There are a few things involved in skydiving... none are too serious as there are a lot of old and out of shape people skydiving. First, it's physical.... getting the gear on, climbing in and out of the aircraft, practicing the skydive on the ground on creepers or just by bending over and going through the moves.
The skydive is very comfortable if you are relaxed. One big challenge is opening shock. You are in 120mph freefall and you deploy your parachute. If you have good body position and the staged opening of the parachute goes properly, opening shock is not too back... although you do decellerate rapidly. Opening shock on my neck is the only part of the skydive that I'm concerned about. If I jump, I'll wear a soft collar and I'll stabilize my head with my hand after deploying... should not be too bad. If you are not already an experienced skydiver, you can not have this plan... things happen too fast in skydiving and it takes a lot of practice to do it right... and some skill too.
If your parachute opens quickly or if you don't have proper body position when you open, you can get 'spanked' by a too rapid opening and too rapid decelleration. That's why they call it opening shock.
The landing is not problem for me... but it might be for you. I have 850+ jumps and have fallen down on landing maybe 4 or 5 times. For a tandem jump, most DZ's are pretty good about easy landings. If you go, I'd make sure that you only jump when you'll get a consistent breeze for landing... then it's a piece of cake. If you have changing winds or even zero wind landings can be tough.... although a good tandem pilot will not have a problem with it.
I have a friend who's son was very seriously injured on a tandem jump. Choose your DZ like you would choose a doctor. I know tandem masters who have more than 20,000 jumps. Go to a busy DZ with a PROFESSIONAL operation. Don't go to the DZ that's like the one in the movie Fandango.
Skydiving is a wonderful sport and I really miss it. I still haven't sold my rigs... don't know if I'll use them again, but they are still a big part of who I am (or was.)
Mark
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