Originally published at: Watch the most successful skateboarding fail ever (video) | Boing Boing
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Very cool and smooth, but the pediatrician in me is screaming “Where is his helmet?!?!!?” That could have gone so so badly.
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Damn that man knows how to fall. I wonder if he’s done any judo, or any other martial arts where learning how to be thrown and recover gracefully is an important part of it? Because that is some beautiful falling.
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i almost think he’s falling just for fun!
wild!
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yeah, this is making me want to go take some judo classes, or parkour, or any other physical discipline that involves an asston of falling.
Or at the very least to take my bike out to the park and practice falling off of that.
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bikes are scary! all those handlebars and pedals. in that respect, falling from a skateboard might be safer…?
though having had my fair share of bike tumbles – better falling would be a great safety course. apparently, sticking your arm straight out and locking your elbow is not the best response. who knew!?
[ eta: next time i will definitely try a back flip instead. 
]
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It’s the same technique, over and over. He has definitely practiced that. Good for him! Falling is hard on you unless you’re prepared for it.
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Recovery is everything!
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I used to do a lot of pretend adventuring as a kid, which somehow involved getting blown up and thrown through the air flying, getting kicked or shot or falling off of airships. In short, I spent a lot of time seeing how high I could jump and land safely with some kind of tuck and roll.
I gave that up sometime in highschool and am now a middle-aged person who gets a stiff neck from lifting a can of beans too assertively without a sufficient warm-up.
come to think of it, the two may be related…
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This is a good comment, but it was hilarious when I thought you were referring to the looping imgur gif
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Bikes are my main mode of transport so it’s probably worth investing some time into how to take a tumble, maybe? I’ve done pretty good at avoiding them so far but it’d be nice to have little “try to leap off the bike and not get tangled in it” reflex in the back of my head.
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Just reading that makes me hurt!
Best tip I ever got was to, when dealing with a fall, try to get your instincts to the point where you take it on the big muscly parts. That’s it.
These skateboarding fails belong on a dance stage, though. That’s some next level grace.
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Wow. If I could fall that well, I’d actually try skateboarding. Dude doesn’t even skin a knee when he wipes out.
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Being bad at judo saved my life.
I took judo classes, and it was great fun. I was really bad at the “throw your opponent” part, so I got good at falling.
After a couple years of that, one night I was playing in the back yard with our large puppy (nearly a year old, 25 kg / 55 lbs). I skipped and turned my back at the wrong time, and he bowled through, under my knees, trying to get to a ball. He didn’t yet have much awareness that his body took up space.
I was standing on a concrete path at the time, and when the dog hit me, my ankles went above my head. Uh oh.
I didn’t instinctively twist my head to see where the ground was, or stretch out an arm. I remember very calmly tucking my head, curling my back, and putting my arms out to lightly guide the impact. I knew exactly what to do.
Because concrete is much harder than a judo mat, and because I was falling back-first straight down (not much roll) I had a massive bruise on my back. But because my head didn’t hit, I didn’t have to re-learn the alphabet or worse. Didn’t even break an arm. Which is pretty awesome.
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And, where are his wrist and elbow guards?!
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it’s true i have been needing to get me some of those… maybe this a good excuse? 
( i have heard, like the judo or aikido thing, learning to fall can really help as one gets older … new hobby maybe. )
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Learning to Fall classes.
Aren’t those just down the hall from the Argument Clinic?
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Yeah, “muscly” might be a bit of a stretch sometimes, but for me, it’s the bum or the shoulder/upper arm area. Anything seems safer than trying to break a fall with a wrist!
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Young and dumb freshman year of college, we were running at full sprint down uneven asphalt for some reason when my toe caught an irregularity and sent me straight down. I don’t know where the instinct came from, but I tucked and did a forward roll, and the momentum popped me right back on my feet. I had a dime-sized scrape on my shoulder to show for it. Crazy luck of youth I guess.
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Learn ukemi on soft grass covered ground, then do a lot of practice on hard packed earth, then on slippery mud, before you even think about concrete 
My kids thought it was super fun!
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