Basejumper.com - archive

I injured my neck several years ago from a very hard opening on a base jump. It was on a new vented canopy, slider up, 4 second delay, 38 inch pilot chute, flat and stable fall, etc. Pretty standard. Anyway, I ignored it for years and starting having complications. I discovered today that the lump that resulted in the back of my neck was actually a large fracture in one of my lower neck bones. And now it's causing all sorts of problems. Anyone else here have neck injuries from opening shock?

One thing that put me out of BASE jumping after a measly 30 jumps was a slammer in Idaho. Scary as it was painful as shit and my left arm went completely numb immediately. I eventually recovered enough to do tandem video at the DZ again, but further BASE was out of the question.

Saw multiple doctors, chiropractor, PT, the works and nothing really helped. MRI seemed to indicate a general degeneration, probably from doing a ton of tandem video.

Eventually said screw it and learned to live with it. Ironically what seemed to "fix" it most was when I was snowboarding and fell hard on my back. The "reverse whiplash" IMMEDIATELY made my neck feel better, and at present, if I had a mind to, I think I could take up BASE again.

But my neck still makes "bag full of gravel" noises when I move it to full range of motion.

Sooo, my advice is go snowboarding.

That and stretching exercises. That did help a bit.

it's a fact that hundreds of No Slider jumps will take it's toll on your back & neck .
.

Injured my neck 2 years ago, hard opening from terminal jumping (Brento)... gained some weight durnig a period which caused the load to be bigger/heavier and my body weaker.

After 3 terminal jumps I could not move without painkillers... ignored that by eating some more pills and did another 20-30 jumps (both terminal and slider down)... Until it was basically unbearable... Put the basegear on a shelf for a while, but continued skydiving.

Got a diagnose of "whiplash injury". Tried loads of things.

Massage - helped 1-2 weeks and then everything was back.
Acupuncture - helped 2-4 weeks and then everything was back.
Rehab - after an intensive 2 months, almost no progress.
Yoga (bikram) - after 10 sessions I was off the pills, still only roughly 60% of normal movement. Now, after 1 year of intensive (2-3 times a week) practice Iam almost fully recovered.... And the rehab now gives much better results as well.

In the hindsight, it wasnt my best decission to continue jumping after the "injury jump"... but yeah, if you're in a physically good state, this should not happen.. :)

Edit: The doctor that diagnosed me told me something like this "a normal whiplash takes at least 5 years to recover with some good physioterapeut rehab work, if you're lucky..."

to simply answer your question, yes.

many continuous stiff openings while wearing a heavy camera rig caused a pretty serious whiplash injury to my neck. add insult to injury, a PC hesi induced hard opening, off Tombstone no less, did me in for a couple months.

Yoga is soo good for all kinds of shit

Had a hard opening at about 12,000' on a skydive high pull. Neck hurt for about a year and it took a couple more years for it to totally go away.
I kept jumping at the same rate after that and further jumping didn't seem to aggravate it.

Since then i have made it a habit to touch my chin to my chest right after i pitch.

My neck hurts sometimes!

lonster you crack me up..

my neck hurts but that's what happens when they cut out my T-1 and shave my T-2 in half..

but I still jump

yoga is awesome

Yes, neck injury from hard openings. Every couple of month I need to go to therapy. Last injury was about 4 weeks ago from another hard opening. Pain killers do the job for now but I know i will get the check in a few years... Until then its party on :-)

Hard openings, hard openings, hard openings. That is what I read. So, take them away and problem solved.

Slider down down jumps, no more then 2 seconds, max. And unvented (for me) only. Had some slammers with a vented troll.

Slider up jumps, chose slider accordingly, and don't dump in a full track.

+10