PROVO, Utah—BYU women’s gymnastics installed a $15,000 pit fluffer in its gym over Halloween weekend. With the purchase of the pit fluffer, the university is making an investment in the gymnastics program and in safety.
“The pit fluffer is a giant balloon that is deflated and fits snugly underneath the foam,” head coach Guard Young said. “It fills up with air, poofs up and throws all the foam out of the pit. Then it deflates and you kick all the foam back in. Now your pit has been fluffed up.”
The pit fluffer took three days to install. The first step was to remove the old foam from the pit. BYU donated this foam to a local club to help future college gymnasts. After the pit was emptied, they laid the deflated cushion in the bottom of the pit and then filled it with new foam.
The system is not used while it is on, rather it helps move foam around in order to make landings safer. Over time, foam gets pushed to the bottom of the pit and can form a hard landing. Most coaches and gymnasts do not spend the necessary time fluffing a pit, which can cause unsafe landings and injuries.The pit fluffer will prevent this from happening.
“I love the fact we can turn it on right before practice, have safe landings throughout the whole practice and not have to worry about our athletes' landings,” Young said.
With the pit fluffer, it only takes ten minutes to fluff the pit. The pit can now provide safe and consistent landings for gymnasts practicing new tricks.
Pit fluffers are new to the gymnastics world and BYU is one of the firsts to install one.
“I think since we’ve put it in we’ll have a lot of people interested in it and maybe follow us in what we’re trying to do here, which is really about safety,” Young said. “We want our athletes to be as safe as possible which means putting in the best pit system available, which is this.”
You can check out the time-lapse video of the gymnastics team as they install the pit fluffer here: http://byucougars.com/video/w-gymnastics/gymnastics-pit-fluffer