Common Trampoline Pains: Causes and How to Avoid or Treat
Trampolines can be exciting, especially if you are a young child. They open up a whole new world of fun that children like to explore. Even adults do not get enough of trampolines as in America alone, over 500,000 trampolines are sold each year.
Many of these trampolines are used by adults to help them get their figure back or tone their bodies so they can make it to the next high school reunion and make everyone else jealous.
Trampolines have a variety of uses and one thing that makes them popular, besides the bouncing, is that they can be easy on the joints. But you still have to be careful when you use a trampoline as they can cause pain to different areas of your body.
What we are going to do here is go through those areas and identify causes, give you tips on how to avoid them, and what you can do to treat them.. With a little knowledge you can keep your trampoline use safe for you and your family.
Pain Related to Trampoline Use 101
Basic trampoline safety:
Before we get to the specific pain issues that come with some trampoline use, it is a wise idea to present to you some basic trampoline safety tips. These tips will help you avoid some of the injuries and pain that come from trampoline misuse:
- Stick to one person to the trampoline at a time
- Don’t let beginners do somersaults
- Keep the springs, hooks and metal frame covered with shock absorbing pads
- Keep the trampoline a safe distance from buildings, sand boxes, jungle gyms and so on
- Keep ladders away from all trampolines
- Make sure the trampoline use is supervised, especially for children
The Many Trampoline Pains You May Experience
When you are on a trampoline, your whole body is exposed and can become victim to the pain that afflicts each part of your body. We are going to go through each trampoline pain you can get, save for back and knee pain (those are written about in other articles here), and hopefully give you the cause, how to avoid it and the treatment.
Keep in mind, we are only talking about pain here and not specifically about injuries. Some areas may have more information than others and some information may be the same for multiple pains.
Trampoline Neck Pain
When a child or an adult gets excited about their trampoline they can become careless. They will hold their head and neck wrong causing strain on the muscles.
Straining the neck is a common trampoline pain and the way to avoid getting it is to stretch your neck muscles before jumping on the trampoline and watch how you hold your head. Treatment can be an ice pack, heat packs, medication and rest
Trampoline Abdominal Pain
There are two causes for pain in this region of your body. First, your muscles are not used to the exercise and two, your stomach muscles tighten to help you keep your balance as you go up and down.
You really can’t avoid this pain until your abdominal muscles get used to the new exercises. Treatment is rest, and then do light workouts till your body can handle the workload.
Trampoline Chest Pain
The cause of this pain may be that you over did your exercises, moved your arms to much or landed wrong. You could have pulled a muscle, knocked the air out of your lungs or your body is not used to the movement and reacted badly to it.
To avoid this type of pain, watch how you land, how you move your arms and be careful. Treatment includes resting, seeing your doctor, and do good stretching exercises
Trampoline Ear Pain
Jumping on a trampoline can jar your ear drum and other internal parts. This will cause you some pain and lot of discomfort. It is hard to avoid this pain but you should double check how you are landing.
If you are landing wrong, then the impact is not being absorbed causing the impact to affect your ears. Treatment for this is just time and making sure you land properly.
Trampoline Foot Pain
This can be caused by turning your ankle when you land. Or it may have been caused because your ligaments and muscles were not stretched properly and not elastic enough to handle the landings.
To avoid this pain, stretching exercises are important and by not being so vigorous when you do jumps. Treatment for this situation is rest, medication and stretching.
Trampoline Hip Pain
The hip can handle a lot of movement but it has its limits. If you experience hip pain, you may have done too much to soon, strained a muscle or torn some cartilage. You may have just over done it when you were on the trampoline.
To avoid this pain, stretch all your muscles, take it easier on the trampoline, and watch your twists, somersaults etc., Treatment ranges from medication, to ice packs to doing low impact exercises
Trampoline Heel Pain
There are a number of causes fro this affliction. You could have damaged your achilles heel or contracted plantar fasciitis. Or you just landed with too much weight on your heel.
Avoiding this issue is to watch how you land to see if you are putting too much stress on your heels, or you strained your plantar fascia. Treatment for these conditions is to go to your doctor and let hi or her examine you and recommend a good course of action.
Trampoline Joint Pain
The cause of this pain is basically over doing the exercises you perform on your trampoline. While trampolines do absorb a lot of the impact that comes with jumping, your joints still feel the effects of those sudden stops.
To avoid this pain is easy. You just need to cut back on those exercises that overwork your joints. The treatment can be ice packs, heating pads, rest and a few pain pills. Time helps clear up any over us issues you may have.
Trampoline Leg Pain
Your legs are filled with muscles, tendons and ligaments. A lack of stretching and over use can lead you to have leg pain after you use your trampoline. Or you made a wrong move and pulled or torn a muscle, ligament, etc.
To avoid this type of pain, you should take the time to stretch properly and watch the maneuvers you do involving your legs. Don’t go too far, too fast. Also the treatment will be pain killers,, ice packs, or heating pads, rest and maybe a visit to your doctor.
Trampoline Stomach Pain
The usual cause of this pain is that your stomach muscles are not ready for the hard workout. The continua relaxing and tensing of your stomach muscles as you jump can cause you a lot of pain.
To be able to avoid this type of pain, you should stretch your stomach muscles before you do any exercises, do lighter workouts till your stomach muscles are ready for tougher routines and so on., The treatment comprises of rest, stretching and relaxing.
Trampoline Shoulder Pain
Trampolines do not directly cause shoulder pain unless you land on your shoulder in the wrong way. Then you may have seriously hurt yourself. The direct cause of shoulder pain are the different arm exercises you do while jumping on the trampoline.
To avoid these aches and pains, you need to do proper shoulder stretching exercises, ore than one, and watch how you land. The treatment is going to be rest, ice packs, heating pads, medication, physical therapy and more. It depends on how serious the cause of the pain is.
Trampoline Tailbone Pain
Repetitive actions, like jumping or landing on a trampoline can cause your tailbone to hurt. Or you may weigh too much when you start your new trampoline workout program.
To avoid this type of pain, you should watch the amount of reps you do with each exercise. The treatment involves adjusting your sleeping position, use extra cushions when you sit down, and the usual heat and ice treatments as well as medication.
Do Trampolines Cause Pain
In America, thousands of kids and adults are brought to the hospital or their doctors’ offices because of pain ad injuries they suffered while using their trampolines. Many parents and doctors blame the trampoline as the cause of these injuries and assorted pains. But do trampolines cause pain?
Trampolines are inanimate objects that cannot move. They also do not have a mind where they can make a cognitive decision to hurt one of their users. If one was honest, they would see that trampolines do not cause any of the pain or injury suffered by those who use them.
What causes these pains and injuries is the misuse of trampolines, the failure to stretch muscles and limbs properly, horseplay, and other bad decisions by the users. Trampolines just happen to be the unlucky place where these injuries have taken place.
If people want to cut down on pain and injury, then they should learn how to properly use a trampoline, do their exercises and recreational activities properly and be a little bit more responsible. Just because someone gets an idea about a unique maneuver they could do on a trampoline doe snot mean it should be done.
Can Trampolines Help With Pain
You can see that if not done correctly and you do not stretch properly, exercising on trampolines may cause you a lot of pain. But there is a good side to the story as well as trampolines can help you with some pain management.
While there are many back ailments that cannot be helped by using a trampoline, Spondylolisthesis is not one of them. A trampoline can strengthen those muscles suffering from this ailment and help take a lot of the pain away.
Also, trampolines remove a lot of the issues that come with impacts as you jog, jump and walk. The trampoline mat will absorb a lot of the impact and give your joints a break. It will also help distribute the impact to different parts of your body protecting one or more joints.
You May Feel Trampoline Exercise Pain
This is a no brainer. Exercise pain will take place no matter where you do your new exercises, even if you do them on a trampoline. You may not have exercised for years but now want to tone your body or get it back into better shape. This decision will open you up to exercise pain.
You can’t escape it because your body is not used to it. It will take time and a lot of daily stretching before your body will ease up on the exercise pain. Getting on a trampoline may see like a way to avoid this pain, unfortunately, you are out of luck.
A trampoline may lessen the pain you feel but your body is still not used to the new activities you are doing. This means you will still feel trampoline exercise pain until your body adjusts.
Achieving Trampoline Muscle Will Result in Some Muscle Pain
You have heard the old saying, no pain, no gain? Well turning to a trampoline in hopes of eliminating any muscle pain is futile. A trampoline will distribute impacts and help minimalize any pain you may feel doing traditional exercises on harder surfaces. But you will still feel muscle pain.
Muscle pain can be good and it will go away in a couple of days. There is bad muscle pain and yo should not try to power through it. The bad muscle pain is an indication that you have something wrong. Some of those ailments are:
- Pulled muscle
- Trouble with your joints
- Torn muscles
- Torn ligaments
- Torn cartilage
- And more
When you get bad muscle pain, you should stop your trampoline exercises and see your doctor. If you ignore the pain and try to gain, you may make a bad situation worse.
Mini or Regular Trampolines: Which Are Better For Pain
Actually that i shard to say as a lot depends on the type of exercises your do, the type of recreational activities your perform and how you land on both versions of trampolines.
A mini trampoline may cause a few more aches and pains as they do not have the large shock absorbing power or bounce the larger trampolines have. For large trampolines the temptation to do more outrageous twists and stunts is hard to beat. Something may go wrong and you land the wrong way hurting yourself.
The key to avoiding pain on either version of a trampoline is to not over do it and do not get cocky. Know your limitations and know what can or cannot be done on either trampoline
Our Rebounder Recommendations | Our Rating | Images (click for more) |
|---|---|---|
94 | 
| |
93 | 
| |
90 | 
|
Some Final Words
There are a lot of detractors out there who see the pain that comes from using a trampoline as a menace that should be stopped. They feel that trampolines should be locked up and when in use only supervised by professionals.
This is the wrong way to think and the wrong attitude to have about trampolines. These exercise and recreational tools can be be a great contributor to your healthier lifestyle. They can also be a great help getting you back into shape and looking good.
But as you can see, a lot of pain can be felt when you use trampolines. If you use a little common sense, do not go past your limitations and so on, you can avoid a lot of the pain associated with using a trampoline.
Avoiding those activities that result in pain, will help you get a lot of fun out of owning your own trampoline.
Looking for a trampoline? Don't buy something you'll hate
Here is a list of our buying guides to help you find the best for your needs:
