The Benefit of Movement

Lukas: Whether you're an educator exploring innovative teaching methods or a parent seeking to enrich your child's development, we invite you to join us in discovering the transformative power of play with our next guest, Ant Morell.

Ant Morell is a co-founder of BOUNCE and has not only created an incredible play experience for children but has also turned it into a global success. With his innovative approach to urban sport and entertainment, BOUNCE has expanded rapidly, opening multiple locations worldwide. Children from various corners of the globe now have the opportunity to experience the thrill and joy of bouncing in a safe and dynamic environment.

Ant Morell's dedication to providing exceptional play experiences has resonated with families worldwide, including my own, making BOUNCE a beloved brand known for its exciting and inclusive atmosphere. Through his leadership, BOUNCE has become a global phenomenon, captivating the hearts of children and families everywhere with its commitment to fun and active play.

And I know this firsthand as a frequent visitor to our BOUNCE here at Burleigh on the Gold Coast — the default for my children on rainy days, and a good opportunity for my ambitions to get mixed up with my capabilities within bouncing around and flipping around as well. So thanks for what you're doing for play, and thank you for allowing my family to play also. Thanks for joining us, Ant.

Ant: Thanks for coming to Burleigh. Thanks for having me on the podcast.

Lukas: So many people, when they think about play, instantly think of a park, instantly think of school playgrounds. But we're moving into this era of commercial enterprises actually taking play to the people and making it accessible once again. For a generation that played outdoors like you and myself, all of a sudden the children aren't playing, they're not getting activated. And all of a sudden you've got this beautiful commercial enterprise that can actually take play to the people.

So I thought it'd be a great opportunity to pick your brain on the trends, the challenges, and your vision for play ongoing. So let's start with the first question that I ask all people: what was your most memorable play experience?

Ant: I'm like you — I think nostalgically about my childhood of playing outdoors. You know, up and down trees, playing in the roof, playing in the brickworks down the road, climbing over the cyclone fence to get in there.

I do have a couple of standout memories. One is these fantastic friends of mine, two brothers who lived not far from my house, where I of course rode on my BMX. They were just very innovative, and their house was usually full of pretty creative play adventures — my favorite being rigging up the flying fox from the parents' bedroom at the top of the stairs that went across the garden via a gnarly tree and then into the pool.

But the one I probably hark back to was with my cousins at my grandparents' place in the sleepout. I think it was 11 or 12 of us sleeping in a series of beds and bunks and obstacles like dressers and exercise bikes. And there was this game we had which was not dissimilar from running around in the BOUNCE X Park actually — just jumping from bed to bed, a complex series of rules, off-ground tiggy, sleepout style. It was great.

And I can see there's easy lines to draw between the BOUNCE parks and that experience, for sure.

Lukas: Now, for listeners from all over the globe — I'll hand it over to you. People go, "What's this BOUNCE they're talking about?" For the people that don't know...

Ant: Should I tell you a little bit about the genesis of how it started?

Lukas: Absolutely.

Ant: So BOUNCE is now 10 years old. We describe it in a range of different ways — it's an adrenaline playground for free spirits, it's an active entertainment center for any age and any skill level. If you haven't been to BOUNCE, just picture a 3,000 square meter giant warehouse with 10 to 15 meter ceilings, full of trampolines that are next to each other and other play features and obstacles.

A bit like my game in the sleepout with my cousins and brothers and sisters that I just described, it's really designed to remove the constraints of gravity and unleash the human athlete that, for a while, has been laying a little dormant.

Its genesis really is trying to give everyone — you, me, our children — access to not only the nostalgic play experiences we were just describing, but a taste of where sport and self-powered physical activity has got to in the last few years. Previously, the freestyle playground of flight suits and skateboarding and parkour and free running — some of those sports you saw at the recent Olympics, surfing, skate, snowboarding, freestyle sports, aerial sports — were really the domain of a very small number of people.

There's been some fascinating convergence over the last few years, and we wanted to make those experiences available to everybody and anybody. So that's what the venues are designed to do.

Lukas: And what was the spark? What was that moment?

Ant: The first spark, if you trace it all the way back, was a random phone call from someone saying, "I've just seen this thing in America, you should go and have a look at it." The first version of the concept — trampolines next to each other, instead of jumping up and down like we did, jumping from this one to the next one to the next one and maybe doing a few tricks in between.

We saw that at a place in America about 11-12 years ago. That was the spark. Visiting that was a little bit underwhelming actually — we'd gone via the airport looking at the GoPro hype reel, looking at what some of our members of the human race were getting up to. "Wow, that's what's going to be possible at this place!" But when we got to it, it was more just for 10 and 11-year-old birthday parties.

But we thought, if we do this well — if we use padding, trampolines, airbags, features, obstacles — we could make something incredible for everyone. That was the spark.

The other really powerful spark was that a lot of the freestyle stuff I talked about before was emerging in entertainment content through either Red Bull ads or GoPro ads, things flying around the internet. It was content that people were consuming and watching and getting inspired by, but there wasn't a way for the general public to be able to do any of it.

And at the same time, there were some pretty significant issues emerging in the community about childhood obesity, physical inactivity amongst all ages. So you had these negatives of inactivity and these positives of combining physical activity with euphoria and fun. Essentially, here's a space to allow kids to start having so much fun they don't even realize they're exercising. That was pretty inspiring to us as a spark as well.

Lukas: And what's been your biggest surprise — your unanticipated impact, if you will — since opening?

Ant: I think maybe the scale of the opportunity and its layers. There are inherent positives in the business idea and the model — imagine a place where anyone of any age and skill level could come and get a taste of the extreme sport world in a safe and supervised environment, with inspiring young staff and great music playing. As an idea, you would think that holds some water.

What's been unbelievable to watch is how much that has just exploded and deepened. We started the business really with general admission — you come in and find your way around and have fun. Over the years it's developed into coaching programs, a really deep and multifaceted kids parties, school programs, corporate programs.

And maybe not surprising if we'd thought about it, but we didn't think about it — that proposition of unleashing the spirit and physical capability of the human body has translated so powerfully from suburban Melbourne to Saudi Arabia to India, South Africa, Burleigh Heads... Its universal appeal has been pretty surprising.

I think the underlying tone is it comes back to fun. All these things are fun in an inner world, especially coming out of a pandemic.

Lukas: A lot of people in their analysis of play say if it's about the outcome, it's not play. We try to recreate these experiences within organized sport activities for children, school is like "let's make school fun and play," but you're doing all these organized events where it's actually taking away from the experience. Through my observation, with it being more open-ended opportunity within the play parks, there's really that chance to connect into just enjoying the process.

Ant: Absolutely. And the parents as well — they look at it and they're like, "What am I meant to do?"

It's a great point. We've got a little bit of a complex relationship with fun. To make the business work, we've got to really understand that. We're kind of codified to have fun on Friday afternoon when we finish our work, on Saturday. As parents, we have fun on Friday night, Saturday night. Sunday we start to get a bit serious.

If somebody asks you how you are at my age and life stage, it's usually "How are you? Are you busy?" And your answer should be "Yes, I'm busy, don't worry about me, I'm busy." It's really, "Are you having fun?"

And as you say, even the sport physical activity stuff is usually in some way caught up in our desire to improve, to upskill, to compete, to win. So I think just having something that removes perhaps the hard edge of competition — you're doing it together. For us, we think of ourselves as a community hub where you're entering the present moment.

If you walk into the bookshop, half of the shelf is covered in how to find the present moment, "The Power of Now," being mindful is now landing safely in the mainstream. Which is all pretty good news for having fun and making your own play. What did we do when we played when we were younger? This is self-powered stuff, it's driving creativity, it's proactive, it's on the other side of boredom, and isn't something that is technologically or screen-based stimulus.

Lukas: And we'll get into that screen-based competition. The benefit of it that I see is if an environment's too easy, your arc of interest will drop and it will be boring. But if an environment's too challenging, it ends up in a place of overwhelm. But with it being open-ended and encouraging people to do what they feel and reflect on — you're responsible for you — it allows that bounce between stretch competency and boredom. And they traverse that, and that's how so many times when I go there, it's like a click of the fingers and two hours have just gone.

Ant: I think that's built into lots of things, isn't it? Even if you're trying to strengthen a muscle, you're trying to push it beyond its comfort zone and then it will double its efforts and improve and grow.

It's really interesting, the idea of progression. From a purely business point of view, if people aren't subconsciously progressing at either a skill or they want to try a trick or they got a bit higher this time — we've got something called wall running where you bounce on a trampoline and run up the wall, or you move through the X park, or you beat your friend in the head-to-head race — if that element of addictive progression wasn't in there, maybe our frequency wouldn't be as consistent as it is.

We definitely observe that it has that progression element, but it's subconscious. It's through the lens of joy and euphoria and flow state. If you can get kids of any age kind of losing themselves in the moment and finding themselves in the moment — yeah, that's really powerful.

Lukas: That's engaging in an environment that can produce those levels of joy and euphoria. A classic quote I love is "the bigger the feelings, the deeper the learning." When you have that, and also with that fear setting that prompts you, when there is that edge of fear, the world is blocked out and our vision actually tunnels in and we're absorbed.

As busy and as loud as an environment can be, when we've set that goal for ourselves — not someone else telling us what to do or play the game — it's the ultimate reward. The biggest hit of dopamine a child or adult's going to get is when they set that goal for themselves and then achieve it.

Ant: Right. And not distracted from the worries of tomorrow or the worries of today, or how I look, or how I'm dressed. That really precious and difficult-to-arrive-in state where my mind and my body and my soul are all deployed in just what I'm doing right now.

Lukas: And it's a good opportunity to mention — it's not within the absence of fear and it's not within the absence of challenge that these need to take place. It's because of the fear and challenge that prompts the flow. There's a bit of a repercussion here: this demands my full attention. When I give something my full attention, I'm going to get the full reward.

Ant: Really good point. That sense of even a perception of fear that drives focus, gets the heart rate going, and you're overcoming something. Absolutely, 100% critical.

Lukas: You just mentioned the wall running — I've tried it and I'm unco at it. It's one of those things where I'm like, "Next time..."

Ant: We will get one of the great hosts from Burleigh Heads to get you up to the top of the large wall by the end of this year.

Lukas: Talking about staff and your hosts — essentially having a playful environment, but we've got to equally acknowledge that you're responsible for a lot of people, there's certain requirements and processes you need to go through to be able to liberate your customers to have fun around safety. How do you support that playful spirit within your staff and that playful culture? Because a lot of our listeners come from early childhood centers, and they know it's a play-based curriculum, they know they're involved in play, but then they're caught in those responsibilities.

Ant: Thanks for asking that, because I love talking about it. It's probably — we're customer-centric, we're trying to deliver a certain set of experiences and emotions to our customer, but the business achieves that and is really most significantly focused on the staff side of things.

If you haven't been to BOUNCE before, the concept is a "role model host." Doesn't matter what venue you walk into, anywhere in the world, every customer, every visit, every time — you should in theory, and mostly in practice, be greeted by an incredible young human being who's typically between 18 and 22.

We will speak to 800 people to pick 80 staff, and typically there's that sort of number of young people as hosts in the venues. We're not looking for their CV, for whether they've "led with key stakeholders for the last five years" or where they see themselves in 10 years. We're looking for someone who has an incredibly centered sense of confidence that's come from self-esteem, not an overactive ego. There's a way of finding that.

And then we're looking for a way to unlock and empower that young person to be friendly, encouraging, and inspiring towards a customer of any age and skill level. So they should be able to read body language, they should be able to use eye contact really powerfully, they know how to get down on a level with a young kid, they know how to "hashtag intervene" — which is a very important strategy if somebody's looking a little bit overzealous and needs to be toned down.

But the role of the host is essentially to treat every customer visit as: here's someone walking into a potentially intimidating environment, and our job through our supervision is to bring a sense of human connection to that person, make them feel comfortable psychologically in the environment, comfortable physically in the environment. We do a whole range of things to make sure it's safe and supervised. But then to unlock whatever play dream that person might have, or maybe hasn't even had yet, such that it's a truly magic experience.

A visit to BOUNCE — you can think of someone as a visitor, and they become a customer after that experience with a staff member. And once they feel "I feel part of this place, I feel I belong here," they want to come back.

Lukas: Working with educators and the sector, I always encourage people — the environment gets them in the door, but it's the relationship that keeps them coming back.

Ant: I totally agree with that.

Lukas: That is exciting. And I can see that firsthand — the interactions with the team have always been fantastic. I've got my son that likes to scale up quite quickly, so it's always good. And I think the word that sums it up is they always have grace around that redirection as well. I find it always impressive to see that certainty for such young people.

Ant: For the younger generation that's "always on screens" — they get a bad rap. That's a very big point, by the way. That sort of projection and stereotyping onto that age group — in an interview process, you almost have to lead with the fact that you don't believe in that myth.

Because what we've found — we've got thousands of staff now at school-leaver age all around the planet — if given the opportunity and the responsibility and the respect to be a role model and to be the face of a brand and to carry it forward faithfully with its beliefs... It's one thing to be cool, but it's not cool to be too cool for school. Inclusivity is the most magnificent version of that sort of energy.

What we're presiding over each hour in each venue is a giant intergenerational party. These young people need to be able to make it look safe and okay to get on the dance floor at 11:00 in the morning. They've got to carry themselves a certain way. If you trust someone of that age with that responsibility, they take it very seriously and they shine brilliantly.

Lukas: I'm fortunate enough to interact with plenty of young adults in our community, and I'm just impressed most of the time. I'm like, "I didn't have a clue what I was doing at your age, and you seem to really have it together." There are absolutely amazing people out there.

I like what you said about multigenerational — it's great to see when you go into BOUNCE, parents having a go but also being confident to step back as well and just let their children go. Do you have initiatives around getting parents playful and moving beyond the risk?

Ant: It's a good point. Placing value on play firstly, and also pushing through the invisible barriers to why you wouldn't get involved. With the junior jumpers, the little freestylers of tomorrow, the preschoolers in the mini BOUNCE zone — a lot of times it's positive and enriching and optimal to create some space between the parents, to let the kids go off and turn the ball pit into a jungle or whatever their imagination is bringing up for them.

But for the other parents, it's a bit unique in that regard — we've got trampolines and obstacles and challenge features. For pretty much any young active adult, it's going to be a little bit tempting anyway. We don't ever push anyone beyond what they want to do, but there are plenty of subtle ways of encouraging people on board.

I've been so delighted by a couple of parent stories that have come our way. The first one was pretty early on. We'd just launched the first venue, it had gone bananas, it was clearly right for its time. People were pulling their kids out of school to come to BOUNCE. We had to tell the PR agency to go on holiday for a few months because we couldn't deal with the customer phone calls, let alone the media phone calls. It was a really exciting time.

Anyway, I bumped into this friend of mine, a girl called Tracy, who I hadn't seen for years. She ran up to me and really wanted to have this conversation. She was explaining how she'd taken her really high-octane eight-year-old twins down to BOUNCE, and they'd been having a ball, going for about half an hour. Then her high-octane husband Felix became equally excited, was out there amongst it, jumping around, trying to run up the wall. Then he came and dragged her in.

She originally was a bit reluctant, then in she went, and the family booked another hour and another hour after that. They were there for three hours. Obviously I was delighted and inspired by that, and I thought that was the story.

But she said, "That is just the beginning." She said, "Last week when I was at school doing the pickup, I was standing there with the school bags and holding the shopping, waiting for the kids to get off the monkey bars and chase tag. I just looked at the monkey bars through an entirely fresh lens. I hadn't been doing that sort of thing since I was a teenager myself." And off she went, early 40s, leapt on the monkey bars and just flowed through and out the other side. It was a big moment.

Those sorts of things are really inspiring. And then I met a bunch of mums who had started trapeze classes — they'd been doing it for five years. Their trapeze class all got together because they were mums sitting around watching their kids doing the BOUNCE Freestyle Academy. They got to talking, one suggested maybe they do something, and now they've been doing trapeze for five years. So it is definitely awakening the urban athlete.

Lukas: And the playfulness. A conversation I was having with Dr. Peter King from the UK last night — joy could be described as playfulness dressed up. It's the basis of joy, isn't it?

Ant: I love it. If everything we're doing — whether it's what we're working on, why we go to work, what we're nurturing and growing and educating our kids around — if all of it eventually isn't in service of somehow maximizing the moments of joy... Of course there's in-between joy, there's downtime where we do our big learnings as you mentioned at the start. But if not joy and play, then what's the objective? Somehow that can get lost.

Lukas: And I work with my therapist quite a bit, and he was like, "Is this a doing thing or is this a being thing?" When we are playing, it's just pumping us to be. And when we put playfulness in check, and joy, so many of us do that checklist: "Once I get this week out of the way, and then, and then, and then..."

What I hear in those stories is that joy being bumped up the list. Because all of a sudden it's not this abstract idea, it's actually a tangible representation of it. You can go, "Oh, I can actually see it, feel it, touch it, taste it." So all of a sudden joy is real and not something abstract.

Ant: It's so nice to see a lightning bolt of joy through a random experience being the catalyst to create something that reawakens something or starts something. That idea of taking my kids off to a skills development coaching class and somehow making a bunch of new friends and becoming a trapeze artist in middle age — that's brilliant.

If we talk deep for a second about the purpose of our business — far beyond just skill sets and moments of joy and euphoria — these are now big community hubs. There's millions of people coming through each of these venues each year. They employ a lot of young people. But we've now seen the power of the brand and the venues and the role model hosts to really create a ripple effect into the local community.

We say that the purpose is to inspire movement, self-expression, and human connection. That's unleashing your free spirit physically, emotionally, and spiritually in a way. And that's where it gets really exciting — what's on the other side of mass-market play? What does it look like when everybody's running out of the venue smiling and coming home? It's very powerful.

And it starts with "Oh wow, I'm looking at my children sweating. I haven't seen that for a while."

Lukas: Absolutely. And you're like, "Oh, I didn't know they could do that." The amount of times I've heard that: "I thought he was going to do this, but look at him" — or "look at her."

In those values you described — that's what it is to support a thriving community and create that belonging. Coming out of COVID and lockdown, people going "What do I actually..." And whether it's a revolution or evolution, who knows, but the four-day work week and people wanting a bit more balance — it all talks into it. People being exposed to play and joy and movement and being like, "Hang on, I actually like this. There's more to this linear action of chasing something."

Ant: Obviously you never want to try and summarize the COVID experience because for so many people it was so different, and horrible beyond measure. But for many as well, there was — back to this idea of permission to kind of just question for a moment — "Maybe I should fly the kite this afternoon with the kids, or maybe I should prioritize participating in that fun that I'd almost put in their box." And I'll come along and do that too.

That tiny window where there was permission — it became a big talking point. Everybody was saying, "If when this is finished, I'm going to make sure I don't lose this habit and that habit." A bit of a refresh for a lot of people. It was for me as well.

Lukas: And how many locations do you have now?

Ant: We just opened our 18th a couple of weeks ago — this is in Australia — in Moorfield. And drum roll, we're opening our 19th Australian venue in Sydney next week. Our first Sydney venue, would you believe! Having gone around the world, it took us a long time to find a site worthy of the Sydney entrance, with a ceiling as high as we need in the city. So that's next week.

Lukas: Within proximity to the people, without being out at an airport or something like that. Well done!