Originally Posted by reppans

Instinct will govern your fall reactions in the moment of truth, and most of those instincts were developed through "practice" during our youth sports when we were more invincible, pliable and healable. But even without much practice, most folks natural instincts will be use their limbs first. Our limbs are our only natural shock absorbers to protect our critical head and torso, and are frankly completely expendable.

I have a lot of fall practice. My parents started me downhill skiing from 5yo, which instilled a lean-to-turn/speed bug that lead to ice hockey, skateboarding, rollerblading, bicycling and motorcycling, and I was also a high school gymnast. I fallen countless times from all sorts of speeds and heights, and on all sorts of surfaces. I've lost a lot of skin to road rash, but knock-on-wood, never had a concussion or broken bone and I attribute that to having a strong instinct to use my hands/feet to break my falls.

I think my most painful injury was one fall where I made a conscious decision to NOT USE my hands. I was ice skating backwards with no gloves, hands in pockets, and caught an edge/high-sided while transitioning to forwards. High-siding launches you upward, and with a bit of "hang-time" to contemplate, I thought it might be rather unpleasant to slap my freezing cold bare hands on the ice so I kept them in my pockets and landed square on the corner of my shoulder. I probably chipped a bone, or maybe even slightly fractured a bone, but I never went to a hospital for an X-ray.

I'm still into all these motion sports into my mid-50s, and as crazy as it sounds, wearing gloves tends to be more important than a helmet for me.