I haven’t used a trampoline since I was a teenager. My neighbors had round one that I would guess was 12-15′ in diameter. There were numerous injuries that I can recall, the worst being a broken leg. All of the injuries that I recall were due to what I would consider (now) to be inappropriate use. We would play dodge ball where one or more people would be on the trampoline and people off of the trampoline would throw a ball at them. I chipped a tooth doing that. Sometimes we would put a lawn sprinkler underneath the trampoline if it was really hot. I believe that is how the broken leg occurred. We did many other less stupid but still somewhat risky things, too, like doing front and back flips and seeing how high we could jump.
My point, though, is that if you do find any safety statistics take into account how they compare to how you would actually use it. Do the stats take into account the stupid things teenagers do on them?
If I can’t do any flips on the trampoline, I’m not sure it’s worth it.
Another question is whether there’s any simple neck-brace I can wear to avoid spinal injuries, which are the main thing I’m worried about. I’m okay with a 0.1% chance of pain, it’s life-altering injuries (or more to the point, work-altering injuries) that I want to avoid.
If I can’t do any flips on the trampoline, I’m not sure it’s worth it.
I don’t have any statistics handy, but once you learn flips from an instructor and practice about 1000 times carefully and under supervision over several sessions, it is a safe activity, because of the muscle memory taking over. Unless you make it unsafe by pushing your limits or jumping while impaired. Of course, there are always freak accidents like this, but the odds are at the noise level, such as being rear-ended hard when driving.
I once took a course, 30 hours, we jumped on a professional rectangular trampoline without vertical safety nets, supervised. I too was worried about spinal injuries. According to my teachers, most injuries do happen by jumping out of the bounds or impromper landing technique (taking the landing shock the spine by not angling hip/body correctly). With that said: Even without flips it was major Fun. Very fast learning curve (and I am a very slow learner with regards to complex coordinations), the freefalling… Also, flips are an advanced technique, we only attempted them by the end of the course; I felt quite safe by then from breaking my neck, I had learned to control the fall and the spinning. Please note that this risk assessment is based on me weighing 65kgs.
I haven’t used a trampoline since I was a teenager. My neighbors had round one that I would guess was 12-15′ in diameter. There were numerous injuries that I can recall, the worst being a broken leg. All of the injuries that I recall were due to what I would consider (now) to be inappropriate use. We would play dodge ball where one or more people would be on the trampoline and people off of the trampoline would throw a ball at them. I chipped a tooth doing that. Sometimes we would put a lawn sprinkler underneath the trampoline if it was really hot. I believe that is how the broken leg occurred. We did many other less stupid but still somewhat risky things, too, like doing front and back flips and seeing how high we could jump.
My point, though, is that if you do find any safety statistics take into account how they compare to how you would actually use it. Do the stats take into account the stupid things teenagers do on them?
If I can’t do any flips on the trampoline, I’m not sure it’s worth it.
Another question is whether there’s any simple neck-brace I can wear to avoid spinal injuries, which are the main thing I’m worried about. I’m okay with a 0.1% chance of pain, it’s life-altering injuries (or more to the point, work-altering injuries) that I want to avoid.
I don’t have any statistics handy, but once you learn flips from an instructor and practice about 1000 times carefully and under supervision over several sessions, it is a safe activity, because of the muscle memory taking over. Unless you make it unsafe by pushing your limits or jumping while impaired. Of course, there are always freak accidents like this, but the odds are at the noise level, such as being rear-ended hard when driving.
I once took a course, 30 hours, we jumped on a professional rectangular trampoline without vertical safety nets, supervised. I too was worried about spinal injuries. According to my teachers, most injuries do happen by jumping out of the bounds or impromper landing technique (taking the landing shock the spine by not angling hip/body correctly). With that said: Even without flips it was major Fun. Very fast learning curve (and I am a very slow learner with regards to complex coordinations), the freefalling… Also, flips are an advanced technique, we only attempted them by the end of the course; I felt quite safe by then from breaking my neck, I had learned to control the fall and the spinning. Please note that this risk assessment is based on me weighing 65kgs.
And yeah … they ARE large amounts of fun.