What is a Trampoline Competition?

A trampoline competition is a gymnastic sport performed while bouncing on a trampoline. Competitors use acrobatic moves to gain points from judges in official competition. Moves are performed after bouncing on the trampoline at a height of about 25 ft (about 7.5 m). Trampolining requires athletic strength and body control and has been an Olympic sport since 2000.

A trampoline competition involves backward and forward somersaults, twists, rotations, and a variety of other moves. Take-offs and landings can be performed from the feet, the front of the body, or the back side of the body. Moves in a trampoline competition are performed with many different bodily moves, and involve most body parts.
There are three basic moves in a trampoline competition. A straight move is performed with the entire body straight — legs and neck straight and arms down to the sides. A piked move is performed with the legs and arms both straight out at 90 degree angles to the body — the arms and legs in this move sometimes touch at the hands and feet. A tucked move is performed with the legs and arms both bent—the knees are pulled into the chest and the arms are folded around the legs. This move is comparable to a “cannonball” dive into a pool. These moves are performed with rotations and somersaults of the body at different angles and different degrees of difficulty.
A trampoline competition must be started on the feet and ended on the feet, and 10 touches of the surface of the trampoline are completed in between. Competitions are performed on regulation sized trampolines, and are judged out of three routines. Scores are given in a trampoline competition on a 10 point scale, based on completion of moves, degree of difficulty, and body form. Degree of difficulty is determined by turns added onto the three trampolining moves. One half turn added onto a tuck, for instance, adds one half point. One full somersault, then, would add one full degree of difficulty point.

The trampoline competition was made a popular sport by NCAA gymnastics champion George Nissen. The trampoline sport was invented in 1937. It first became popular in high schools and colleges in the United States. It then moved to Europe and the first World Championship was held in 1964. The sport of trampoline competition became popular internationally in the 1970s and 1980s and began to be dominated in tournaments by Europeans countries and especially countries of the former Soviet Union. 

Cost

One myth that needs to be dispelled is that an inflatable kayak will cost less. This is true, for the general-purpose recreation kayak and beach toy category. Good quality soft shells will run about as much as hard shell kayaks and in some cases more.

Some folks will want a low cost soft shell to "test the waters" to see if they like kayaking. This makes some sense, but one must be aware of the performance (& safety) factors. Bear in mind that the experience will be similar, but paddling a soft shell will require a bit more effort and your distance goals will have to be scaled down. Careful attention to wind and currents is a must.

•     The next question to ask: "Is an inflatable right for me and the waters I am paddling?"

Since an inflatable is essentially a sit-on-top kayak there is no need to be able to Eskimo roll or perform sit-in-side style self-rescues.

An inflatable or sit-on-top hard shell kayak would be a good choice for those who are less likely to invest the time learning rolling and self-rescues. It is, however, possible to Eskimo roll a soft shell if it is outfitted with knee straps - sometimes called thigh straps or leg straps.

Performance

Performance is something to consider. Hard shells will generally out perform soft shells. As I said earlier, the reason to get a soft shell is for storage and transportation. That said, they are not necessarily slugs on the water. In fact many good quality inflatables will out perform low-end hard shell recreational boats.

The higher quality soft shells will have good hull designs, high air pressure and in some cases there will be rigid structural members to hold the shape and enhance performance. If you need the convenience of a pump-up boat you can weigh the performance from kayak to kayak, soft and hard, while shopping for the one that suits your needs. If at all possible go for a test paddle.

The sun shines brightly and light twinkles on the surface of the swimming pool. Everything looks peaceful and quite. Suddenly, the calm is broken by the sound of people flapping and splashing water. Despite the March cold, even the weather does not prevent people from swimming.

“People in Shantou like swimming very much,” said Yang Qingwei, who is in charge of the operation of Zhongshan Park, where there is also a swimming pool. “More than 1,000 people came to our swimming pool in a day in summer.”

As there are so many people, the quality of the water has become a topic of public concern.“We adopt the cycle of water purification devices, which works about 15 hours every day in summer, and six hours every two days in winter,” said Zeng Yonghua, 35, the manager of the swimming pool in Zhongshan Park. “We usually change the entire water once a year.”

There are 80 swimming pools in total in Shantou among the hotels, schools and residential areas, according to Zhang Biaoming, the Chief of Policies and Regulations of Sports Board.

The swimming pool in Zhongshan Park is one of the most famous swimming pools in Shantou. “Most of our customers are families, they train their children to learn swimming here,” Yang said.

There are two inlets and five outlets in the swimming pool in Zhongshan Park, and the latter is much bigger than the former. All the water entering into the pool has already been disinfected with Sodium Hypochlorite, which can protect people from the E. coli, a kind of bacterium which is harmful to the body when its content is more than 0.3mg per liter to 0.5 mg per liter.

Zeng emphasized that Sodium Hypochlorite should be liquid rather than powder, as liquid can more easily evaporate. Every time they have to get a certificate of quality from the Health Inspection and Supervision Centre, in order to buy the chemicals from the factory.

The swimming pool managers have an official record book from the quarantine station to keep track of the amounts of chemical agents poured into the pool.

“When the officials from the Health Inspection and Supervision Centre came, we showed the tally book to them,” Zeng said. “The inspectors often take a liter of water from the pool and add a special pill into it. And then the water becomes  colored. They compare the color to the standard color on a kind of special test paper.”

“We only are in charge of public swimming pools and go there irregularly. But we haven’t found any that have problems with the water,” said Zhang, the person in charge of inspecting pools.

The cycle of water purification devices functions well, but is also expensive. “It will take about 600 RMB if it works for ten hours continuously, and each time it will lose 10% of water during the process of backwashing and sewage disposal,” Zeng added.

The most advanced sterilization technology, however, is the ozone-activated carbon sterilization technology which combines the adsorption of activated carbon with the oxidization of Ozone. It is considered the most environment-friendly because it produces no secondary pollutants. This is the technology that was used in the National Aquatics Center during the Beijing Olympic Games.

However, because of its high equipment cost and large power consumption, it has only been used in the international competition swimming pool or a number of high-grade water parks. Even as the only national diving training base in Shantou, the swimming pool on the Haibin Road around the People’s Square still uses Sodium Hypochlorite for disinfection.

“But the water here is blue while it’s green in most of ordinary swimming pools, as we used Copper Sulfate to limit the growth of phytoplankton,” said Ma Liguang, the leader of Shantou Diving Team.

Apart from this, another kind of advanced equipment plays an important role in the water purification in the diving pool. It’s called preparatory pool which has a corresponding water level with the diving pool. When the latter doesn’t have enough water, the former will flow into it automatically. “In this way, we don’t have to empty the pool to infuse new water,” Ma said.