During the inaugural men's and women's street skateboarding finals at the Tokyo Olympics, the best riders in the world fell. Repeatedly. They tumbled off steps and rails, hit the concrete, somersaulted, slid and loofahed any exposed skin. But after lying for a moment, most popped up, grabbed their boards and moved on to the next trick.
They gave a master class in how to wipe out well.
"Falling is commonplace if you are an athlete or physically active, even if you are young and fit," said Jacob Sosnoff, a professor and associate dean of research at the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City, Kan., who studies human movement and falls. "In fact, if you exercise much at all, I would say falls are almost inevitable at some point."
But falling does not have to end in serious injuries and painful tears. Science and experience suggest that we can learn to fall more safely.
For suggestions about the right ways to tumble, I talked with scientists, coaches and competitors in sports that grapple with gravity, including skateboarding. What follows are their suggestions for where to look, how to crumple, when to flex and why to congratulate yourself when you realize you are about to take the plunge.
Tuck and roll: "Falling is easy," Sosnoff said. "Gravity does the work for you. It's the landing that's hard. You need to disperse the impacts when you strike the ground."
In practice, this means you tuck and roll.
"A rolling movement helps to redistribute the energy that must be absorbed by the body over a larger contact area," said Vivian Weerdesteyn, a professor of motor control and rehabilitation at Radboud University Medical Center and St. Maartens Clinic in the Netherlands and, at one time, a judo athlete with the Dutch junior national team.