Glad it wasn't worse! This is why after 40 it is too late to take up skateboarding. That ground is so hard and it comes up at you fast.
A few years ago I tripped and actually fell flat on my face. One moment I was up and the next I was down looking at the ground. I couldn't even get my hands up in time so I also sprained my wrists. Ouch! It was embarrassing being a cliché.
(On this trip along the Danube I also managed to slip in a very clean and slick bathtub. I started keeping an eye out for falling pianos.)
I have a partial tooth replacement from pavement and a screw holding a vertebra together from a truck incident. I agree about momentum being a surprise.
I was going to suggest posting SAT scores and best scars, but have decided that's not the best idea.
Video for connaisseurs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjP6mTjTVxQ
About 2 years I ago I fainted.* Fell flat on my face (I was unconscious) and my wife thought I'd died. I've never fainted before or since. My face/head was a mess, and I landed on carpet and not from my entire height. It was pretty surprising how much it hurt and how long it took for the scar/carpet burn on my forehead to fade. The only other recent time I remember being as bad was when I came off my bike -- due to someone walking out in front of me without looking -- and it took about 6 months for my shoulder to heal enough to have a reasonable range of motion.
I think the general lesson, as per the OP, is that being a fully grown adult and hitting the ground when you aren't expecting it ... hurts..
When I did martial arts regularly I used to get punched, kicked or knocked over fairly often. But in those situations, you sort of expect it, so you're prepared to take the hit, or to anticipate the landing. I don't even really remember ever getting injured in those situations, other than a sore nose a couple of times, and some DOMS the day after a long training session. I've certainly had much worse and longer lasting pain just straining a muscle chasing a football around in the park with my son.
* vasovagal syncope, half got out of bed with an excruciatingly bad muscle cramp and hit the ground like a sack of potatoes.
My wife fell on the ice last week and broke her elbow. Maybe you're liked link a voodoo doll.
Why the fuck can't I type today. Linked like. Maybe I'm about to faint.
On the plus side the first appointments for MA teachers opened this morning and she got one for Monday.
I've fallen hard on ice twice this winter -- both times the classic feet skidding out from under me, totally off the ground, and then down on my butt type of fall. Oddly, I landed well enough both times that I wasn't even really winded, just sort of unexpectedly sitting on the ground trying to locate where my glasses had flown off to. But I'm a giant klutz, so I'm probably more familiar with falling down than most.
When I did martial arts regularly I used to get punched, kicked or knocked over fairly often. But in those situations, you sort of expect it, so you're prepared to take the hit, or to anticipate the landing. I don't even really remember ever getting injured in those situations, other than a sore nose a couple of times, and some DOMS the day after a long training session.
This is what I remember from soccer, too. I stopped playing at age 30, though, and now I'm a decade older than LB was when she was a lecherous crone. But I think you're right that being so braced and ready to fall and anticipate the landing helps so much. (Also I didn't play on concrete.)
I'm short, so I fall better. I have lots of smaller falls, but no injures.
Or rather, all my serious injuries are from repetitive stress.
[knocking wood] I've only fallen once skiing this season, right near the beginning. It was really silly, but also quite humiliating because it was on totally level ground, and I was having real trouble getting up. I was skiing alone that day (the wife only has a weekday pass this year) so a passerby gave a quick assist.
I feel like I'm a lot more cautious as I learn to ski and mountain bike in my forties than I would have been in my twenties, but it's hard to say. Definitely hear you on overuse injuries. It seems unfair to be injured through sitting.
I fell on the ice a couple years ago, and thought I'd landed well, but banged the side of my hand/wrist which became very painful (I had a couple of days when I couldn't use that hand to unlock doors because the grip and turn was too painful-- which was very awkward because I'm strongly right-handed).
But that healed fairly quickly.
One of my reactions was that I was getting older, and also that I was out of practice falling. I can't say that I ever fell very often, but I've fallen off my bike a couple of times. It's painful, and I don't like it, but I also think it's good to feel like the experience of falling isn't totally unfamiliar.
Ha! My wife and I put on a clinic in old people falling last Friday. We had been intending to go out X-C skiing all winter (good snow season up in the ridges and pandemic-approved activity) but lethargy had won out until last week. Very warm mid-week but cold nights, and Friday was to be low 40s and sunny with big rain coming over the weekend (that potentially ended the season). So we went. First time in 30+ years* for me (I have done downhill over the years but I am not good--in recent years my goal is basically "don't fall"). My wife has done some X-C on and off.
Unfortunately it clouded up and the snow did not really soften as expected. (And as a warning sign the parking lot was an incredibly treacherous skating rink).We both took several falls. My wife is a much better skier than I but she had more trouble than I at the start but rounded into it while I started carefree and well-balanced but deteriorated at the end. After my 2nd fall I was in pure fall avoidance mode, at one point cowardly side-stepping down a short (but narrow) slope. No real injuries (I did bruise a forearm a bit where it came down across my ski pole) but hard snow is hard--both to stand on and land on.
In conclusion, cross-country skiing is a land of contrasts. Also we are sometimes idiots in our stubborn insistence on carrying out a plan despite clear negative auguries.
*I was quite avid for a few years, even doing races including a 50 km one on the Tug Hill Plateau (upstate NY in Lake Ontario lake effect snow belt). I had last been at the area we went to Friday 40 years prior as I mentioned to several people there. So yeah, I'm *that* old guy.
I do fall on occasion playing racquetball and pickleball, but almost always in the planned fall kind of ways o not so jarring. Exception is a couple of times involving collisions and in both cases was not happy with how long various resulting aches and pains lingered.
One thing I still don't understand is that I fall all the time in hockey and it rarely hurts*, but even if I were wearing the same equipment rollerblading it would hurt way more (impact, not road rash). Maybe because it's easier to fall on ice you can fall less awkwardly, whereas on pavement if you fall it's going to be because you did something really awkward that puts you in a bad position to cushion?
*The only really painful falls are when you go straight down on your tailbone which feels like someone literally fucked you up.
I miss racquetball.
Don't get the appeal of pickleball, tried once, I guess too different from any other racquet sport to work for me-- like supersized table tennis, except the ball's bounces are just wrong. I know people who like it...
14. Auguries is a great word. Last night I realized what a fabulous word "shortcoming" is, up there with "wrongdoer"
17.2: It is an easier sport to do as mobility decreases 9almost always played a s doubles) and slower ball allows longish rallies.
Also for me, it is a sport that my wife and I play at about the same level. (I come from r-ball, while she played a lot of tennis.)
Good social sport, although that is at times a mixed blessing.
16: Isn't it because the momentum maintains better on ice, so you skid instead of halting? Like the difference between breaking a bottle over someone's head, vs hitting them with a bottle where it doesn't break.
That's why when the locals play unicycle football on cement, it's so much more painful than unicycle football on ice.
I wonder if the difference of falling as an adult is really down to greater weight, or if the majority of the difference is that we're less used to rough-and-tumble and have lower pain thresholds, less elasticity, etc.
Damn! That sounds great incredibly painful. Glad you're ok..
One of the reasons I am terrified of biking with any speed and thus terrible at biking.
I slipped on ice a couple weeks ago while picking up a carpet cleaner from a house with a steep, icy driveway. I was sore for a while, but mostly annoyed with myself because I had ice grippers in my coat pocket and had noticed when I got there that the driveway was icy and steep, but hadn't thought to put them on.
I have something like that. The trouble is that ice is in patches but you've got spikes on your feet all the time.
That's why we call you the novel coronafoot.
The ice is less patchy in Alaska, but yeah, you can't wear them all the time so there's a whole on-off hassle to deal with.
They really ruin a basketball court quickly.
I felt so bad for Steady when he was still in the running and falling stage. Part of it was the injury, but then it also looked so unfair. He was happy and running and it was all great and then BAM, shock and pain.
It is remarkable that humans have to learn that falling over sucks by doing it repeatedly.
My last really bad fall was when I slipped on snow during a day hike which was a warm-up for a week-long backpacking trip, and (according to my friend) my tailbone landed right on a pointy rock. I think it was probably a hairline fracture or something---for the next two weeks it hurt a lot to squat, which is really annoying when you have to enter/exit a tent, squat to pee/poop, etc. for a week.
This winter, I ordered nanospikes because the sidewalks around here are so bad, but of course two days after I placed the order everything melted.
Who knew we had such a fallingover bunch?
4: syncopation is always tricky, but not usually dangerous.