plyometrics is a very dangerous method of exercising. there are no exceptions and the damage is cumulative. plyometrics involve jumping and landing both involving high acceleration and impact forces. my premise is that all injuries (i. e. tissue damage) are caused by the application of forces that exceed the structural tolerances of the tissues injured. a bone fracture is an obvious example. simply put plyometrics exposes a trainee to injury level forces and this is unnecessary to gain the adaptive benefits of exercise. the problem is not just limited to the spectrum of acute athletic injuries. those high level forces that are not high enough to cause catastrophic tissue failure can still proceed to damage structures like articular cartilage and loosen joint systems (muscle insertions ligaments musculotendinous junctions) in a sub-clinical way. this risk is elevated because of the risk of slipping due to the nature of the exercise. these repeated impact forces contributes to chronic degenerative disease with osteoarthritis as the ultimate result. articular cartilage can be slowly and significantly damaged over time and this has now been shown on runners where sequential mris were done over about 4 years. many people do not know that this asymptomatic damage is irreversible and over time this cumulative damage becomes debilitating.
what are the risks of plyometric exercises?