place

Photograph 5. Running in place. In the center of the rebounder, start a walking, jogging, or running motion. Lift your knees high in front of you. Don't wait for the rebounder to bounce your leg up - run at your own speed.
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V-Bounce

Photograph 6. The V-Bounce. Sitting in the middle of the rebounder, lift your legs to a 45 degree angle while your back is at a 45 degree angle. Using the motion of your arms, try bouncing without touch the rebounder with your hands. 
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High Bounce

Photograph 7. High Bounce. Standing in the middle of the rebounder, use your toes and calves and bend your knees to bounce off the mat from four to ten inches vertically so that you land in the center of the rebounder. 
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High Kick Step

Photograph 8. High Kick Step. In the center of the rebounder, land on your left foot, while kicking your right foot straight out in front of you. Then land on your right foot and kick your left foot straight out in front of you.         Return


The Slalom

Photograph 9. The Slalom. With your feet parallel to the right of center and your toes pointing ahead and to the left, bounce and land so that your feet are parallel to the left of center and your toes are pointing ahead and to the right. Your knees and hips should be bent slightly. All the action is below the hips so that the body remains virtually motionless and facing straight ahead. (It isn't as easy as it looks, but then neither is skiing.)
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The Twist

Photograph 10. The Twist. In the middle of the rebounder, bounce so that your hips and legs turn to the left and your chest and shoulders turn to the right. On the next bounce turn hips and legs to the right and chest and shoulders to the left. On the next bounce, reverse again.
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