Actually, err... yeah maybe a bit of doubt and uncertainty... :-)

Wicked quote though.

Well I spent a lot of time on playgrounds, woodchip surfaces back then weren't too bad, also crashed on grass, and jumped from every platform I could find. It was jumping 20' from a treehouse when I forgot to let my legs roll under, my knee came up and chipped my tooth. Thing is 10 year olds heal a lot faster than 35 years olds. I really wouldn't recommend this type of "Training" for anyone. Foam pads are the way to go. You still get a feel for how your body reacts to flying through the air, and hitting the ground, but without the inevitable broken bones. Martial Arts and Gymnastics both give you a safe padded space to practice flying through the air, though in gymnastics, the goal is NOT to fall, which I think is a much more sensible goal.

Sorry, Per, but you were really brief in your initial post. Skateboarding is definitely a young persons game. I pretty much gave it up myself after I broke my first bone in my early 20's. Oh to have rubber bones like a teenager again ;-)

edit: I'd really advise riding a freewheel (geared or single speed) blke for a while before you try to take on a fixie. Fixed wheel is a beautiful experience once you learn to ride it, but it's pretty dangerous if you can't. Don't worry about crashing, but learn to be comfortable on a freewheel before you take on fixed.

edit agin: maybe it's just best to learn fixed to begin with. That's what our grandparents did I s'pose.

I learned to fall by being incredibly clumsy, and taking karate from an instructor who also taught aiki. That said, I don't think bike falls are really something you can prepare for. It best to try to avoid them, of course, but every situation is going to be different. I tend to go over my handlebars more than anything.

Maybe the thing is to learn to be comfortable with falling. You're more likely to get hurt if you flail about. Also, having the confidence to get right back up and continue on your way (if possible) after a crash. Getting spooked causes lots of people to stop riding.

ha... I'm soon to be 36 and still skate roundwall a lot, (yeah, I wear pads); skate with a guy who is 39 and does frontside airs all day long. Lots of 30+ skaters in the DC area. Not a lot skate street, though.

aikido and judo will definitely make you more comfortable with falling and have a lot to offer beyond that. However, it's a different beast to have someone flip you than to slip out at speed clipped into ~20 lbs of awkward metal between your legs.

my suggestion for learning how to fall on a bike: play bike polo. Not so fast and easy to fall.

I'm trained in the Scottish martial art of fuk-YOOO!

Prepare for impact.......f uck..BAM

one thing to add to the above:

remember to put your keys in your bag, not your pocket.

you never realise how sharp and pointy they are until they're the only thing standing between your hip and some rapidly approaching tarmac.

fsnl
sparky

Just don't put your hands down! My co-worker severely broke his arm riding BMX a few weeks ago by putting his hand down to break the fall.

Also, as a former martial arts student myself... there is practically no situation on a road bike, or a mtn bike for that matter, in which I think a person could safely unclip and do a tuck and roll at speed. No way. Martial Arts is fun & useful so do it, but sorry, it ain't gonna help you break your fall any easier on a bike. That said, don't fall.

Okay Pathetic, I ride at a moderate pace for little while and then head for nearest brick wall. Upon contact I try to "stop, drop and roll" before my head splatters. It might take a few practice runs. But give 'er a go anyway!

judo that way you fall and put the power into the car causing more damage to the vehicle

slightly off topic, but this is perhaps my favorite keirin video ever:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rUD7T4g9Q0

In the 80s/90s national team members were taught tumbling at the Olympic Training Center. Dunno if they still are. The "tuck and roll" does work, although I have always maintained that intentionally unclipping in a crash situation is stupid. The idea is to tuck the head toward the handlebars rather than "superman" into the ground and do your wrists/collarbones. The bike ends up flipping through the air.

Preparing for crashing always seemed a bit defeatist to me, at any rate. I'd consider focusing on bike handling drills instead...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frxfRdcPjVw

in this one, you can see the all the guys holding on to the bars they eats it. good form, I guess

Probably not, but it's still useful and increases awareness of your body and its limits, possibly making your inevitable fall a little less crappy. It's also good to be trained not to break any kind of falls with your hands. And the conditioning strengthens muscles and acclimates yourself to being hit a lot, which does come in handy when you eat it. But yeah, I agree, I don't know how a forward roll would work on a bike.

I have a better idea. Get a safer bike, one that coasts, and you won't have to worry about falling so much.

Fixed gear is responsible for an accident that damn near paralyzed me. My own stupidity (not wearing a helmet) is responsible for several skull fractures.

I'm being totally serious here.

So the fixed gear forced you to fall over. Evil thing. I hope it was arrested, sued, or at least given a good spanking.

Sorry for making fun of your troubles, but YOU are responsible for falling off of your bike. And for not falling off of it.

I don't know, I fail to go with the "just fall" aspect as I've dropped to a knee in wrestling on a big mat and have torn my cartilage.

As a martial artist, I'm also skeptical of the "tuck and roll" method. It seems that most times I've fallen on my bike are due to the rear wheel sliding out from under me, in which case you go down too fast and at the wrong angle to roll. If you're going over the bars it might work better.

In martial arts, the basic principles of how to fall are pretty straight forward:
Never put your hands out! As others have said, this is a good way to break your wrist.

Try to hit the ground with the maximum surface area all at once, to distribute the impact.

Tuck your head in as you hit the ground -- the force of impact will tend to whip your head toward the pavement, you want it to be moving in the other direction to
counteract that.

Oh, and stay loose.

When I've fallen on the bike I usually use something like a sideways breakfall -- the idea is to land on one side of your body, with your leg, hip, side, and arm (the side of your arm, not the hand) all hitting the ground at once to spread the impact out.

As for how to practice, I'd recommend grass or another soft surface. And it's probably best to start without the bike, just falling from a standing position. The bike has hard, pointy bits that complicate the whole process.

I prefer not to crash.

Perhaps the only sensible thing to do about crashing is not to put an arm out if you go down... Although I'm quite sure I myself would put my hand down instinctively. So I just don't crash instead.

DAMMIT!!! you beat me to it!

The "tuck and roll", BTW, is just for "over the handlebars" type crashes, like when someone falls in front of you in a track race and you have no choice but to centerpunch him. Then it's supposedly better to tuck your head away as you fly through the air and then hit the ground rolling. I have actually seen folks do this and more often than not they've been surprisingly uninjured -- esp. as compared to the folks who do the more natural/typical "superman" bit and end up pile driving their shoulders, heads, faces, etc. So I think the technique has some merit. I can't imagine trying to depend upon it in every fall, though. Tucking and rolling your way through a low side would earn you a broken pelvis, I'd think.

Having said that, I get the impression we are talking primarily about street riders -- not racing or group riding scenarios. IMO, there's no excuse for falling while riding by yourself or in a small group. These falls are caused almost entirely by bad decision making and/or lack of skills. (Yeah, cars are something else. No crash technique in the world is going to help you when you get nailed from behind by an SUV.) For these riders to practice falling strikes me as the height of foolishness. Spend the time on skill drills, and think about making intelligent decisions while on the bike. (Occasionally riding helmetless seems to do wonders for the folks are in the habit of taking unecessary risks on the bike. Without the "courage for your head" -- the illusory feeling of "I'm protected" -- we tend to become much more thoughtful...)

wow. you're hilarious. Any mods, feel free to officially close/destroy this thread. People get to calling names, or wishing others ill, it's not really serving anybody's purposes anymore.


* * *


My final thoughts:

Of course the best way to deal with falling is not to fall in the first place. I was specifically asking about falling not crashing.

I was wondering about this as a way of feeling more comfortable just practicing my drills, like a preliminary step: if I can get used to falling, maybe I won't be as uneasy trying to practice other things first. So I guess I'm most interested in learning to do a 0mph fall :D.

The other reason I was asking about this is because it also seemed like it might be fun, once you learned how to do it right. I think I might need to go find a stunt man's forum, though.

BTW, those keirin videos are great. That's not really the kind of thing I was wondering about, but some good examples to review, nonetheless.

"* * *


My final thoughts:"

i lol'd

Obviously, you need more detail.

My right foot unclipped when I was standing on the pedals and cranking (right foot forward). When my right foot unclipped, my left foot was still rising, so when my weight shifted to that foot, the cranks didn't stop moving, and pitched me further upward, which (because my balance was already to the right) basically threw me over.

You *could* blame the pedals, but unclipping happens occasionally on my geared mountain bike, and I don't crash. Why? When my foot releases on the right, when my weight shifts to my left foot, the crank on the left goes backwards and so I regain balance quickly. With the fixed, instead of having some 'give' to let me get my balance, they made it worse.

You *could* blame me, but I've been riding for ~25 years, logged thousands and thousands of miles, on everything from long road rides to insanely technical XC mountain biking and never had a crash like this.

The bike was a factor - short wheel base, very twitchy. I'd call that about 25% of the reason why I crashed, because a longer, more stable bike might have dealt with the sudden shift of weight better. So, maybe throw 'stop riding track bikes' in there too.

Fixed is fun, I'm going to miss it, but it's not as safe as a coasting bike in panic situations, and safer in ones that don't mean anything to me (i.e. icy conditions).

Hope this clears my stance up a bit.

http://www.dirtbikestore.co.uk/acatalog/ExNB10.jpg
http://www.motocrossmotorbikes.com/s...balwhit-81.jpg

Then you should know better than to ride equipment you have already proven to yourself to be inadequate. Twice, in the early days of clipless, I suffered "pre-release". The second time it happened I caused a severe crash in a 1/pro field sprint, badly hurting myself and causing various degrees of injury to about a dozen other riders. This was not the fault of the road, the bike, the pedals, the gearing, God, or my mother. (Well, maybe my mother. She apparently raised an idiot.) This was MY fault. I was using equipment I knew I could not rely upon, and I -- along with a bunch of other people -- paid for my foolishness.

Again, I'm sorry for being a dick about this, but I've got a sore spot for people who do things when they should have known better and then lay the blame everywhere except where it belongs. A million riders with a zillion miles under their wheels have managed to ride track bikes and fixed gears without hurting themselves. You're about a hundred years to late to decide that fixed gear is dangerous.

perhaps that is a bit harsh. all pedals are prone to unclip SOMETIMES, except perhaps old-style look death cleats. I've had the exact same accident, though I've always recovered from it with fancy/lucky handling. the key is to have a brake.

Having crashed quite a bit most of the advice here is pretty good. Keep your hands on your bars, preferably on the flats rather than the drops which is where I ride anyway. If you're doing a sliding crash, ass end out, try to shove the bike down so the bars and pedal take the brunt of it. If you're doing a streetcar track catch and crash, try to roll with it if you can, do the above or at least don't lead with your head. With an over the bar crash, tuck tight and pray. I separated a shoulder by doing this as I landed more on my shoulderblades than by completing a roll, but it was better than landing on my head or face. For anything involving a vehicle try to lean onto the vehicle if you can and turn with the vehicle, such as in a right hook (which you should have seen coming anyway, you sidewalk gazer). If you're getting cut off by a motorist turning left across your path and are trying to do the turn as above, try to get your leg out between you and the car if you can. And lastly, if you're walking through a cross walk and are about to get hit, jump as high as you can. Better onto the hood than under the car. I've been pretty lucky, taken out two windshields with my elbow of steel, and bent one frame, but I'm reasonably in good shape despite these adventures.

And if you have a penchant for crashing, get a helmet.