Michigan Trampoline Park Injury

A trampoline is a training device and a gymnastics apparatus that requires caution. Certified gymnastic instructors use skill assessment and progressive learning programs so that basic trampoline skills are mastered before more advanced skills are even attempted. In gymnastics, trampoline safety is a priority and strict rules are followed to prevent injury.

A recreational concept that by physical design and operation dismisses the precautions observed by the gymnastics community and general trampoline safety standards and exposes its customers to death and life-changing injuries. Trampoline parks offer no skill assessment or instruction, and expect customers, of any age or experience level, to know how not to exceed their skill level while jumping at a trampoline park.

History – The trampoline park first came into existence in the late 1950s. Many trampoline parks were outdoors and consisted of pits in the ground with trampolines inside and level with the ground. There was no skill assessment or instruction offered at the trampoline parks. The trampoline parks merely sold admission. Deaths and injuries became rampant and by the mid 1960s the trampoline parks were out of business from lawsuits and insurance costs.

Why aren’t trampoline parks safe? The average trampoline park customer is unaware of the hidden dangers inherent in trampoline park design, operation and features. These include:

• Children under 6 should not be allowed on trampolines. Who says so? Medical groups, Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), the warnings on backyard/consumer trampolines. What is the policy of trampoline parks, such as Sky Zone? – “If you can walk you can jump.” (My youngest clients are a 4 year old with a fractured femur and a 5 year old with a fractured leg below the knee)
• The trampoline beds are thick, stiff, surrounded by 100 heavy springs, and sealed creating a diaphragm effect, as compared to the less tensioned and perforated gymnastic, and backyard trampolines. The trampoline beds vary in tension from the center to the sides, and recoil with tremendous bone breaking speed/force. (My 4 year and 5 year old clients’ legs were fractured by the force of the trampoline snapping back into position.
• The trampolines are interconnected and jumpers are continually at risk from other jumpers who may jump on the same trampoline and cause a collision or double jump (where the recoil or snap back of the trampoline bed causes injuries); and energy transfers occur from jumpers on other trampolines in the field of trampolines making the trampoline surfaces unpredictable.
• Trampoline parks purposely offer no skill assessment or instruction. Their employees are prohibited from offering any help on how to jump. As far as the trampoline parks are concerned, it is up to the jumpers to know how not to exceed their skill level. The average jumper has no knowledge of how to perform basic skills, let alone what is beyond their skill level.
• Advanced Skills – Advanced trampoline jumping maneuvers are especially dangerous for the non-athletic and/or untrained jumper. The high risk of injury when exceeding one’s skill level is cautioned against by the USAG, ASTM, CPSC, and even the IATP in its never published/self-suppressed 2015 Risk Management Manual.

ADVANCED SKILLS (As defined by ASTM F2470-15)

• Aerial Maneuver – Inverting the body (flips/somersaults), risk of death or paralysis from landing on head/neck.
• Jumping Horizontally from Trampoline to Trampoline – The trampoline is propelling a jumper sideways making it difficult to jump in the center of the trampoline and control landings . . . Resulting in off balance landings . . . Resulting in contacting harder areas of trampoline bed around the perimeter . . . Resulting in contacting the edge of the padding, the thin padding covering springs, chains, steel frames, steel posts . . . Causing spontaneous fractures of feet, ankles, leg bones, hip joints and the tearing of ligaments and tendons in the joints.
• Jumping Off of Sidewalls – The change in body position makes it difficult to land safely on the adjacent horizontal trampoline.