Why trampoline sprints might be the fastest way to get faster

If you’ve been around the Power Athlete training ecosystem for a while, you’re plenty familiar with one of our go-to sprint training methods: The Trampoline Sprints. And without a doubt, there isn’t anything that sparks more questions than these. Search the discord and you can see the most frequently asked question is, “what can I sub for trampoline sprints?” To save Power Athlete Certified Coach Johnny Durrett some time, we’re going to walk through why we use trampoline sprints, why you should hop on Amazon and pick up a trampoline, and why there is no direct substitute for them (but what you can use to get partially there).

Three Things That Actually Make You Fast

Trampoline sprints present a unique stimulus that cannot be replicated. When we think of sprinting, the aim is to drive as much force into the ground as quickly as possible to drive yourself forward as fast as possible. So why would we train this by staying stationary on a trampoline? Three physical components come to mind immediately: force application, elastic rebound, and stiffness. Again, with sprint speed being dictated by your ability to repeatedly transfer force from the ground through your body as quickly as possible, being able to maximize these qualities is paramount.

Put Your Foot Through the Floor

Force application is simple: put your foot into the ground with as much strength and power as possible every step. Can we accomplish this by simply sprinting? Maybe. But there are some tradeoffs that will be made. First, Newton’s Third Law will dictate that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Yes, this is how you drive yourself forward in a sprint, but it comes at the cost of your body absorbing those forces against an immovable object (the ground). Sprinting on a trampoline allows us to deliver these intense, rapid forces into a movable object (the trampoline) which means we can produce force without having to beat our joints up as much through force absorption. This is especially valuable when you consider everything else you see in the training day. Heavy compound lifts like back squats, higher volume accessory lifts like Bulgarian split squats, and even things like calf raises will take a hit in intensity if we regularly blow our structural load in training by sprinting on flat ground.

The Trampoline Does Your Legs a Favor

With Newton’s Third Law still in mind, we can capitalize on the elastic rebound of the trampoline that cannot be mimicked. Remember, sprinting is determined by repeated force application meaning the faster we can turn over and deliver these high amounts of force the faster we will sprint. When sprinting on flat ground, you are limited by your own ability to flex the hip into the knee drive and move on to the next step. Oftentimes we see people trying to accomplish this by sacrificing their actual force application, resulting in a higher turnover but shorter stride and less powerful drive. The trampoline propels your hip into flexion equal to the amount of force you put into it. Thus, we are able to still maximize force into the “ground” but now get assistance to train a faster hip flexion resulting in faster turnover.

Every Weak Joint Gets Exposed

The underlying requirement of fast sprinting is your body’s ability to maintain a requisite amount of stiffness for effective force transfer while still being fluid enough to hammer a big arm swing while driving your knees. Your body can only handle forces that the weakest joint can sustain. With sprinting being a whole-body endeavor, this means every joint from your ankles up to your shoulders needs to come correct or else you will face some level of force bleed, or the inability to transfer force due to a weak link in the kinetic chain. That is, the force you produce into the ground will be muted by a fault in one of your joints. The trained eye can dissect this when watching someone sprint on flat ground, but the user typically doesn’t have as keen an awareness because they are too busy trying to move as fast as possible. The trampoline is a stand-in for the coach’s eye because it will cause an exaggerated fault at whatever joint or joints are failing you. Anyone who has hopped on the trampoline can attest to the reactive nature making even the most seasoned athlete lose their footing. The real-time, tactile feedback allows the athlete to make the changes on the fly without missing a step…or getting bounced off the trampoline which will serve as a strong enough reminder to fix their form.

The Best Coaching Tool You Can Carry In

The trampoline sprint doesn’t solely serve one master. Coaches get a view that can’t be had by watching people simply sprint. Power Athlete spent years traveling the world coaching people to be fast and powerful athletes, but when you are coaching 30 or more athletes at once within a warehouse gym, there isn’t the space or the sets of eyeballs to effectively watch everyone go sprinting by. Having someone sprint on the trampoline allows for what typically takes 20, 30, or 40 meters to happen within a stationary window. And since the athlete is stationary, it allows the coach to work in 3D, seeing them sprint from all angles which is virtually impossible otherwise. In a single 10-second sprint, coaches can download their athletes’ mechanics from the rear, side profile, and frontal view and provide enough feedback without taxing them with several reps.

Sorry, There’s No Substitute

So what can you do instead of trampoline sprints? In short, nothing. Obviously, we don’t want you to do nothing. You can sub in hill sprints to work on force production, downhill sprints to work on turnover, or any number of our sprint drills to work the coordination between knee drive and arm swing. But none of those will adequately replace the work that can be done on the trampoline. Do most gyms have trampolines available? Probably not. But as of this writing you can hop on Amazon and buy one for under $60 and have it delivered tomorrow. Will people give you weird looks as you carry your trampoline into the gym? Maybe. But at least you know you’ll be able to chase them down if they make fun of you.

If you want to dive deep on the methods and decisions that John Welbourn puts into our training programs and understand the daily task beyond sets and reps, you’re in luck. After half a decade of hibernation, we’re opening the doors again and coaching people up in real time.

On May 29–30, we’re breaking down exactly how we build muscle that actually does something at The Hypertrophy Standard. Not just bigger for the sake of it, but muscle that carries over to how you move, perform, and feel every day. We’re capping this at 50 athletes. Once it’s full, it’s full.

If you’ve been putting in the work but not seeing the return, this is where that changes.

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Event: The Hypertrophy Standard May 29–30, 2026.

Pod: Ep 858 – From Effort to Size: The Hypertrophy Standard Explained

Blog: Not All Hypertrophy is Created Equal

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