All children should have something like a year of Ju Jitsu, which teaches falling as a daily part of class. I had three years, and it has saved me from injury on half a dozen occasions. On one occasion, I fell down a full flight of stairs head first, and instinctively performed a dive roll that resulted in no injuries and me landing on my feet and walking away from the stairs, thrilled at my good fortune. I'm not particularly graceful, and I've saved my wrists from breaking by knowing how to fall flat when I tumble on the street. Falling happens, and knowing how to fall is a basic skill all children should learn.
A few weeks ago my right foot slipped while walking on the slippery concrete sidewalk next to a supermarket -- i had stepped out on the very edge of the sidewalk (next to the actual asphalt roadway) to let someone pass with their shopping cart. I was too sleepy to quickly realise what was going on and quickly reposition my right foot, so I just fell like a stone onto the edge/curb of the sidewalk.
I thought I was a goner, as my sleepiness had sent my reaction time to shit, and here I was, falling onto concrete and asphalt -- right above the hard right-angled border between them. I then found myself lying on my back, clutching my purse, literally stunned silent; I was unable to verbally respond to any of the people who were asking me if I was OK or if they should call 911.
According to the initial/final positions and my injuries -- there was a wide (about 8cm wide) abrasion from below the middle of my left shin all the way to right below my knee -- my fall training had nevertheless kicked in. I'd let my lower leg make contact with the curb edge as much as possible and then (judging from the injury) once the contact point was almost at the knee, I rolled onto my buttocks/back (onto the sidewalk). I'm still shocked I walked away with no head/neck contact (no TBI for me) and no broken wrists -- and so were the passers-by! The abrasion seeped blood for a day or so, but that's nothing compared to the other possible injuries from slipping and falling onto concrete and asphalt.
I'm so happy my body found a safe way to dump about 1kJ (CG height * mass * g) in about a second -- anything else might have been disastrous.
That's utterly awesome. Good for you. What art did you train in, how often, and are your reflexes generally good? I am curious about how much good genetics or how much training are necessary to make something like this the average case.
I took Kuk Sool Won in college (Korean art focusing on joint locks, throws, pressure points, so not too different) and very nearly the first thing they taught us was how to break a fall in every direction.
Saved myself from being concussed twice in college (falling on ice, low speed collision with a car).
Now I do tai chi and I've had at least three bad stumbles on steps or sinkholes that would have put me in a leg cast ten years ago and I was just fine because I took all the weight off of the misplaced foot and sank to the ground.
Several of these remind me of similar injuries friends and family have experienced and I'm very glad I didn't have to go through the same thing.
If I were in charge of PE, every kid aged 10 and over would be a tumbling master. Then I would start teaching them sports.
> If I were in charge of PE, every kid aged 10 and over would be a tumbling master. Then I would start teaching them sports.
COUNTERPOINT: At age 13 we were being taught some tumbling in PE class. A mishap caused a minor neck injury. I am glad I didn't break my neck and end up paralyzed. I wore a neck brace for a couple weeks and had chiropractic adjustments for a couple months. However, that site has ever since been very susceptible to tightening of the muscles and a locus for headaches. Sometimes quite severe headaches. Somewhere in my twenties I learned to manage the headaches better but here I am in my fifties still managing headaches.
Having made this counterpoint from my own experience I think I agree with you about tumbling and others who have mentioned judo, BJJ or other martial arts training. I suspect on average it would be beneficial but the training itself is not risk free.
I've heard dodging drive-by's, dealing with carjackers, and defensive driving involving cars. I didn't have any training in being hit by them. ;) I'm curious what the car was doing and your reaction specifically that you think helped. It might be worth thinking on given how people in my area drive.
Aikido as well. I slipped getting out of the shower not too long ago and instinctively tucked my chin.
Another time more recently I was dashing up some concrete steps with a DSLR in my hands in front of me. My toe caught a step just as I hit the landing. I was headed towards a face first fall with the DSLR between me and the concrete. Instead I instinctively turned, rolled onto my back, and sprang back to my feet.
I had a similar experience when I was taking Aikido classes, dropped my motorcycle, (high-sided over the tank/bars) and instinctively tucked my head and rolled. I had a backpack on with schoolbooks in it and rolled back up to my feet, suffering nothing more than some mild bruises.
I'm a huge proponent of having kids do Judo. It's pretty safe, teaches people how to fall (and also defend themselves), and is amazingly good physical activity.
Indeed. For falls from relatively low heights, just having an instinctive reaction to protect vulnerable areas like your head and hips, to spread the impact over as wide an area as possible, and not to do things like reaching out with locked arms can avoid or mitigate many potential injuries.
Counterpoint. I had a friend who took Aikido where he learned rolling falls. He was quite proud of his abilities and I wound up taking him to the emergency room after he dislocated his shoulder doing a roll off his car hood.
Perhaps not to the same extent, but kids get the same skills out of any rough contact sport. You get tackled enough or dive enough and protecting your body gets instinctive.
Although I don't do it, my friends that do BJJ teach me a lot about it when I'm around them. One thing that's constantly fascinating about it is how most contact sports, including my starting one, are mostly two dimensional centered on good stance on one's feet trying to spot or counter bad situations that aren't. However, BJJ is three dimensional making a person comfortable in about every position imaginable countering falls or other entanglements from all directions.
So, over time, most contact sports couldn't even compare to BJJ on this topic in what situations it could prepare you for. An example that came to my mind exploring this was a car overturned in a lake. Being in a weird position, trying to stay calm, barely moving (big if holding breath), identifying direction/moves necessary, and taking just enough action are all pretty normal in BJJ. Whereas, those of just trained in high-impact, maybe-quick-moving standing sports such as karate/kickboxing or football might find that a much, more, uncomfortable situation. It's one reason I recommend cross-training in standing and ground arts.
"All children should have something like a year of Ju Jitsu, which teaches falling as a daily part of class."
Boom. Beat me to it. I did Karate originally but learned from Judo people to fall properly. I didn't practice it a ton like them but retained some of it. Also, to keep the body relaxed as it reduces injuries. The combo of relaxing and positioning from various martial arts helped when a person operating heavy equipment able to move 1000+ pounds kicked it into drive instead of just pulling it unstuck w/ me. Both of us pushed/pulled in a direction & he accidentally hit accelerator w/ my leg in between a metal wall and the thing coming at it w/ no way to go. I reflexively tilted my leg a safer way, let my body go limp against the wall, and SLAM leg got hit with the machine.
No damage that I can tell. Just a little pain instead of massive amount I expected in knee. My heart was pounding but I felt really good. Got to explain a key benefit of martial arts on top of admitting I was probably lucky as hell, too. :)
For similar reasons, if you ever have the opportunity to take a winter driving course on a test track, please do. When you get your driver's license, you don't get field training or field tested on how to operate a vehicle that you've lost control of. These skills will save your life, or someone else's.
I had a similar experience, took off on my bike, stepping up to get some more push. The handle slips off as I push that side over. Cue me going over that side, but pulling into a forward roll, and up onto my feet. BJJ paid off! Someone even clapped!
Saved my neck in soccer a couple times. Someone's leg comes out in front of me and I can either cause them a bad injury (I'm not small and I move fast) or go over it and land safely. Also makes for some fancy ball recovery moves.
Totally agree. I took one semester of Judo in college 20 years ago. Since I've fallen four times on asphalt, and miracuously, each time I somehow turned it into a roll and popped back up on my feet. The few that see it think this middle-aged guy just decided to do a crazy sommersault (in odd circumstances). I felt like I had a superpower :)
I heard exactly this from someone who practiced either Ju Jitsu or Taekwondo (can't recall which one) - he got into a motorcycle accident and was thrown over the handlebars totally uninjured due to instinctively landing how he learned to in martial arts.
As a (washed up) climber, falling is something I think about a lot. It turns out that sit harness used by recreational climbers are unsafe. In a catastrophic fall, the harness directs force into the lumbar spine in an anterior direction. An old study on industrial fall arrest found that loadings in this orientation can produce spinal injury around 4kN (don't quote me on this number, it's been a year since I read the paper.) It gets worse. If a falling climber rotates during the fall, load will be applied left-right above the pelvis. This orientation decreases the spinal injury threshold further.
A chest harness, on the other hand, loads the body in a vertical orientation applying compressive force to the spine. This pushes the survivability margin out toward 7kN and beyond the maximal loading forces you can experience in a factor 2 fall.
If you're healthy and using a normal, dynamic rope, no it won't. It won't even hurt. A factor 2 fall onto webbing or dyneema can totally mess you up though, even from a couple of feet.
The UIAA (climbing standards body) disagrees with you. The specs of climbing ropes are set by them to result in no injury in worst case falls. And plenty of people have taken factor 2 falls with no ill effect.
You'll want to retire that rope, but nope, I've had a couple of high fall factor falls with no ill effects. A true fall factor 2 fall is impossible to achieve in a real setting (knot, etc.), but I've taken a prob 1.6 or so.
The Canadian Medical Association seems to have a similar tradition, judging that on "Cigarette smoking: an underused tool in high-performance endurance training" (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3001541/)
> "Scientists are now encouraging people to learn how to fall to minimise injury"
Learning to fall and/or crash is one of the most important skills you pickup when you start mountain biking or skateboarding or other similar sports where crashing and crashing hard is a way of life. The amount of freaky stuff I got up from when I was hugely into mountain biking is somewhat mind boggling to me now.
Excellent article. Can attest to the great value of learning to fall well from alpine ski racing and training experience. Learning the moves to they are 'instinctive' and happen without thinking, pull in or press together limbs so they don't get snagged, roll, etc. Mostly, stay aware every microsecond and keep working with whatever bits of control you retain.
Very key concept also mentioned in the article -- fear of falling increases likelihood of falling. Work to learn to fall, don't fear it, fall well, and it won't happen so much and won't be as damaging when it does. While I did have my share of injuries and close escapes, decades later, the ability to react, slip-but-not-fall, or fall well still comes in handy. I still think about getting some formal martial arts training to add their techniques to the skill-set.
Good to see the knowledge getting into more scientific study and therapy situations.
I have the same experience. I fell in almost 120km/h in a slope earlier this year, but know how to not become a ragdoll. I was completely fine, except having to walk far up the hill to retrieve some of my gear.
Moral of the story: If you're going to jump from an airplane without a parachute make sure to aim for something soft like pine trees in snow or a building with a glass ceiling.
«Young people break their wrists because they shoot their hands out quickly when falling. Older people break their hips because they don’t get their hands out quickly enough. You’d much rather break a wrist than a hip.»
I once broke my wrist while landing from a unicycle fall (while trying to jump on a sidewalk). I felt unlucky to have a broken wrist, but maybe it saved my head.
I think some protection gear make people not learn to fall correctly. For instance wrist protectors for snowboard. When falling lightly without it, you quickly learn not to save yourself by planting your hands in the snow. But when having them, you don't get that feedback, so when a worse accident happen your instinct is wrong.
TL;DR - maximize deceleration time whenever and however possible - crumple your legs into a roll if you are falling straight down or crumple your arms if you are falling forward or backward. Also remove fall risks by wearing better shoes and removing slippery hazards.
The martial art Aikido has a focus on falling techniques, which are used to allow for training – To practice Aikido, someone has to be the victim, and it is best if they remain uninjured when thrown to the ground ;)
In military parachuting, how to fall is one of the first things you learn.
The PLF (Parachute Landing Fall) is taught as a safe way to distribute the force of your impact with the ground gradually over more surface area of your body as opposed to just the bottoms of your feet.
The former can bruise the hips shoulders and occasionally ring your bell, the latter breaks ankles.
When jumping a typical static line square or circle (ie T 10-D) parachute your descent speed (full combat load) can be as fast as jumping off the peak of the roof of a one story home without a parachute. Your lateral speed can often be 10 knots.
I was in tumbling as a young child and involved in wrestling for many years after that. I've had numerous serious falls that have resulted in no injury (other than some bruising). While others that have had similar falls have had fractures.
I can definitely testify to the importance of making falling an instinctual response. When I had my most recent and only fall since being a fully grown man (30 years old, off an unsteady step ladder) I felt my body go completely limp right before my ribs smashed into the step ladder and my subsequent hitting of the ground. While falling I just knew I was going to be hurt, however I ended up only having the wind knocked out of me and a slight bit of bruising at my ribs.
I'd encourage healthy people to take up an activity that teaches them how to fall instinctually based on my own experiences.
Many comments mention martial arts which help during a fall. I have 14 years of kung fu (I am dreadful) and 20 of volleyball (both pure amateur). This combination saved me many times, in various situations. I am also the only player in my team who instinctively makes a roll ever time I fall for the ball.
I wonder whether it's actually good advice to hold the handrail when using stairs. It may reduce the risk of falling, but doesn't everyone dragging their hand across the same bar transmit a bunch of germs?
What I tend to do is hover my hand over the rail, without actually making contact unless it's necessary.
Isn't it a better idea to let your body be exposed to germs and learn to fight them? I do try to avoid touching the bathroom door after washing my hands, and I wash my hands immediately after shaking hands with "that one guy", but that's about it.
Are you implying that it's illogical to avoid some shared surfaces, if you can't avoid all of them? I don't really have enough evidence to argue either way, so I just avoid touching things when a convenient alternative exists.
