Learning to fall--any tips?
 

Title says it all. Anyone who has or does practice, please share...

You mean like practice rolling over hoods and windshields? :D

take some martial arts classes. akido or jujitsu or the like.

tuck and roll.

useful for sure, but not nearly as much as knowing how not to fall.

hold on to ur bike, don't let go while ur flying thru the air. it will same u some broken limbs

How long will it be before somone posts that horrible link to that guy?
Seriously, try not to fall. rolling out of a fall presumes that you're clear of the bike, and that's a big assumption.
for example, I crash on a skateboard, and the board stops, shoots out, whatever. I am now an independent body, able to roll, I hope.
or, I crash on a bike, and I'm still straddling the bike, or I have a foot clipped in, and now I'm trying to cushion my fall attached to my bike.

Growing up riding a skateboard taught me pretty well. I'm sure that a martial discipline could teach you a lot better.

Is it just me, or does this smell like another brake debate waiting to happen?

Get used to knees and elbows that hurt for days.

Think floaty thoughts.

If your just laying the bike down on it's side, like in a slick turn or such, keep your hands on the bars and let the bike take the impact. You'll have a very very strong instinct, almost unconscious, to put your arm down as you go down, but you need to just fight it. This is how I broke my wrist. It's better to have a ton of road rash than to have a broken wrist AND road rash.

As a student of the Martial Arts I definitely second the opinion that you should/could check out some classes in any martial art that does alot of throws and rolls. Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Aikido, Aiki-jutsu or Judo would all be choice options.

Edit... I realize that my addition of named arts gets you no-where....

As for falling? The best thing you can do is train your body to curl up rather than splay out. Our natural reaction when falling (which may or may not have something to do with our late great ancestors having grown up in trees) is to throw our limbs out to catch hold of something, anything, that will stop our fall (perhaps a precipitous one from the top of a ginko tree where we have, until recently, been eating/fornicating/napping/grooming). This is a BAD idea. Splaying out, especially while on a bicycle does things like put arms and legs in car-roll-over territory (etc). Unless you're on a mountain side and need to deploy your climbing axe the best thing you can do is to get as few of your limbs sticking out as possible and allow yourself to bounce.

I disagree; "Martial arts" can mean a lot of things to people. I study Arnis, and it surely won't help me roll out of a fall.

I agree with Nouia. Yeah, keep your hands on your handlebars. The "best" way to learn how to fall is in the winter when there is ice out. If your bike is simply sliding out from under you my plan is: take off as much speed as possible with my legs, say a prayer...then put my shoulder and thigh out as far as possible (not hand/wrist or hips), close my mouth and turn my face away from the ground (I have nice teeth:) and just ease into it.

This method is of course best of skid/slide outs. It might sound stupid, but the more you crash, the better you get at it. Well, some people who skate talked about this up above. But yeah, try to remain calm and let muscled parts, not bony parts, absorb the impact. I'm sure race car drivers are better at crashing than a person who just got their license. And, this is kind of like driving in snow. Someone from Buffalo is better at it than someone from Richmond.

As for getting hit by cars or sudden accidental falls I guess the only method is to say a prayer and kiss that arse of yours goodbye. I've been hit twice and thankfully my kiss bounced back:)

Staying loose is important, and practice makes perfect

I call troll on this guy. Give us some details on why you would want to know or f*ck off.

Dont fall on your chin

"The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss." © Douglas Adams

He specified "check out some classes in any martial art that does alot of throws and rolls."

heheh.. that's the description of how to fly, not to fall, if I remember correctly.

sorry, I was speaking to his statement that his naming of various arts did not help. I think that it helps a lot.

My problem with my initial post, and hence my edit, was that the OP was asking WHAT he can learn in order to survive a fall from a bicycle with some chance of retaining the use of his limbs. When I named the martial arts that he could investigate I wasn't telling him what he could learn but where he could learn it. So we're all nutz ;P

ninja training
http://www.23mag.com/games/toys/nt03.jpg

I thought it was still applicable.

simply amazing!

I will have to third or fourth or fith or whatever we are up to the Martial Arts suggestion. In my youth I got up to green belt in Tang Su Do (sp) and I think it helped me in both cycling and in snowboarding and skiing.

Tuck and roll is the symplistic way of saying what you want to do...practice does make perfect. I have taken some pretty big falls and have never broken anything during them. It helps.

I used to post on this particular forum a lot, then got worn out by the anger. Reviews of my posts will show you I've been on BF a while.

Not a troll. Just wondering about this. I'm not the best on a bike, but I like learning new things. I tried taking up skateboarding in my 20s, and had one major meeting between my face and the pavement that ended the experiment. I learned from the experience that I should maybe go out and practice/learn this stuff, but after taking a month to recover, just dropped the whole thing. Now I've been riding bikes for the past two years and realized maybe I should give myself a quick primer. Never having played a ton of sports growing up (single mom, no siblings--not all are like that, but some are), and being well into my 30s, I'm not a good natural crasher/body sacrificer.

Thanks for the suggestions, BTW. I think I might just look into some judo/jujitsu/aikido. Did kung fu when I was a kid, but mainly learned lots of offensive-minded activity there.

Falling is easy! Gravity does most of the work for you. I't's getting back up and walking away after the fall that's sometimes difficult. :P

A lot of people recommended martial arts. I'd say falling a LOT in any controlled environment that minimizes the risk of injury will help you know what to do when eventually you fall not on purpose. Although crashing your bike on purpose is a stupid idea, that's one of the many things I did as a child as I strove to train myself for a career as a movie stuntman. Somehow I managed it with nothing more than a few sprains and one chipped tooth, and I know how to take a fall instinctively, but that didn't stop me from spraining my wrist last time I went over the handlebars unexpectedly.

Anyone questioning the premise of this thread should watch street skaters for half an hour. In many situations where you or I would probably get really hurt they can just roll out of it with maybe a bruise or skinned knee, then get right back up and keep going. You can definitely get good at falling.

Thanks. I was actually kind of hoping someone might have thoughts on the most instructive way to set up such scenarios. I think the 63xc(?) site mentioned trying to do this on grass somewhere. But how would people here think would be the best types of falls to attempt? (over the handlebars seems dodgy, unless your landing on a big cushion, but maybe to the sides, or something?)

I got to thinking about this b/c I watched the little NYTimes video piece on LESers who play bike polo. There was one moment where a fairly tall rider took a spill, and it just looked so un-painful the way it happened, even though it was on asphalt. I thought, "I'd like to learn to fall like that."

No doubt! ;-)