Advice from a street-skate veteran.

Click here for inline skating lessons & beginner group rollerblade courses.

We all stack every now and then - I seem have a “serious” one about once a year, which results in bad bruising, cuts and / or ripped clothing, although thankfully I’ve had nothing worse to date, touch wood.

I studied a style of Ju-Jitsu for just a year in the early 90s (and have always regretted not continuing), where one of the first things you learned was how to take a fall, on the grounds that no matter how many Dan grades you achieved, there would always be the odd occasion when you would be knocked down.

Basically, the philosophy is: Hit the ground, don’t let it hit you. If, having flailed your arms around wildly and staggered hither and yon, you find you are unable to regain stability and control, it’s often just safer to forget your fear, pick your spot and land on it in a controlled manner.

Falling forwards…
If I feel myself wobbling, or see someone close to me in trouble, the first thing I do is put my hands into a “karate chop” position, with fingers and thumbs tightly together. Your fingers are more likely to sustain serious injury if they are spread out - something most people do in the panic before a fall, so the above does go against instinct a bit.

If, having flailed and staggered, I am still going down, then it’s usually a case of trying to…

Look for a spot to fall and deliberately drop onto my knee pads, then (with fingers still tightly together in the karate chop position) fall forwards onto my outstretched palms (held up and in front at face / shoulder level), taking the immediate force on my wrist pads, absorbing as much of the rest as possible with my elbow joints and trying to keep chest and stomach off the floor, unless / until necessary.

There are other ways, but that’s the one I’ve used most often, without much worse than road rash on the forearms.

I would never use my fists to break a fall, ever.

Falling backwards…
Definitely more dangerous, as the opportunity for head injury is far greater. If you know you’re going to go over backwards, the first thing to do is TUCK YOUR CHIN FIRMLY INTO YOUR CHEST.

Finding a place to drop while falling backwards is hard, but what I try to do next is: Execute a “forced sit-down”, by buckling my knees and bending my torso forwards (having a heel brake makes this much easier). I try not to just land flat on my bum, but to roll on it and as I roll backwards, spread my arms, with palms down and (you’ve guessed) fingers tightly together. I try to take the main force of the fall on my shoulders and upper arms, but the palms can help. Normally with a backwards fall, I tend to throw my arms out wide, to spread the force, although this is risky in a crowd, so I used to practice falling backwards “scarecrow style” - upper arms out from the shoulders, with forearms hanging down towards the floor.

Author: Lightnix

Never street-skate without your protective pads.