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What really prompted the direction away from a foam pit were some of the higher-level athletes, that are also coaches. They adamantly refuse to enter a foam pit, and with good reason. You’ll find anything from: used band-aids; to broken toenails; to pretty much every form of human excretion known, in a foam pit. They’ve seen it all. 

· Air-pads are much much cleaner: In fact, they can actually be cleaned, where a foam pit cannot. From the moment new foam cubes are thrown in a pit they begin to disintegrate and create a fine bacteria-laden dust, which may also contain toxic fire-retardant chemicals. This gets on clothing, and is also breathed in. It’s extremely hard to get this stuff out of clothing so you can imagine how hard it is to get it out of one's lungs. 

· A five-foot air-pad will always be five feet: Foam will immediately begin to break down and the original height will drop. Jump in and that entry point is now even lower. Every time someone enters the pit afterward, it becomes even more shallow as cubes are pushed aside. An air-pad, however, will immediately return to it's original height. 

· What’s at the bottom? In a foam pit you can’t see the bottom so you don’t know. The fact is; there is a bottom, and a five-foot foam pit is rarely five feet of foam. Whether it be a net, a trampoline surface, (common in some parks), a resi-pit or a layer of foam, eventually one gets through the foam cubes and may hit bottom. Because you can’t see it, it’s unexpected and can cause an injury simply because it’s a sudden change in density. 

· Would anyone intentionally dive head-first into an air-pad? Not many would, but this happens all the time in a foam pit. Free-foam tends to give one the impression that they can’t be hurt, like they’re entering a pool of water. Ironically, I believe one is safer landing head-first into our air-pad  (I can’t speak for others) than into free-foam. When you enter a free-foam pit, whatever cubes are not pushed out of the way are compressed and will become more dense, although granted they will do the job of slowing one down while that happens. On the other hand, after landing on an air-pad, air is expelled and it becomes softer the deeper down you go. It's not hard to imagine a scenario where an arm is caught underneath a falling body; it happens all the time. In a foam pit that arm is now at the mercy of this denser, shifting foam and can be twisted in any number of directions while a body is continuing to fall on top of it. Now picture the same scenario into an air-pad, where the impact area is stable and getting softer, not harder over the duration of the landing. On most air-pads, how fast the air is expelled on impact is adjustable, resulting in an even softer landing if desired. 

· So what’s the bottom line? Which one is better? While there can be no debate as to which one is more sanitary, some still argue that a foam pit will always be safer. I believe they can be under perfect conditions, but conditions are rarely perfect. In fact, the characteristics of a foam pit will begin to degrade from the moment it’s new, and change every time someone jumps in. Nothing exists that can totally eliminate any chance of an injury. Again, I can’t speak for other air-pads, but I’m convinced that our impact absorption system is hand’s-down safer than a foam pit, and likely most other air-pads as well. Wondering where ours came from? https://i2kairpad.com/