At age 14 in 1974, Paul Hagan entered gymnastics training at the Academy of Gymnastics in Grand Rapids, MI. In 1979, he built his first trampoline in a high school shop class; it soon became a passion to build trampolines for friends and family. In 2000, he built a 10 foot by 20 foot super tramp trampoline for personal use. In 2010, he pioneered the first square super tramp and changed the trampoline world which inspired him to begin MaxAir Trampolines with co-owner Steve Chan. Today, Paul continues to design new trampoline technology for tomorrow’s bouncers. His works can be found throughout the world in athletic facilities, adventure parks, Broadway sets, Hollywood films and more.
Listen to this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement with Paul Hagan about fun exercise for all ages.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
– How playing on a trampoline is one of the most effective and fun ways to work out.
– How MaxAir trampolines is one of the world’s highest bouncing trampolines.
– Why it’s important to get a top-quality trampoline.
– How traditional shoes do not act like trampolines despite what their marketing might say.
– Why spending hours on a trampoline is great for both kids and adults.
Connect with Paul:
Guest Contact Info
Twitter
@MaxAirTramps
Instagram
@maxairtramps
Facebook
facebook.com/MaxAirTrampolines
LinkedIn
linkedin.com/company/maxair-trampolines
Links Mentioned:
maxairtrampolines.com
Connect with Steven:
Website
Twitter
@XeroShoes
Instagram
@xeroshoes
Facebook
facebook.com/xeroshoes
Episode Transcript
Steven Sashen:
If you had to think about something you could do that’s maybe one of the greatest forms of exercise in general, that could build strength in parts of your body you didn’t even know you needed strength, and also was crazy, crazy fun, what would it be? Don’t try to even answer it, because I’m going to tell you in just a moment on this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement, the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body, starting feet first, because those things are your foundation. We break down the propaganda, and the mythology, and, sometimes, the flat-out laws you’ve been told about what it takes to walk, or run, or hike, or play, or do yoga or CrossFit, or even the thing we’re going to be talking about on this episode, and to do that enjoyably, and effectively, and efficiently.
Did I say enjoyably? Trick question. Of course I know I did, because if you’re not having fun, do something different till you are. Because you’re not going to keep it up if you’re not enjoying it. I’m Steven Sashen from XeroShoes.com, your host of The MOVEMENT Movement podcast. We call it that, because we are creating a movement that involves you, I’ll tell you how in a second, about natural movement, letting your body do what it’s made to do, not getting in the way. Because there are very few things that actually can improve what your body does, but there are a lot of things that can make it worse.
The thing you can do is have some fun. Go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com. There’s nothing you need to do to join. That’s just the domain I got, but you’ll find the previous episodes, all the places you can find the podcast, and all the ways you can interact with us on social media. The movement part of The MOVEMENT Movement, this is where you become part of it, is just give us a review. Give us a thumbs up. Give us five stars. Like us on the places you can like us. Hit the bell on YouTube. You know what to do. The gist is, if you want to be part of the tribe, just subscribe. So, with that said, Paul, pleasure having you here. We were chatting before we started this, and we’re having way too much fun already. Tell people who you are and what you do.
Paul Hagan:
Yeah. My name’s Paul Hagan. I’m with MaxAir Trampolines. I’m the founder of the company. We started about 11 years ago, and sort of my claim to fame was … An Olympic-style trampoline is seven feet by 14, or seven by 14. I decided to make a 14 foot by 14 foot trampoline for the X Games athletes, and it really took off. It’s one of the world’s highest-bouncing trampolines. You can get into your triples, your quadruple flips with a thing like this, and make sure you’re not going to be landing in the pads. You can always land on the trampoline, because it’s so darn big and so much fun.
Steven Sashen:
So you just gave me a … First of all, I know most of the people listening to this are not going to be throwing triples and quads, and maybe have never even thought about being on a trampoline, and I want to talk about that, about why trampolining can be really good, even if people have never been on, and are not gymnasts, and are not thinking about that. But I have to start by saying this. You just gave me a flashback to when I was at the Woodward Gymnastics Camp in 1978, ’79, I don’t remember which, and they’d just gotten the first Aussie bed tramp. That was an amazing thing. So in the process of you describing what you’ve done to not only make the trampoline bigger, which has physics problems attached to it, but make it better and high-bouncing, can you talk about the physics of that before we launch into why people might want to play on one of these?
Paul Hagan:
Well, the trampoline is a string bed trampoline that allows the air go through. So the first thing is if you take a tennis racket, air goes through it really quick. If you wrap a newspaper around it, you can feel that resistance, that wind resistance. That’s why the backyard black trampoline doesn’t have any air going through it, so it’s got a lot of resistance. So it doesn’t throw you very high. So ours allows the air to go through but still be comfortable on the feet, and the elbows, and the knees when you do your body skills.
The other thing is to get a high-quality, high-tensile material to make the springs out of, which we use music wire, and put a lot of tension into that, and we get the best quality we can possibly get on the market. Because we want the highest-bouncing trampoline, because all the Olympic training centers use our stuff. The movie industry uses our stuff. Woodward Camp, we just got a new order from them. They use our stuff, and just, it’s so much fun.
The other thing with trampoline, one of the quickest things that I’ll bring up real quick is the astronauts use the trampoline when they come back from Earth, because they’ve been in this weightless area, and their bones get lighter and brittle. Well, they put them on little jogging trampolines and trampolines to increase bone density. So when you jump on a trampoline, especially a world-class athlete, their bones get stronger. And so if you have a real bad fall, unfortunately, your bones don’t break. Your ligaments go, and a ligament injury is much worse than a bone injury. Bone injury, eight weeks, you’re back in the … Ligament injury, it’s a lot longer healing time. You know?
Steven Sashen:
That’s interesting. I had a DEXA scan, so not from gymnastics and trampoline, but, well, although that was definitely a part of it. But I’ve been a sprinter now for the last 15 years. When I had a DEXA scan, and they looked at my bone density from … Basically, my naval down just was like steel rods, and people don’t, many people don’t know. In fact, here. I’ll let you do it. Can you talk about what it is about that, about bouncing that helps with bone density?
Paul Hagan:
Well, it’s just that pounding that you get that … With trampoline, it feels like it’s not very violent. When you hit concrete and you’re running, especially if you’re not running right, you’re putting a lot of jar into there. So you’ll end up getting shin splints, things like that. If you do it properly, you’re building the bone density in your legs and in your body. So trampoline allows you to do that. Our top guys have pulled almost nine Gs at the bottom of the bounce and going up, which is incredible. You’re a 200 pound trampolinist, jumping 20 feet in the air, pulling the eight, nine Gs, that is an incredible force on the body. If you weren’t bouncing and building that bone density, your body couldn’t hold up. You know? So learning and building on that.
Steven Sashen:
That is phenomenal, and if people haven’t watched, most people think about trampolines in just their backyard, or friend’s backyard, or one of those circular black bed things with a net around it. But they haven’t seen what people are doing on tramps, and excuse me really quick. Pardon me. Again, before we get into why and how someone can start experimenting with this and experiencing it, talk about … Well, how do I want to say this?
Egad. I had a thought until I coughed, and then it flew right out of my head. It was there a second ago. Ah. Screw it. We’ll go on to something else. Okay. For people who’ve never thought about getting on a trampoline, it’s just not part of their mindset, give me your elevator pitch about why they might want to try that and how they could get started.
Paul Hagan:
Well, getting a trampoline is all good, but to really enjoy the trampoline, if you get a top-quality anything, like a bicycle or whatever, you get a top-quality trampoline, it’s going to be a lot more approachable. It’s going to be a lot of fun. If you get a coach to tell you how to go through the proper progressions, you reduce the fear level that we have in trampoline, because that was one of the things that I’d have problems with, is if somebody got really scared, it kind of meant the end of their career. Right?
So having fun and having proper instruction takes the fear from bouncing high, and then you can just get … always add another flip, always add another twist. So if your audience goes and looks at Olympic-style trampoline or looks at anybody in the Olympics, they will not believe how high these guys and girls are going. Girls are going nearly 20 feet in the air. Guys are nearly going 25 feet in the air. They’re doing three and four flips. Every trick has got a twist in it with a triple or a double. It’s just incredible what they’re doing on the trampoline these days. So they are super fit athletes.
Steven Sashen:
Oh. No. It’s amazing. I’ve gotten into watching certain things on YouTube I get, and YouTube, of course, makes recommendations. Once it thinks it knows what you want to watch, it just keeps showing you more and more. Watching all the trampoline stuff, both just regular trampoline or mini tramp stuff, it’s unbelievable what people are doing. I imagine that if someone watches that, it could be intimidating, but you don’t have to be doing all of those insane things to be getting the benefits and also having fun doing it. If somebody was going to start from scratch, they’d never been on a trampoline before, what would you tell them?
Paul Hagan:
It’s just work on your bounce and control, and just learning to get that balance and get that feeling from your feet all the way to your head, that you’re in control. You can bounce up and down, and then you want to start with just basic body skills, the seat drop, the stomach drop, the doggy drop. From there, you’re adding twists. You’re adding turns, and then working on the technique. Is your toes pointed? Are you having good body lines? If your core isn’t tight, you’re going to snap your back. It’s going to jerk back. So all learning to have everything in a line while you’re bouncing, and then just kind of experimental play, I think, is important with trampoline. You know? Just enjoy the sheer fun of it.
Steven Sashen:
So a tramp that you’ll go buy at a toy store, I don’t know, do they still have toy stores, wherever you would buy sort of a normal backyard tramp, they’ve put a net around it to, in theory, make things safer. What’s your take on nets and safety?
Paul Hagan:
Well, the nets, if you have an aboveground trampoline, you do want a net, because you don’t have spotters there catching people and pushing, when, old-school, when you’re in PE class, they had everybody standing around to push everybody back to the center. Right?
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Paul Hagan:
Well, here at MaxAir, what we did was we made a trampoline where the padding went out four feet from the bed of the trampoline, so you got four feet of safety landing area. Then, we put a net up, because the nets, if they’re real close to the bed, you can flip and land on the post, into the net, and get injured that way. So we try to design ours to have that a lot further away from the bouncing surface, so if you take a fall, you’re more like rolling into the pads and then the nets, and it stops you.
Steven Sashen:
Well, and the whole pad situation has changed. I mean, the high school tramps that people may remember, you’re basically having a thin, relatively hard pad just over a bunch of metal. And so I imagine yours is a whole different technology there, too.
Paul Hagan:
We listened to our customer. One of our first customers is like, “We want bigger pads. Make them thicker, bigger, thicker,” and I’m like, “Wow. That’s all going to be a lot of money.” But we started going that route, and everybody went, “Wow. They’re not doing …” Because still today, on an international trampoline, the side pads are only one inch thick. The end pads on the end, they add what’s called end decks, and those are nine inches thick. Then, they got a trampoline bottom to it. Because you tend to fall off, internationally, in competitive, you fall off the end, the front end or the back end. You don’t really hit the side too much. It happens once in a while, but can you imagine jumping from 18 feet in the air and landing on a one-inch pad on a steel frame? You don’t get a lot of padding there, so you got to be really strong, really fit, and brave.
Steven Sashen:
Yes. Brave, crazy. Call it what you will. It literally, when you just watch these guys just jumping, it can be terrifying. You just can’t … Because you can see all the things that could go wrong from that, but, of course, you don’t just start trying to jump 20 feet in the air, so not something to worry about. We talked about, and I want to dive in a little more, about just the various things that get stronger when you’re using a trampoline, even if, literally, all you do is just bounce on it, and not one of those little round things that you stick in your living room.
So talk about just … Because people don’t really, they don’t really get the physics of trampolining, and I want to … I’m going to dive into that in a little bit more, because there’s some uses of the metaphor that people don’t think is a metaphor, that something is like a trampoline when it’s actually not. I’m saying that literally so I remember to bring it up again, but just talk about what happens and what gets stronger when you’re just bouncing around, let alone doing a bunch of tricks.
Paul Hagan:
Well, you’re going to get some flexibility out of trampoline when you’re doing your body skills, like stomach drops, because your stomach is going to sink, and you’re going to basically do a back-bender arch. Right? So it’s really geared … When you’re younger, it’s easy to do. If you’ve never been on a trampoline, and you’re 60 years old, and you get on a trampoline, I can’t do a stomach drop anymore. I can barely do a seat drop anymore, because my body, haven’t done enough stretching lately.
Used to be in the gym all the time stretching. Now, I’m not in the gym stretching, so it bends me in ways I haven’t done in many, many years. So it will increase your flexibility. Really better to start younger or be older with … and make sure you’re doing all your flexibility before you get on the trampoline. The other thing is we talked about bone density, muscle and core strength to make sure that you keep everything tight and in line to jump high. A trampoline is like a bow and arrow. Right?
Steven Sashen:
Oh. Interesting.
Paul Hagan:
So when you pull a bow and arrow, and you aim it up, and you shoot it up, that’s what a trampoline does. It shoots up. So arrows, they’ve developed over the years with an arrow. It used to be the wooden arrow, and it’d fly through the air, and it would wiggle. Right? Then, they ended up going to aluminum arrows, less wiggle, goes faster through the air, and then they went to carbon fiber. Those things don’t bend at all through the air, and so they cut through the air faster. So that’s having a good core strength and good tight body to ride up out of that trampoline to get maximum height up there so you can do your skills. Higher you can go, more flips and twists you can add into it.
Steven Sashen:
Well, the other thing about trampolining and just bouncing that many people don’t know is that when you put that little strain on your veins and arteries, they produce nitric oxide, which is a muscle relaxant and is actually … It has many, many benefits and literally just comes from bouncing. You can get that on one of those tiny little tramps that you’d stick in your living room. In fact, some hospitals, for people who are in bed for a long time, they just percuss their feet. They just have something that just hits their feet regularly, because that little bit of force has that impact in addition to the bone density we talked about. But there’s another, there’s like an illusion that people have, that the trampoline is somehow magically, that’s the thing that’s making you go high. They don’t get that it’s just all about your legs that are interfacing with this trampoline bed.
Paul Hagan:
Yeah. I’ll tell you a quick story. We have a thing, because our guys like to bounce on these string bed trampolines in bare feet so they can feel and get the better balance. They like that control, and then, but they have to compete on these web beds where they have to wear shoes. Right? They’re a lightweight shoe and everything, but they’re a little tighter around the feet, where your shoes give you more width in the front part of your foot and everything. Having them more flexible helps a lot with balance and stuff.
So we have a thing, when you’re bouncing 16, 18 hours a week on the trampoline, that the material, your foot would sink in, and it would rub up the heel. If you’re bouncing a lot, it would get little blood blisters in there. We named it the blallus. Right? Because it’d get painful, and you’d have to take a file and file down that callus that would be on the side. It would get little blood blisters inside. So we’d say it’s a blallus.
To keep the pain down and keep the balance and everything, you’d have to file and take care of your feet. And so I got a saying as a trampoline coach. It’s take care of your feet at all time. Do not walk around an arena barefoot, because they’re like, “I’m used to running around the gym in bare …” Well, that floor’s padded. Now, you’re on concrete. You’re going to stand in there 12 hours a day, and you’re going to take the energy out. So put something nice, lightweight, and something that feels, so you’re protecting your feet at all time.
Steven Sashen:
Well, this is a really interesting thing, because what we’ve heard from thousands and thousands of people is they can stand all day in our shoes or in bare feet without a problem. But that’s because they’re making all these little micro movements and whatnot, and they’re actually using their feet. And so the point is, in this case, it’s not like they can’t handle being on concrete. It’s that you don’t want to just be … It’s amazing how much energy you actually expend just walking around, and if you’re going to be on a tramp, where you’re really need your feet to be functional, you just want to chill out.
It’s giving me a funny flashback. I was at the World Track and Field Championships when Usain Bolt set the world record, and before the race, he comes out with Tyson Gay and Asafa Powell and the other guys in the race, and they all, they had this little podium thing behind in each lane. They just sat on it, and it looked like they were going to fall asleep. I mean, they were just doing nothing.
It took a while for the race to actually start, and they spent like 20 minutes just sitting there doing nothing. They weren’t stretching. They weren’t … I mean, just like, “I’m not going to do anything with my legs, because I’m about to use them.” Similar thing. If you’re a professional trampoline athlete, you want to save it up for when you’re on the tramp. Not that you, you’re going to be building stronger feet from using them, but you don’t want to have to use that when you don’t have to use that.
Paul Hagan:
Right. Right. Right.
Steven Sashen:
The trampoline metaphor came up a lot lately, and I’m very curious to hear what your thoughts are on this, when people talked about all these new shoes that are maximally-cushioned shoes, which is tons and tons of foam. There’s a couple of, I’ll put air quotes around the word, “footwear experts” who said, “Oh. Those shoes are acting like a trampoline.” Now, I’m not going to try and poison the well by telling you what I thought when I heard that, but I’m curious what you think when you hear that. We have not talked about this before.
Paul Hagan:
No.
Steven Sashen:
We’ve never met before. It’s like being a magician. You’ve never met before. Correct? Pick a card. So we’ve never met before. What do you think when you hear someone say that that padding in shoes is acting like a trampoline?
Paul Hagan:
I’d tell them there’s a book called Born to Run, and they talk about running basically barefoot or with very thin, lightweight things. They better do some more research, because you can always find an expert to tell you what you want to hear. But listen to other people, too, and then make up your own mind. You know? So I read the Born to Run, and it’s about thin ultramarathon runners and kind of the opposite of what everybody’s telling you. Get these big clunky, fat shoes and … But you can’t get your balance in there if they’re stiff and hard, and you know, so …
Steven Sashen:
Okay. Well, I’m going to throw my answer at you now. The first thing, literally the first thing I thought when someone said, “Oh. These things are acting like a trampoline,” is, A, a trampoline works because you’re using your legs. So you’re not getting anything magical out of the tramp. The tramp is just allowing you to maximize what you can do with your legs. The second thing is the trampoline works because the springs are out there. They’re not right underneath you. They’re out there. That’s the physics of how it works. So unless you had something further out, like if you had a shoe that was literally a trampoline, that’s one thing, but just having foam underneath your foot doesn’t act like a trampoline.
Then, people say, “Well, it’s just like the Harvard track.” So Harvard has an indoor track that is known for having people set world records on it, because it actually is like a trampoline. Because they have these wide planks that are supported on the outside, and if anyone decides to look it up … I’ll have to see if I can find the paper, but the guys who designed the track talked about the physics of it. They say, “Yeah. We try to make the track a slightly tighter spring than the spring of the athlete themself,” which means-
Paul Hagan:
Right, because you get a quick rebound, and that throws you down the floor faster.
Steven Sashen:
Right, if you’re the right weight running at the right speed, and that’s the other part that … I kept saying, “All these maximally-cushioned shoes, the foam is tuned to a particular weight and speed. If you’re not running at that speed, and you’re not that weight, then it’s going to get in the way.” I’ve been saying this now for nine years, and happily, like two, three weeks ago, the Washington Post printed all the research showing that that’s exactly true. If you’re not that weight, that speed, this stuff actually gets in the way and causes real problems, which made me think about a question that I never thought to ask about trampolines.
Obviously, in the Olympics, you’re not tuning the springs, and everyone in athletics tend to … People tend to gravitate. Swimmers all look the same, not because they end up being built that way, but because the ones who are built that way tend to become better swimmers. Is it the same thing with trampoline athletes, where they’re all fundamentally in that same kind of weight and strength ratio, or do you ever tune a tramp to an individual?
Paul Hagan:
No. You don’t really tune a trampoline to the individual. Actually, I’ve been experimenting with that, trying to get that to happen for certain people. We could dial it with different springs and do that, the tuning, but with the international trampoline that they use in the Olympics, everybody has the exact same thing. So it’s, who does their dieting correctly? Who does their weightlifting correctly? Because I had a gentleman, one of the best guys I ever trained. He could jump high as can be, and he went to … He got a knee injury, so he went in the weight room.
His brother’s a professional football player, very athletic family, and he starts hitting the weights big-time. He comes in. He’s now, from 195, he’s now 225 of all muscle, and he can’t jump as high because he weighs too much. Right? So I’m like, “Listen. You’re changing the way you eat. You’re changing the way you exercise, and I want you down. In the next four months, before you start getting into competition, you got to get down to 185 pounds.” So darn it. He’s one of the few athletes that was able to diet, exercise, listen to his coach, and get his weight down there, and all of a sudden, his bouncing went three feet higher.
Steven Sashen:
Wow. So is there-
Paul Hagan:
Because big muscle doesn’t fly. Fat don’t fly either.
Steven Sashen:
Well, it’s a similar thing. If you look at sprinters, it’s really interesting to see how the sprinter body has changed, because a lot of sprinters came out of not only track and field, but also football. These guys were just massive, and now you’re watching these sprinters who, if you met them on the street, you’d think you could knock them over with a feather. They apply force into the ground brilliantly. They’re super strong, but they’re just not as big.
Actually, I just had a funny flashback to the Olympic trials a few years ago. All the American sprinters looked huge, and then, a couple weeks later at the Olympics, they looked less huge. It’s like, “Oh. Clearly, the Americans weren’t testing for things that they test when they were at the Olympics. So there’s that.
Now, I remember going into a CrossFit gym for the first time, and having a whole lot of fun, and then thinking about the competition part, because I like to compete. It’s very entertaining, gives me something to work towards. It became very clear that that wasn’t going to work, because they don’t adjust the weights or anything based on how much you weigh. So I was going to have to deadlift the same 300 pounds as a guy who was 6’5”, 250. Now, I can deadlift 300 pounds, but it’s not the same as someone who almost weighs 300 pounds. So there’s an ideal CrossFit body. Is there an ideal tramp body, as well?
Paul Hagan:
There is, but there’s people that break that norm. So the ideal weight would be about 165 pound male. Okay? That’s about 5’5″. Okay? But there’s been some guys out there that have been six feet tall, and weigh 195, and been able to compete and win gold medals and stuff. They’re just outside the norm. So just, all of a sudden, you see seven little guys and one big guy, and the big guy might win that meet. You know?
Steven Sashen:
Well, I’m the exact opposite.
Paul Hagan:
But for the norm, it tends to be a smaller man’s sport.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. I’m the opposite when I show up at a track meet, because I line up at the line. I’m 5’5″, and then the other guys are six feet tall that I’m running against. I beat most, if not all, of them, the ones that are my age. The ones that are 20 years younger than me, they crush me, but nonetheless, my goals as a sprinter changed. When I first started, it was like, “I want to win races,” and now I just want to freak people out.
I just want people to go, “What’s he doing here?” and then I win the race, and go, “How’d that happen?” So it’s a whole different goal. The tuning thing is very interesting to me when it comes to feet and shoes in general, but I had that question about tramps. Because again, like I mentioned at the top of our conversation, the Aussie bed was the first time that … where it wasn’t just big thick strips of fabric that were woven together. More air was going through it, and it just felt like magic, but it also … After not too long, your legs are exhausted.
Paul Hagan:
Yeah. Yeah. Our trampolines, very similar to the Aussie bed trampoline, is a string, two string by two string weave. Right? Lets the air go through. We talked about that. But what we did talk is I’ve got parents that call me up. They go, “I cannot believe what I paid for this trampoline. We got motorcycles. We got jet skis. We got boats. We got everything. Our kids spends eight hours a day on the trampoline. As a matter of fact, I’ve set a ban time, that they cannot jump trampoline after 10 o’clock at night.”
These kids are having so much fun. Then, they become super athletes. I got four daughters. Three of them were high school pole vaulters. Two of them got track scholarships for pole vaulting and hurdles and stuff like that, because trampoline is plyometrics. You want to get stronger, you want to get faster, you want to get quicker, do your plyometrics. Well, if you’re playing on the trampoline and having so much fun, you’re just doing plyometrics over and over all day long. Right? Then, the parents are like, “I kind of had an awkward kid, and now they are very talented and just live on the trampoline.”
Steven Sashen:
Okay. Well, since you brought it up, I’m going to ask. So talk to me about what it costs to get a really good trampoline, I mean, not even necessarily one that you make, just for the fun of it, but I want to hear sort of what the price range looks like and what happens as you go up or down in price.
Paul Hagan:
Yeah. Well, your poly bed trampolines, you’re going to pay anywhere from under $4,000 all the way down to, I think you can get one for $250. Right? They’ll put little tiny springs on it. It’ll be big, and then the kids will lay on it for a while and then … or play on it and then lay on it, get tan on it. Then, they’ll never use it again. But our MaxAir Trampoline or an international trampoline that’s a high-performance, you’re going to be at that $10,000 range going up to our top-selling unit’s almost $30,000. Right?
These parents go, “I cannot believe I wrote a check for that much,” and then I check back with them a year, “How’s your kids doing? How’s things going? What do we need? Trampoline doing okay? Anything you need replaced?” Whatever. They’re like, “Best thing I ever bought for my family. Best thing ever.” You know? You pay for what you get. You get a high-quality anything, and it lasts longer. It’s built to last. It’s built to be more enjoyable. If it’s shoes, bicycles, trampolines, you get high-quality, and you know the difference right away, the first time you’re on it.
Steven Sashen:
Well, there is a difference when it comes to shoes in that there’s been a ton of research showing that the more expensive the shoe, typically, the worse it is, after a certain point, so because it’s got a whole bunch of crap in there that just gets in the way. But if you’re using better-quality materials that do last longer, like you were saying, that’s a different story. That can bring the price up. But there are situations where more expensive doesn’t mean better, and footwear is definitely one. There’re probably others that I … But I don’t think about them too much, because I just live in and around footwear. And so you make, I mean you’re making above-ground and in-ground. What’s it like when you’re installing them? My God. How deep of a hole do you need to dig if you’re making a in-ground?
Paul Hagan:
Well, in the center, we can slope them down so they curve down in the center, because that’s where it’s going to sink the most. So you’re almost at five feet.
Steven Sashen:
Wow.
Paul Hagan:
So we don’t want anybody to ever hit the bottom, so we make ours a little bit deeper. So above-ground trampoline is almost five feet off the ground and then-
Steven Sashen:
Oh. Wow.
Paul Hagan:
Yeah. So you’re way up there. So the net helps you not fall the five feet off the side. So it’s like hit the pads, roll into the net, and, “Oh. I didn’t fall the extra five feet onto the hard ground.”
Steven Sashen:
And so if we’re including the pads and everything else, how much space do you need?
Paul Hagan:
Well, I mean, our big deluxe 14 foot by 14 foot is 22 feet by 22 feet. So it’s a big, giant thing. But talk about enjoyment. Like I said, my customers keep coming back and saying, “I can’t believe I did it. They love it, and they spend more time on that than any other piece of equipment that we’ve owned or any bicycles, jet skis, motorcycles, the quad runners, all that stuff.” You know?
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. So it’s much less likely to be a clothes hanger like many home gyms become.
Paul Hagan:
Right. Right.
Steven Sashen:
Where are you located? I can’t remember.
Paul Hagan:
We’re in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Steven Sashen:
If people … Before they’re going to drop 30 grand, I imagine, or even 10 grand, or even five grand, I imagine they’re going to want to know what they’re getting themselves into. How do people do that?
Paul Hagan:
Well, they contact us at maxairtrampolines.com, and then we’ll go through the whole thing, kind of the conversation. We have our sales, between Steve and I do all our sales here at MaxAir, and I was a professional trampoline coach for 25 years. Steve worked as one of my assistants and ran his own team at our facility. So not only did we coach trampoline, we bounced trampoline, and then we manufactured trampoline. Because we didn’t like what we were bouncing on and wanted better, and then the world came calling once they found out our stuff is better than everybody else. So we’re getting a big presence out there.
Steven Sashen:
But again, I mean, I imagine, look, if it was me, I mean, ignoring the fact that I’m going to be 61 and I got whatever’s going on with my spine and whatnot, I still like to bounce. It’s still super fun, but if I’m going to drop any amount of money, I’m definitely going to want to go feel it first, which, of course, it’s the puppy dog clause. You don’t have to take the puppy now. Our puppy, it was … When we got our dog, which we got him almost a year ago. My wife and I had never had a dog. They said, “We don’t do a meet and greet thing. Just come take the dog for a week and let us know what you think.”
We knew that we were suckers as soon as we said yes to that. At the same time, we hit the rescue dog lottery. They said, “It might take your dog a couple weeks to get used to you and your house,” and it took him like, I think, maybe a minute before it was his place and he was part of the family. It’s gotten better and better over time, but nonetheless, it was great. But nonetheless, I would want to do the puppy dog clause. I’d want to go somewhere, bounce on the thing for a few days, et cetera, and see what I’m-
Paul Hagan:
Sure. Absolutely. So a lot of our trampoline, the trampoline parks, the Sky Zones, we have a few in the Sky Zones, not a lot, but there’s another company called DEFY and CircusTrix. There’s a lot of those trampoline parks that are opening up, and they’re starting to put high-performance areas in there. So if people check in their neighborhood for their trampoline park and see if they have a MaxAir trampoline in there, we do them all over the world. That’s usually, once the people bounce on that trampoline for a while, go to the park, then they’re like, “I’m tired of paying money at the park. Let’s just get one in our backyard.”
So we get a lot of that, and then, if we sell a family, then their cousins come over and bounce on it. Then, they buy one. It just, our word of mouth has been really our main thing over our website, is word of mouth. When you have such a great product like we have, word of mouth is everything, and probably same thing in the shoe community and the running community. They got to say, “Here’s the way to go.”
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. Exactly the same thing. Yeah. My favorite one is we hear this version, is, “I bought your shoes, and then I have five pairs. Now, my mom and my dad, who are in their seventies or eighties or whatever, bought them, and they won’t wear anything else. They have 10 pairs.” And so it really … Word of mouth has been the number one driver of our business, as well, which is super, super fun. For people, again, who’ve never bounced on a tramp, or think that it could be scary, or that doing anything might be difficult, what do you do for any sort of coaching or recommending coaching or something so that people …
Here’s my favorite thing, is people discovering they can do something that they didn’t think they can do. I just hung out with a bunch of guys at this gym that I was in last week, where if people haven’t seen it, I’m … We’ll have to include a link. So almost 61, did a standing back flip, and, which was-
Paul Hagan:
That’s incredible. That’s just … That’s very impressive, and I’ve been in a gym my whole life. I gave up doing flips at 50. I’m like, “No more.”
Steven Sashen:
Well, see. Here. Look. Here’s the deal. First of all, I had a bet with my-
Paul Hagan:
I’ll do them on the trampoline, not on the ground. You did your standing on the ground. That’s a whole different animal.
Steven Sashen:
Well, that’s true, but I did the first few on the tramp just to make sure I still knew where I was. Then, I did a few where I stood on the edge of the tramp and just used the tramp to land on, and then I went and threw it on the floor. I had someone spot me just in case, and he said, “Dude, I didn’t touch you.” I said, “All right.” So then, I did a bunch more.
But part of this was because I had a bet from when I was in high school with my coach about who was going to be the oldest doing a standing back. And so I just won that bet. I didn’t get anything for it, unfortunately, but other than the satisfaction. But now, the question is, who’s the oldest guy who’s ever done a standing back flip? Annoyingly, the Guinness Book of World Records, it says a guy who’s like 94 and change, but he did it off the edge of a pool into the pool.
Paul Hagan:
Eh. I don’t call that a record.
Steven Sashen:
Exactly. So I have no doubt that there’s a couple of guys dorkier than me, who are older than me, who, maybe in their mid-sixties, who are still throwing them. So I got to find out, and we got to start this competition and see who’s going to be the last one standing or flipping, as the case may be.
Paul Hagan:
Just to do it? I’m a fairly fit guy. Right? When I go out snow skiing, I love to snow ski, and I ski 30 miles by the end of the day, from the start of the day, which is a lot of miles. So my fitness is really high. I’m not doing a standing back tuck. Your fitness has got to be at another level, because, I mean, did you feel it the next day in your stomach, the stomach muscles, the abs?
Steven Sashen:
No. No.
Paul Hagan:
Because it’s a lot of core. People think it’s all in the legs.
Steven Sashen:
No. It was 48-
Paul Hagan:
There’s a lot of core to get those legs up over your head quickly, and that’s your stomach.
Steven Sashen:
It was 48 hours later where my lower apps were like, “Oh. Yeah. What?”
Paul Hagan:
“What’d I do?”
Steven Sashen:
It wasn’t actually too bad, but I definitely, I only did like seven or eight of them. Then, I was feeling it, I can never … abductors, abductors in my legs, inside of my legs. Surprisingly, the inside of my legs, my glutes, which was … really made me happy, because glutes are super important for sprinting, and then abs, and then, you and I talked about this before we got on, my hands. I mean, from immediate, immediately, when I did the standing back flip, you’re throwing your arms really hard, and the blood just goes to your hands. I undeniably busted a couple capillaries in there somewhere, and that lasted for about an hour, very painfully. Then, over the course of a day, it went away. But all that made me think is, “I got to do more of these. I got to get to the point where my body can handle that again.”
Paul Hagan:
Yeah. Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
Because I used to do like 40 or 50 at a time, just as part of a workout.
Paul Hagan:
Oh. Yeah. That was my conditioning for the team we’d call the circle of death. We put 20 people in a circle, and everybody just had to keep going around. Once somebody was out, didn’t make their back flip and fall forward, then it’s you’re out. They’d go around a hundred times, the good athletes. But that’s, instead of doing 500, 800 sit-ups, you could do 50, 100 standing back tucks and get more of a workout, because you’ve really got to snap and engage that core and get those stomach muscles firing.
Steven Sashen:
Well, there’s another part to it, because it’s not just about being able to tuck quickly, which you could do if you’re doing hanging leg raises or something. You can kind of get that. It’s actually that the first movement when you’re doing the standing back flip is a little back extension. So you’re stretching your abs before you pull them in, and it’s that stretch. There’s a guy who I adore named Nick Nilsson. He calls himself the Mad Scientist of Muscle, and one of his ab exercises is roll up a towel, and put it underneath your lower back. So you’re starting with that stretch position, and then you do just a crunch. You don’t try to go all the way up.
Paul Hagan:
That’s makes sense. Right.
Steven Sashen:
There’s a lot of research coming out lately about how the stretch position is better for building muscle, for hypertrophy. You’re not going to build a lot of muscle in your abs. That’s not the thing, but the stretch position, literally just being stretched actually is building strength and building muscle tissue, which is pretty wild. But then, you look at some of the old-school bodybuilders, and they did a lot of stuff, just partial reps in that stretch position. That’s sort of similar to that.
Paul Hagan:
Right. Right, and that ends up limiting range of motion, too.
Steven Sashen:
Well, they don’t-
Paul Hagan:
So if I get that full stretch, you get a full range of motion through your bodying.
Steven Sashen:
Correct.
Paul Hagan:
If you shorten that up, yeah, you might get a bigger muscle.
Steven Sashen:
Well, these guys are not doing-
Paul Hagan:
But you don’t have a functional muscle.
Steven Sashen:
Correct, and they’re not doing just the partial in the stretch. That’s just like the last part they do. There was some research that showed if you just stood with your toes elevated, like you’re doing toe raises or calf raises, and just stood there for some exorbitant amount of time, but literally just stood there with your … stretching your calves, that was building strength and muscle, as well. So no range of motion at all. I don’t know how functional it was, but it was just interesting to see.
This actually came from a bird study, where they would just stretch a bird’s wing, and it got stronger and bigger muscle. So it was a really interesting thing. But we can’t finish this conversation without talking about, by far, the craziest thing I’ve ever seen, and trampolines that make yours seem like those little round things that you put in your living room, the guys who are, quote, “freestyle trampolinists,” guys who are like 40 feet in the air, 50 feet in the air, doing nine-
Paul Hagan:
They scare me.
Steven Sashen:
One guy just did nine flips.
Paul Hagan:
Well, I got to say hold on a second.
Steven Sashen:
Okay.
Paul Hagan:
Because I saw the video. The guy did nine flips, and he did not land on his feet. So like a standing back tuck-
Steven Sashen:
I agree.
Paul Hagan:
… or sending them off into a pool, it’s no record until he puts it on his feet. That’s a record. So this other stuff, guessing where you are in the air, because you’re spinning so fast and lucky you didn’t kill yourself on the trampoline, and they throw in a mat, and everybody goes nuts, “He’s not dead. Give him a big hug.”
Steven Sashen:
Well, let me say this. A, I agree with you. I had the same thought, and B, let’s be clear. We’re arguing about whether a guy just threw eight and a half or nine, or eight and three quarters.
Paul Hagan:
Eight and three quarters. Right. You’re going to land on your head.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. This is a purest argument.
Paul Hagan:
Yeah. I’m worried about those young men, because they’re missing a lot of progressions. They’re just chucking it and going it. They’re very brave. They’re very stupid, and they can’t do a lot of the intermediate skills to make them truly great.
Steven Sashen:
I get it. I mean, we used to do this in the pool, or we’d do it into a pit. It’s like flip till you land. That’s basically what they’re doing on a trampoline, which is, it’s undeniably crazy, undeniably dangerous. It’s also, though, one of those things that, from when you and I were competing, the things that we were doing, now five-year-olds are doing. I mean, the things that people are doing now, we never even dreamed of doing.
Paul Hagan:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
So I’m hoping that what these guys do does add some amount of inspiration about what’s possible, or they find a way that it becomes not so insane. So there’s always someone who’s pushing the envelope. Look. I remember being in high school and watching, I just blank on the name of who it was, Russian gymnast who was the first guy who threw a triple back off of high bar, and everyone thought he was completely insane and it was the dumbest thing in the world. They didn’t want to allow it in competition, because all the people would die. Now, if you can’t throw a triple in high school, you don’t get a college scholarship.
Paul Hagan:
Right. Right. Right. I got a quick story. I had a mom call up. She’s asking about our trampolines, and she’s like, “Well, it says here that your trampolines, you can jump 25 feet in the air, but I don’t want my three-year-old jumping 25 feet.” I’m like, “Your three-year-old’s never going to be strong enough to go that high.”
Steven Sashen:
But look. More power to her.
Paul Hagan:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. I think that’s great that she’s that protective while still wanting him to have a good time and build athleticism. What, if anything, I mean, given all this, what if anything do you see as next, either for you or trampolines and trampolining in general?
Paul Hagan:
Well, one of the things, we’re inventing a new trampoline that has a pulley system. Right? So we’ve got it. Our prototypes are being made right now, and we’ll get it on our website here pretty soon. But sometimes, we have somebody where they’ve got a small space, and they want a large jumping surface. So what we did was we put a pulley on the end and have a rope go around the pulley, and then the springs work up and down. Okay?
Steven Sashen:
Oh. Fascinating.
Paul Hagan:
So what we’ve done is taken … A spring weighs about one pound. You got 118 springs in an Olympic trampoline. So we took 118 pounds off the jumping surface. So now, it’s coming up quicker and a lot faster. Now, the spring is only working straight up and down, and gravity’s helping. So little tweaks like that, we’ll get a little more bounce out of it. We’ll get a little, jump a little higher, but it makes the trampoline a little more expensive. So we sell that to the circus people or the Olympic coach that really needs to get that extra two feet higher. I’m like, “They’re already going 25.” You know? “Well, 28 would be great.”
Steven Sashen:
Well, that’s an interesting question, though. I mean, if you are bouncing on a tramp, you’re training for the Olympics, you’re bouncing on a tramp that’s just giving you much more than you get in the standard Olympic trampoline, how are people kind of making that transition? It would be really easy to get used to something that you’re then not on. I mean, obviously, you’re not going to stay on just one tramp, but nonetheless.
Paul Hagan:
No, but your body will adjust. Our top guys ,we go to meet after meet, and every trampoline is somewhat different. It just is, and if you get enough warmup time in there, you adjust pretty quickly. I always say a world-class athlete could go out on a round trampoline and still beat everybody in the neighborhood, because he knows the right technique, the nice form, and just how to do everything correctly. So you can go out and have power tumblers and gymnasts, the best one from the Olympics, on these nice 40 by 40 bouncy floors and everything. That guy’s still going to probably win if the thing was done out in a parking lot.
Steven Sashen:
Right. Right.
Paul Hagan:
You know?
Steven Sashen:
You gave me a funny memory. I met a guy who was a professional bowler, and he said, “Oh. Yeah. When we’re going to warm up, I can tell you if there’s not enough oil on that one piece of wood that’s two inches wide and four feet long in this part of the lane. So I want to either avoid that piece of wood or hit that piece of wood.” The idea of being that attuned to your equipment in bowling was mind-blowing.
Paul Hagan:
Right. Yeah. Absolutely.
Steven Sashen:
I’m backing up to your pulley trampoline thing. Who thought that idea up? That is super clever.
Paul Hagan:
That was mine. I thought about that for years and years and years, because we went and talked about the bow and arrow and shooting it up. Then, I looked at a compound bow, and I went, “Wow. A compound bow really launches. I’m going to make a trampoline like a compound bow,” and I did it.
Steven Sashen:
That is brilliant. I love that.
Paul Hagan:
I’m still in the playing stage of it, and it won’t be ready for another year, year and a half.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, but that is super, super clever. I totally love it. All right.
Paul Hagan:
I got one more thing to do. One of the new … Yeah. Sorry.
Steven Sashen:
No. That’s great.
Paul Hagan:
One of the new trampolines we did is around high-performance trampoline, and nobody’s ever done that before. So we took our fabric that lets the air go through, and we made a round trampoline. So we have an in-ground model that will be released in the spring that’s round and a high-performance, because we just have some people that are like, “Nope. It’s got to be round.” “But square and rectangle bounce higher.” “Nope. I got to have a round one, aesthetics in my backyard,” whatever it is. The movie industry, we do stuff with them, and they’re like, “Got to have a round trampoline that bounces high.” Like, “Okay. We can do it now.” You know?
Steven Sashen:
What diameter?
Paul Hagan:
We have a 11 foot seven and a 13 foot seven, and that’s the bouncing surface. So it’s a little … another 16 inches around when you add the springs on to it.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, yeah. I love it. I love it. Oh. Actually, I do want to ask this one question, though. I almost got to before. So someone’s going to start anew, and again, trampoline is one of those things where you really can learn to do things that you never imagined you could do.
Paul Hagan:
Yes.
Steven Sashen:
Who thought they could do a back flip? You find that you can. It’s not only not as hard as you think, but it’s not what you think. People think you have to throw yourself backwards to do it, or for a front flip, you throw your body down to do it. It’s definitely not what you think, and discovering that there’s movement patterns that work differently than what you imagined, I think, is really, really interesting. But if they’re going to get started from scratch, what do you recommend in terms of coaching?
Paul Hagan:
If you can go to your local gymnastics center or get with one of the organizations. There’s three of them out there that are the trampoline federations. There’s AAU Tramp and Tumbling. There’s U.S.T.A. Tramp & Tumbling, and then USA Gymnastics, are the governing bodies in the United States for that, and finding a good quality coach that’s been certified through either one of those federations, especially just if you’re doing the stomach drops, backdrops and that.
But once you want to start doing the single flips and double flips and stuff like that, to be safe, you really want quality coaching. They will make it fun for you, and they’ll show you the way that you can think and learn yourself and be able to see and know where you’re at in the air at all time. We don’t lose sight of the trampoline bed when you’re doing a triple twisting double layout. Your eyes are looking at that trampoline the whole time. They don’t. So learning from a coach telling you the right things to do, where to look, how to bounce, how to be in shape, all that stuff, and give you the drills, and follow proper progressions will make it a safe, fun sport for everybody.
Steven Sashen:
I can’t think of a better way, a better note to end on. So, Paul, first of all, thank you. This has been a total pleasure.
Paul Hagan:
Yeah. Thank you.
Steven Sashen:
Secondly, I mean, while you’ve mentioned it a number of times, please tell people, if they want to find out more, how they can find you and get in touch with you.
Paul Hagan:
Maxairtrampolines.com. We have a really great website, and come and take a look at it.
Steven Sashen:
Beautiful. For everyone else, thank you. Thank you so much. If you decide to start trampolining, whether you’re getting on a MaxAir Tramp, which I recommend, or anything, let us know. This’ll be fun. I’m hoping someone gets inspired to go try something new, because that’s part of the fun of doing things and having a natural movement, is discovering there are things that are fundamentally natural that you didn’t know were. In fact, actually, I got to say this. I just remembered this. Some people say to me, they argue, “Well, we didn’t evolve to run on concrete for 26 miles,” and my response to that is, “We didn’t evolve to do double twisting double back flips either, but guess what you can learn to do.”
Paul Hagan:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. yeah. Hey. I tell you what, I love your shoes. I’ve been going, looking at the ones in the background and some of the ones on your website and everything. You got a nice concept in your shoe and everything, and I’ll be getting mine real soon.
Steven Sashen:
I know a guy who knows a guy. He’ll hook you up.
Paul Hagan:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
So-
Paul Hagan:
Thanks, Steven. I really appreciate it, having me on your show.
Steven Sashen:
Pleasure. Yeah. Don’t go yet. I’m just going to do a quick sign-off for everyone else. Just a reminder, go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com to find all the previous episodes, to find all the ways you can interact with us on social media. In fact, if you have any questions or comments or people that you think I should be chatting with on the podcast, you can drop me an email, [email protected]. If you think that I have a case of cranial rectal reorientation syndrome, you can let me know that. In fact, it’s my goal, it hasn’t happened yet, to find someone who thinks I’m completely full of it, to have a conversation with them and see what happens. I know what’ll happen, which is, I know why they don’t show up on the podcast. But nonetheless, it would be a blast if someone is dumb enough to try and take me on.
Paul Hagan:
Absolutely.
Steven Sashen:
So all that said, most importantly, just go out, have fun, and live life feet first.