My point is not that is not instinctual to catch yourself, it is that I doubt there is any sports trainer who would argue that catching yourself with an outstretched hand is a better idea than relaxing and letting your side absorb the impact. And we're talking about an event that you can literally go "oh crap I'm falling I'm falling", not something that happenes so fast you stand up twenty feet from the accident site going "WTF???". I'm not going to argue that there aren't situations one can't do the proper thing in, but in this threads case I'd never advocate trying to catch yourself.