—boomf.
I tossed the current pair of jeans-that-fit into the wash, and substituted the light rayon baggy track pants that look like hell.
Worse, I tried to skate in them. Funny thing. You wear tight jeans on the ice, you get a sense of support for your muscles. You wear light stuff, no support, and I, yes, dragged a toe as I tried to recover from stepping onto my heel.
Backward. Boomf.
On the other hand—I rotated as I went down, landed on the flat of the hip between tailbone and hipbone, and managed to keep elbow AND head off the ice. Pretty good, eh. I wasn’t wearing my Crashpads ™ and thought I’d kill myself. But I didn’t. Didn’t hurt much at all, except I shook my brain when I sat down and had a consequent headache.
That’s a way better fall on the ice than I usually manage. Also, I was moving, so I had the skid working FOR me. (A dead fall on the ice hurts worse than a moving one.)
On the other hand, I managed to get the Mantis fired up and attacked the front yard. THAT made me sore. So sore. It bucks like an angry skunk when it hits grass roots. But—we’ll get there. I only have 80000 square feet to go.
Didn’t do my headache any good. But I got about a 10x 8 section of the lawn done. That’s pretty good.
I will attest to the floating gracefulness of this fall.
I’m glad you didn’t really hurt yourself, but man, you’re way braver than me. I pretty much gave up ice skating when I was twelve. I fell backwards, hit my head on the ice, and had a flash of black expand outwards from the center of my vision. I don’t even know how long I lay there blinking. But then, you’re clearly more coordinated than I am — I’ve been known to trip over stray air molecules…
I hope your headache goes away. I don’t think there’s anything worse than a headache… 🙁
That’s why I wear a helmet. The notion that you can’t ride a bike without a helmet, but you’re going to put your young kid onto the ice without one is nutz, and that’s just typical. First time I got on the ice to learn to skate five years ago, I fell backwards, hit my head, and went out immediately and bought a) a helmet and b) my own skates. So did Jane—get the helmet and skates, that is.
It’s taken me a few years to achieve the supreme elegance of this most recent fall, the first in which I *didn’t* hit my head…and that’s experience. You learn that falling onto your tailbone hurts, so you try not to. You discover that falling onto your hipbone is dangerous, too, so you try not to. Result: land in between the two bony points, and develop butt muscle. I succeeded in controlling that fall yesterday! I landed in the right spot and am not even bruised, in spite of the fact I was not wearing pads. That’s huge!
Equal with that, and basic, keep your arms stiff and out of play—forward, fall like Superman—you’ll skid. Falling backward, fling your arms forward. If they get trapped behind you, you’ll break your arm. Success in that, too! Double check!
And the hardest thing—keep your head up. If falling backward, as you get your arms out of the way, curl and keep your head off the ice: aim to fall on your upper back, just under your shoulders, but without hitting your shoulder joint. Success! I could have survived that fall without a helmet!
And it’s only taken me five years to learn!
If you start as a tiny, tiny kid, your learning curve is shorter because your mass is smaller. And your coach tells you how to keep your head off the ice—plus your whole anatomy is shorter, and you have a little natural help in not hitting your head. And tiny kids tend to go down forwards, while not carrying enough mass to really hurt their knees.
If you start past age 12, and especially as an adult carrying—ahem!—a few extra pounds, your new center of mass makes learning that trick more difficult. Tall skaters sway further off their center, fall more readily, almost always fall backwards instead of forwards, and have a lifetime of habits that will kill you on the ice.
But the bear can be taught. I did it. I only had a slight headache, just from the body-check when I hit, but nothing hit the ice that could be hurt.
Now, the stupidity of catching a toepick as long as I’ve been skating—that’s bigtime stupid. But hey, I caught a toe on the mudroom steps again this morning. What can I say? I was acrobatic, carrying a full coffee cup, but I didn’t go down.
Same toe, too. Gotta figure what I’m doing that’s crazy.
Just imagine how much hard it would be to fall like this on a station….
Glad you didn’t do too much damage!
A helmet… I suppose hockey players wear them, so it makes sense.
I remember buying my first bike as an adult (15 yrs ago?) and being astonished that they expected me to wear a helmet. Now whenever I see someone biking in the street without one, I want to yell “get a helmet!” out the window, except it wouldn’t do any good. (And when I see someone wearing one tilted way back in the patented Useless Position, I want to yell “put it on right!” but that would be equally fruitless.) Oddly enough, I’ve never hit my head in any of my spills. It’s probably the fact I’m prepared to. The bad thing you’re prepared for is never the thing that actually happens.
Good falling tips! In the unlikely event I ever get on the ice again, I’ll try to remember them. We didn’t skate much, when I was a kid. I was a wall-hugger, the few times a year we went. My best experiences on the ice didn’t even involve skates — there was a frozen marshy area at the top of the street, and we’d go boot-skating, watching the air bubbles under the ice and feeling it flex beneath us. At 8, of course, you have no conception of how cold it’s going to be if you go in…
And it sounds like the Invisible Pavement Gremlin that grabs my sneakers has relatives in the northwest…
@mrgawe: I once caught my front tire in a crack in the pavement and went down right in front of my husband. He left tire tracks on my helmet and we later donated the helmet to a bicycle shop where they displayed it as a sales tool. Now, the tires were very narrow high pressure touring tires, not the fatter ones that you see these days, and it certainly didn’t take much effort to stick the tire in the groove between two concrete slabs.
Learning to fall should be taught in PE classes. I learned to do it in modern dance classes in my 30s. It has stood me in good stead for 30 years. I’ve slipped on ice, tripped on uneven sidewalks, been hit by a truck, and always come out better that I might because I can fall, usually on my butt, or more elegantly, my upper hip area. The truck was the worst; I had brain damage from the brain shaking around in the head, and a very small skull fracture, but it could have been much worse if I had not taken most of the fall on my butt with a side roll.
tulrose: He ran over your HEAD? Holy crackers, that must have hurt even WITH the helmet! Yeep!
Pretty good advertising though…
I agree with arethusa that falling should be taught in PE. I mean, how many times as an adult are you really going to need to know the rules to volleyball? My college roommate learned to fall in judo class, and I was pretty jealous. Not jealous enough to join judo though.
p.s. arethusa: Hit by a TRUCK? Holy cr — actually, I think that rates more than holy crackers. That might be a holy bundt cake. (I think maybe I’m hungry.)
And somehow, “small” as a modifier for “skull fracture” doesn’t really sound that small…Glad you recovered!! Eeek!
Strangely it didn’t really hurt. His front tire sort of skidded off the helmet and he was half-way off the bike by then. Still left tire tracks though.
Sounds like OSGuy needs to assist with the rototilling….after the bridge across the glorious pond is installed. 😀
ooooh. 😉
I haven’t been on the ice in about 9 years, last time was a fraternity get-together (professional fraternity) at the rink where the Norfolk Admirals of the AHL practice. For me, the rental skates were hockey skates, I guess because of 1) the size 2) they figured a guy would want hockey skates instead of figure skates. First time out, I could tell the difference between hockey skates and figure skates and I was amazed at how well I could take the turns. Well, familiarity breeds overconfidence and I lost the edge on one turn, Made a spectacular fall on my left side, skidding about 10 feet or so. No damage, except to my ego, but then, there was one of our group who was afraid to go out onto the ice. I wanted to let her know that even so-called “experienced” skaters like me (HAHA) fall “occasionally”.
I’m glad you weren’t hurt.885
I’ve never been in hockey skates: the only close look at hockey skates showed me how narrow they are, and they looked excruciating. 😉
For general information: The big difference between hockey and figures is the blades, of course: the figure blade has the pick (for jumps and other exotic maneuvers: the early skates didn’t have this) on front, and looks as if it runs straight back from there to a ‘free’ tail about 3″ beyond the heel stanchion. But it isn’t straight: under the front stanchion, and going as far as the toe pick is a slight bow, called the ‘rocker’…it will, if you engage the rocker, make you produce a 7′, 8′, or 8.5’ circle on the ice. The size of the rocker depends on the needs of the skater.
One of the things you learn as you get more advanced is how to ‘walk’ the blade during a maneuver. To do an outside 3-turn: You skate forward with your weight just at your ankle-bone, and tilted a wee bit inward. Your next stroke sets down the other foot on its OUTSIDE edge of the blade, knee deeply bent and toe aimed into the turn you want to make. You ‘walk’ your weight forward on your blade and when your center of balance reaches the front outside stanchion you *will* turn 180 degrees fairly abruptly as the rocker tips further forward (but not all the way to the toepick: calf resistence will keep it from going that far). You are now going backward as you use knee and butt strength to haul your weight a wee bit back, not clear to the outside heel stanchion, but just to the outside of the toe-stanchion and behind it a tad—because you skate just behind the toe stanchion when you are going backward. You are still, mind, cutting a curve on the ice because you are on the ‘rocker’, and you will continue to cut a curve—you could make a full ‘outside’ circle if you continued, but at this point you want to switch feet. You have the option to start another curve by shifting to an opposing outside edge, etc.
Well, that’s what the rocker does. It’s like the steering wheel on the car.
And hockey skates are, to my observation, rocker from toe to closed heel. They look dangerous to me. 😉
From what my figure skating instructor ‘way back in 1970 told me, hockey skates have a double edge because the blade profile is “U” shaped, except for goalies skates, which are flat like figure skates. Since I’ve never been on hockey skates other than that one time, I can’t speak from experience. However, I did not that I felt pretty comfortable in them. Recall that hockey players, like figure skaters, have to be in their skates for hours, practice, practice, and competition. If they aren’t comfortable, you can’t do your best. Recall, too that hockey skaters have to worry about getting hit, being able to handle a stick and a puck on that stick, etc. Granted, they don’t skate for as long as a figure skater does at one time, but the skating is just as intense, especially if the other team is on a power play.
U-shaped as per the side view of the blade…yes. Figure skates are U shaped headon, ie, there’s a groove between the inside and outside edges. Dunno about hockey skates in cross-section.
Dunno about endurance, either—a figure skating practice session is about 1-2 hours for us total amateurs and the hockey guys are out there with us—but they whiz about like maniacs, then sit and pant for five minutes…of course they are mostly the older guys. Us older figure skaters just do plain-skating round and round a few times or skate over to the boards and have a sip of latte for a while until we catch our breath, then go for another trick. Then, rarer on our ice, there’s our speedskaters…they’re all technique, and interesting to watch: if a human being can be a machine, I swear, that’s a speedskater. They’re so precise. They don’t go long, but they don’t seem to get back out once they’ve rested. Of course that’s the lot we’ve got: I can’t speak to the habits of that exotic style.