how do you get hurt while wakeboarding? I've tried it once or twice and besides drowning it seemed pretty safe . I'm really curious cause I want to get into it
At the speed you're going when you edge to the wake, the water is almost like concrete. When I tore my ACL I was coming out of a backroll[1] and cased upslope of the opposite wake so all my speed and rotation came down on my back leg, compressing my knee and snapping the ACL.
When I went to my surgeon he said I was the 4th wakeboarder he had done that summer and asked me why it was so rough on our knees lol...
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dC3TEqcyT24
EDIT
It is amazingly fun though. If you can ride behind a nice boat with big wake and speakers so you can jam out while riding, it's a great experience. Plus, wakeboarding is social and always takes a minimum 2 people. Learn to drive the boat properly and always give some gas money, and you'll be invited over and over.
I gave up skating and eventually wake boarding (tore an ACL) for the same reasons. Surfing is something I feel like I can do forever. Snowboarding is also fine a few times/year. If I moved back to the mountains, I could see where doing it all season would end up also being pretty rough on the body though.
Something I've been doing a lot the past few years which is surprisingly not that rough on the body is jiu-jitsu. I did get dinged and bruised when starting out, but nothing like I used to get skating or wake boarding.