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[What is plyometrics good for besides injury?  Is it a good cardio workout?]

Well, plyometrics (in the Don Chu sense) is not a good cardio workout at all -
it's short bouts of high-intensity power training with long rest periods.  
It's really for strength and power development, at least as Chu outlines it.

What's it good for?  It's wonderful for conditioning athletes who will
experience similar stresses during their sport.  Basketball players are
probably one of the best examples of people who will benefit from having
some plyometrics included as part of their training program.

That said...

They're a highly specific training technique when properly applied, but
that doesn't mean that plyometrics is appropriate training for every
person, or even every athlete, or even every muscle group.  For example,
upper-body plyometrics might be appropriate to shot-putters or tennis
players, who would have relatively little need to perform lots of 
jumping drills.

Plyometrics often gets a bad rap because it's one of a large number of
very specific training modalities that gets misapplied to the general
fitness population and/or overused/misused even with populations it might
be appropriate for.  All too often instead of looking at the specific
demands of the activity and choosing training modalities to get the
exerciser to their goals people start pulling tools like plyometrics out
of a hat for the sake of variety.  This usually results in misuse, overuse,
and injury.

Sure, plyometrics are high-risk.  So is basketball.  Training that may
condition a player to better withstand the stresses of basketball may 
offset the risk of the training modality itself (especially if properly
applied).  However, if there's not a clear benefit (like increasing vertical
jump for a recreational exerciser who just wants to lose ten pounds) then
the risk of engaging in plyometrics may be too high for that exerciser.

					larry...