Been watching some old Olympic diving events, and it's always looked quite terrifying.

As a kid, I used to spend about every day in the summers running and jumping head first from either the 3m springboard or 5m platform. I wasn't taught how to do it and so most of the time I was stupid and often dove head-first with no hands to break the surface of the water. In other words, my head would be the first thing to touch the water. I probably did this about 50-100x a day about every summer for several years. I'd also run and do front and backflips, often landing badly. I'm sure I whacked the back of my head into the water a decent amount of times as well.

Yet I don't recall anyone, including myself, ever knocked out or showing serious signs of concussion at any point. I also can't recall seeing pro divers seriously injured with head injury from faulty landings unless they hit the diving board/platform, etc.

Is the head hitting the water really not as dangerous as I'm imagining? In my case, it was almost always from the 3m board with the additional height of however high I could jump.

Obviously, it's an incredibly stupid idea to dive into water without using the hands for a number of reasons including hitting the bottom of the pool surface. Everyone should be properly trained/instructed on how to safely dive from any height. And I can't imagine diving from 10m Olympic heights regardless of skill level.