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In our ongoing bid to make exercising more weird and wonderful, we have a go at trampolining.
Trampolining does not look like real exercise. Trampolining looks like something invented to sell hotpants. Like attentionseeking in mid-air. Like something that would make even the cast of 'Pineapple Dance Studios' tut, 'Bit camp, that.'
Unfortunately, it also looks easier than it is. Within minutes of turning up to an hour-long 'airborne fitness' class at Acton's Oxygen Freejumping trampoline park, I'm flailing around wildly in an attempt to pull off 360-degree spins. I'm trying to do midair stomach crunches without looking like a photos that should be captioned 'mid-air poo squat'. I'm bum-dropping the fabric in a way that suggests I'm a WWE wrestler and the trampoline has told me it wants to steal my stupid shiny belt. Easy it is not. And as for the pair of grippy-soled yellow minisocks they give you? Well, letís just say they wonít be appearing on the cover of Vogue any time soon.
According to the class blurb, this is ëa highintensity, low-impactí exercise based around burning fat, toning and building muscle. Itís also very entertaining. As the class progresses, we start boinging about at such a height that I feel like Iím in some kind of fitness theme park. When I actually pull off a move correctly, it's so satisfying I want to rush home and start filling in an application for the 2020 British Olympic trampolining team. Itís even pretty entertaining when I lose my balance so badly that the trampoline I land on is not the one I took off from. Or at least it is for the rest of the class.
By the end of an hour, my stomach muscles feel like wild horses have dragged them across a field of broken glass. My arms have apparently been doused in petrol and set alight. That thing about trampolining not being exercise? Yeah, scratch that.
Great if… you're an adrenaline junky.
Avoid if… you have a fear of heights.
Oxygen Freejumping, Unit 15, Vision Industrial Park, Kendal Avenue, W3 0AF. West Acton. £10.
Want more novel ways to get fit? Try footgolf or cheerobics