Fall Down Go Boom

[NCSkater02]

Four words: Attitude. Spiral. Toe. Pick.

Ouch. The one thing about skating with kids is that I can't say the four letter words I really want to.

I have a badly swollen knee (with an itty-bitty bruise) that hurts to bend--but I can walk on it--two sore arms, and a bruise on my right hip from sliding on the ice. Good thing I didn't have to go to work today.

[SynchroSk8r114]

Ha, yeah I almost had one of those incidents today while heading into a double salchow from an inside sprial...all while trying to avoid a little girl. Oh, the joys of being the more experienced skater - you're always the one sacrificing yourself for the safety of others. ;)

[Skittl1321]

So sorry :(

[Query]

I've posted on this subject too many times in the forum, so I'll make this a private message.

I have a badly swollen knee (with an itty-bitty bruise) that hurts to bend--but I can walk on it--two sore arms, and a bruise on my right hip from sliding on the ice.

Sliding on the ice with bare skin might create an abrasion, but not a bruise. If you land on the ice hard one one or a few body parts with too little surface area, it has too absorb all the energy and momentum of the fall. If you started a roll or slide before you actually hit, nothing bad would have happened.

You may wish to look at my page on falling

http://www.geocities.com/grunes/falling.html

or take lessons from someone on the same thing. Practice makes perfect.

[Morgail]

Isn't Fall Down Go Boom someone's name on here? heehee

But ouch! That sounds really painful. I've done bad stuff to my knees skating before too (from dislocation to just falling really hard on them). Get some rest and lots of ice. And I can't count how many times I've tumbled over my toepick on a spiral. Ah, the hazards of skating...

[doubletoe]

I've posted on this subject too many times in the forum, so I'll make this a private message.



Sliding on the ice with bare skin might create an abrasion, but not a bruise. If you land on the ice hard one one or a few body parts with too little surface area, it has too absorb all the energy and momentum of the fall. If you started a roll or slide before you actually hit, nothing bad would have happened.

You may wish to look at my page on falling

http://www.geocities.com/grunes/falling.html

or take lessons from someone on the same thing. Practice makes perfect.

So. . . I'm not sure exactly how private this message was supposed to be, but since it's out there, let me say that if you have successfully avoided banging your knee on a catch-toe spiral fall, you have better reaction time than the top skaters in the world! This is one of those falls that sends you straight down, and there's just not a whole lot you can do but try to keep your face from hitting the ice.

But to avoid any repeats, try lifting the toes of the skating foot during spirals. Somebody told me about that after my catch-toe spiral accident about 10 years ago and I haven't had one since! :D

Get well soon, NCSkater! :)

[dbny]

Sliding on the ice with bare skin might create an abrasion, but not a bruise. If you land on the ice hard one one or a few body parts with too little surface area, it has too absorb all the energy and momentum of the fall. If you started a roll or slide before you actually hit, nothing bad would have happened.

You may wish to look at my page on falling

http://www.geocities.com/grunes/falling.html

or take lessons from someone on the same thing. Practice makes perfect.

Do you actually skate? I don't mean just around in a circle, but really skate, lessons, etc.

[ibreakhearts66]

Do you actually skate? I don't mean just around in a circle, but really skate, lessons, etc.

whoa little harsh.

i definitely see both sides. if you are doing a catch foot at speed and you catch a toe-pick, you have almost no chance of turning yourself to slide out of the fall. i know that when i've done that, i hit the ice before i even realize it has happened.

but...i have learned now how to trip on spirals with only minimum damage. i twist myself a little, and manage to slide on my hip. but, i actually think i can do this only because of my huge toe-pick fear (tripped over one, nearly broke my hip and ruptured a tendon in my knee). saving a spiral fall isn't as easy as you think, so please, don't be so condescending (and if no one else thinks you were a little harsh, i apologize, but your above statement wasn't very nice)

[dbny]

whoa little harsh.


Yes, it is, and I rarely come off that way. I have a special dislike of such absolute claims that serious injuries can be avoided by falling correctly. Falls are accidents, and as such, are unpredictable. Of course we do know that certain things will cause falls, but when those things may happen is a surprise, and dealing with surprises is a notoriously difficult enterprise. No amount of practice or training is going to prevent all injuries resulting from falls, just as no amount of training will prevent all drownings.

NCSkater02 got hurt in an accident on the ice. Preaching about practicing proper falls is not helpful, it's offensive, IMO.

[ibreakhearts66]

Yes, it is, and I rarely come off that way. I have a special dislike of such absolute claims that serious injuries can be avoided by falling correctly. Falls are accidents, and as such, are unpredictable. Of course we do know that certain things will cause falls, but when those things may happen is a surprise, and dealing with surprises is a notoriously difficult enterprise. No amount of practice or training is going to prevent all injuries resulting from falls, just as no amount of training will prevent all drownings.

NCSkater02 got hurt in an accident on the ice. Preaching about practicing proper falls is not helpful, it's offensive, IMO.

ahhh OMG i am so sorry! i totally misread all of these. i thought that the "do you actually skate?" was query's response to doubletoe saying that you can't save yourself from a toe-pick spiral fall. please forget everything i said, it was not meant for you!

[dbny]

i thought that the "do you actually skate?" was query's response to doubletoe saying that you can't save yourself from a toe-pick spiral fall.

I hope you don't mind this, but after I read your post a few times, I got a good and much needed chuckle out of it.

[ibreakhearts66]

haha don't mind at all. i was so so SO confused after i read your response to my first statement. i was like, "wait, this person was just going on about how to fall properly, and now they are saying that they can't stand it when people preach about how to fall properly?!" i was so so SO confused. now i just feel like an idiot lol

and just note, i entirely agree with you. going on about how to fall properly is pretty useless. there are some falls that absolutely cannot be saved.

[doubletoe]

LOL!!

By the way, my term "catch toe spiral" is just my tongue-in-cheek reference to catching the toepick of the skating foot in the ice (not to be confused with a "catch foot spiral," which is a free leg position we do on purpose!) ;)

[dbny]

This reminds me of one of my all time favorite skating videos - Slide! (http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=1893860) I guess Query has never seen it. Many of the falls in it are famous/infamous and you will probably remember them as you watch.

[Beccapoo2003]

Great video, DBNY! It made me gasp and laugh. They do fall very well though, for the most part softening their knees and crumbling down. Thanks!
Becca

[Query]

Oops. My post was meant to be a private message. Too late to recall it now.

I like the Slide video too, and will shortly add it to the page.

>I have a special dislike of such absolute claims
>that serious injuries can be avoided by falling
>correctly.

I don't claim all serious injuries can be avoided - just most. If you don't have an injury every few years serious enough to seek medical attention (or for which you should), you are a very atypical athlete.

No, I don't really skate. But I've been trying for over 10 years, and have spent a few thousand hours trying. I still spend 5-10 hours/week on the ice, but slow progress has discouraged me so much I haven't taken many lessons recently for the past year or more, though I used to take privates a couple times a week, and assorted group lessons about the same. I'm semi-permanently stuck at a low freestyle or dance level, in part due to serious flexibility limits.

For most of that time spirals (or "forward arabesques", as the ISI now calls them) have been and will be one of the most difficult moves for me. Short hamstrings, despite stretching exercises, force my weight forwards, and it uses most of my strength to assume the pose at all, so I do a lot of "Catch Toe Spiral Falls". (Let us hereby make it part of the accepted technical jargon. CTSF. Or should we name it for an someone, like so many skating moves? A volunteer is needed for that honor.) I practice them, both deliberately (to improve response time) and accidentally.

World class athletes either don't have time for such practice, or don't believe it will help, so of course they get hurt too. Probably more often than the rest of us.

Yes, a fall from spiral position allows you less time to react than from standing height.

Assume you are at least 3' [3 feet] off the ice in spiral position (such learned discussions are for full grown adults). Catching a toe is stops its horizontal motion, removing much of the vertical support, at which point your center of mass - about the same height - begins to almost (there is still some support) freefall towards the ice. A well trained response might take 0.1 - 0.2 seconds, during which time you will fall at most 0.16 - 0.64'. In addition you initiate a spin about your center of mass, sending your head and body downwards along a circular arc, with an angular rate (in radians) corresponding to your forwards speed divided by that 3' height. Let's over-estimate rates of fall a bit and say your entire forwards speed (multiplied by cos 45 deg) is effectively transferred into vertical fall speed. If you are moving 15'/sec, that translates to an extra 1.06 - 2.12'. So you fall a total of 1.22 - 2.76' by the time your trained reflex is completed. 2.76' is pretty close to the 3' height, but it corresponds to a 0.2 second response - pretty slow for a trained response. And it still provides you with some margin. Besides, your upper body is shorter than your lower, and forwards speed is reduced due to the inelastic stretching of body tissue that occurs after the stop, so you actually have a little more time. (On the other hand, a good skater moves faster.)

Martial arts people don't just have somewhat similar falls. They are actually thrown to the mat - yet they usually react successfully in time to prevent injury. (It helps that they expect to fall.)

So you can succeed, though the margin of safety is small. Many of the best skaters in the world can't do it because they don't practice doing so. Only a nutcase like me (there are of course no other nutcases in this forum) would bother practicing falls from such basic moves.

In addition to flexibility limits, fear has also discouraged me. Not during falls any more. But fear-induced muscle tension during jumps and spins make me tighten my stabilizing muscles, preventing the most basic motions, like wrapping the leg. 8 or 10 years ago a hotshot young skater who was my teacher said that would turn my waltz jump into an axel. She considered it a trivial change. It still hasn't. Even most of the single rotation jumps and consistently centered spins remain out of my reach.

I should give up, but Adult Onset Skating Syndrome is a most pernicious disease. Is there a Skate-aholics Anonymous support group? Barring that, does anyone know of ways to eliminate fear-induced-tension during jumps and spins?

If I ever teach a class on falls, I might leave out the CTSF. Reasonable standards of student care for group lessons require an adequate safety margin with a reasonable amount of practice time. It doesn't appear on my website.

[doubletoe]

Query, thanks for sharing your background story. And definitely don't give up skating if you love it!

So what are your thoughts on how to minimize damage on a catch-toe spiral fall? It sounds like you are recommending trying to twist on the way down to fall on the hip if possible. Have you tried it and has it helped?

[Sessy]

Oh oh, I successfully avoided banging my knee in a spiral fall TWICE! Instead I banged my hips AND ribs, respectively... :twisted:

Actually I'm not entirely clear on how one would bang the skating knee on a spiral fall, unless the standing knee isn't stretched through? I always end up on my hipbones at the front, or on my hands if it's not a bielman.

The one thing that helps though is to keep your toes off the bottom of your skate. Harder to catch the toepick that way, if you focus on lifting the toes.


Question: the .2 second response, how's that slow? Car-drivers responses are about 0.5 to 1 second, even in very experienced drivers, just for realizing they need to hit the brakes.

[Sessy]

I should give up, but Adult Onset Skating Syndrome is a most pernicious disease. Is there a Skate-aholics Anonymous support group? Barring that, does anyone know of ways to eliminate fear-induced-tension during jumps and spins?


IF you are receptive to it, hypnosis-therapy could work against the fear.

[Query]

So what are your thoughts on how to minimize damage on a catch-toe spiral fall? It sounds like you are recommending trying to twist on the way down to fall on the hip if possible.

It takes more time to twist around to the hip on a forwards fall then to do a direct forwards or sideways fall.

I love brush and glide forward and sideways falls. I reach out with my hand or hands and brush forwards against the ice, not taking significant weight, just guiding the arms, which slide high above your head, becoming a full body slide. It's fun! Practice and see how far you can slide. It helps a lot if you skate wearing gloves, long sleeve shirts and long pants. (Or dresses? I wouldn't know.)

The arm motion is an instinctual response to falling forwards, so you are probably half way there already. If throwing your arms forwards doesn't move you back into balance (it might), then the slide is the next logical step.

A good judo, aikido or gymnastics person might be more comfortable with a forward diagonal roll. Form a diagonal (one arm more forwards) arm wheel and let this guide a roll diagonally across your spine. (Let the arm wheel collapse as you hit, to absorb energy.) Rolls work better than slides on non-slippery surfaces (do you roller skate?), or if you are an excessively competitive skater who must continue your program.

I looked back at my physics calculation, and realized something terrible. I wuz wrong. At fast skating speed, say 30-40'/second (20-31 mph or 33-49 kph; a good roller or inline skater probably goes even faster) it probably isn't possible to react in time, no matter what. I love speed, but don't do spirals skating fast, so this hasn't been a problem - for me. Perhaps it is for all you senior level skaters.