stendhalian

how many of you come from a background in skateboarding/bmx/martial arts/marines training/whatever and found learning fixie wasn't really **** all and falling is actually kind of fun cause you are used to it?

I find it a little strange that people post about breaking limbs on falls from bicycles...Did any of this past experience of wrecking yourself teach you how to fall?

onetwentyeight 

you're just not riding hard enough 99 percent of the times ive fallen its been no biggie, its just when i get drunk I get stupid. *sigh*

Revit

falling from a short board going downhill when i hit a pot hole really taught me a lot about how to fall.

Revit

tsk tsk*

Beer+bike= fearless riding
fearless riding= fun
fun= wreckage

nickmaimone

I used to be one of the best skateboarders in New Jersey when I skated, also I used to BMX, couldnt do many tricks, but could ride dirt real well, and fast. Many injuries from these 2 old hobbies, but thankfully none sent me to the hospital. I definately havent learned how to fall because being strapped into the pedals, and falling, pretty much just takes you whereever it wants to take you, theres no way out of falling face/chest first, with a bike attached to your feet...or is there.

stendhalian

not riding hard enough? haha. you want to see some blood huh?

anyway, i always find myself comparing that first trackstand of the day with the first ollie of the day. if its solid and not sketchy its gonna be a good day to ride...

lumenredundas

i agree all the other sports that i have been in that i had to learn how to fall with out getting completly F-ed in the A have totally helped me get out of some super hairy situations. bet it ending up on the hood of a car or running into a curb.

XVX

sxe fbm rider

I ride bmx and have for 5 years now, and I fall quite a bit.. so I have learned to fall, but I'm higher up and strapped in to a fixie so it's a bit different.. but I havent fallen from my fixie since I was just starting and tried to skid alot at low speeds and did know unweight my back wheel.

bostontrevor

Feh.

I used to inline street skate and freestyle BMX. I was a lot better at the former than the latter.

Anyhow, what those thnigs taught was not so much about how to fall as much as that falling is rarely as painful as you expect.

I've had bad falls, including a pretty serious parking lot headplant while grinding rails and a awesome flaming bike wreck that left my shoulder messed up for a couple of months. I've had way more wrecks cycling than skating. My "experience" just allows me to get back on the bike without being too shaken. (Like yesterday morning when my wheels just slipped out from under me around ~20mph... I did a little preflight check to make sure everything was cool and got back up and rode off. No significant adrenaline, no shaking, just, "oh damn, that sucked.")

dudeman

inline street skating? whats that?

bostontrevor

I used to do **** like https://www.trythisurl.com/ukskate/MKstreet.html

Only I wasn't really that great. I couldn't link one trick to the next, no flow. I am proud to say that I was one of like three of us who kicked off my hometown scene and now we have a few skate shops and a skater built and maintained park.

Used to have a box out in front of a rental house right under a tree. One day we were all doing tricks off the box and one dude ended up actually up in the tree. Awesomeness.

MKRG

Skateboarding here. Something about falling 12 ft to flat and blood makes bailing on the bike not so bad. My ex-gf freaked about a bloody knee once. It didn't even hurt. I tore out the nerve endings in that one 15 years ago! HAHA!

sers

one time when i was a kid, me and my best friend set up a picnic table so we could take running leaps off of it and make slam dunks in a nearby hoop. he tried some crazy reverse dunk and fell down with his arms outstretched. i remember actually seeing his arm break, because the radius in his right arm was almost poking through the skin. he was convinced that the bone was dislocated and not broken, and screamed at me to "pop it back in." after some heated arguing, i decided to give it a shot. after counting to three i firmly pushed down - my friend tried to take it like a man, but he actually started pissing his pants, and his legs started shaking so bad he sort of fell down onto his ass. now that's pain.

since that day, i've made it a point not to outstretch my arms when i fall.

stendhalian

i compound fractured my tibula and fibula on my right leg...this was on a vert ramp in corvalis oregan
in 1989...another skater ran into me as i was coming out of a 5 foot air, dude came right under me, i was going full speed and we smashed shins. mine basically wrapped around his. on the flat i picked up my leg and it was as bendy as a noodle. so yeah, after that, ill basically take anything...i aint ****in' with cars though, i've had a few drunken near death, late night hill bomb, blasting through red lights and brushing inches from cars crossing my path sorts of situations that i am actually sort of cautious now...just older and wiser maybe.

stendhalian

holy ****e, i was laughing the **** out loud at this...

vobopl

Martial arts for 20+ years here. Yep, it teaches you some, at the same time you are prone to take more risk feeling confident.

And $#*! happens anyway. Just a week ago when I was walking down the stairs with our HR lady to interview a candidate I fell on the wet stairs . Ukemi was allright but it wasn't designed for the stairs - I have protected head and spine but mangled the elbow and the hip and fractured the finger of the hand breaking the fall. I did the interview allright, yet I was forced to go to see a doctor a day after.

thebankman

skateboarding and roller blading and just being a stupid little kid jumping off things taught me how to duck and roll to avoid injury. i was that kid jumping off his bed in a superman suit and landing hard on the floor, then getting back up on the bed and repeating until bed time. good times

caffinated

I usually catch myself falling, launch into the air with a triple back twist, and landing on my seat 1 footed and still rolling.

zelah

man **** that falling

you

I never really learned how to fall properly, but I always felt that that first fall fo the skate session was just a mental boost like saying "hey that wasn't too bad, go for it!" whenever I've fallen of my bike I've just gotten back up and strated riding, it's just reflex i suppose?

humancongereel

ah, there's math i can understand!

metallo pesante

going on like 8 years as a rockclimber and my history of multiple types of skating and doing stupid sheit hasn't really taught me how to fall all that much, but it's taught me how to deal with pain a lot better. And with all the times my helmet has saved my thinker wilst kayaking, i still seem to think i'm safe without one while i'm riding my bike...fancy that.

stendhalian

i think this is the case, not so much knowing how to fall but be very familiar with pain...i am always surprised to witness some yuppie falling in the street and then holding their ankle and grimacing in pain like a world cup soccer player trying to draw a red card from the referee...as a skater, i know when my **** is REALLY ****ed up, blood is nothing, bruises meh...i have a few scars from stuff that probabley should have been stitched up but i didn't want the hassle (or the bill)...

this whole thread is so jinxed...we should all knock on wood.

fordfasterr

i ate it the other night just as I pulled into my driveway on the dismount...

thats what 6 new castles + 5 shots of rum'll do to me ...

and for some reason, I wasn't wearing full body armor... knee down !

all those years of inline scrapping just taught me to use my knee pads ... sheehs... where are those damn knee pads anyway ! ??

ImOnCrank

Nothing says "learn to fall quick or cripple yourself" like boardercross. Thank you snowboarding in VT for teaching me about the wonders of eating sh*t at 30-45mph on to rock solid ice and granular man made "snow" with something attached to my feet. Fortunately this seems to translate over to biking a bit, only difference is that my street clothes don't seem as happy getting chewed by concrete as my snowboard clothes on ice.