Falling & Getting Up on Roller Skates

Hi everybody, I'm Dirty Debra Harry with the Dirty School of Skate and Sure Grip Roller Skates. I'm here again late night at the Fountain Valley Skating Center in Southern California here to talk to you about a very important subject in regards to roller skating. There is one guarantee in skating and I mean one guarantee. That guarantee is that every single skater is going to fall. Some of us more than others, but every single skater will fall. It doesn't matter if you're a beginner, intermediate, or advanced skater, everyone's going to hit the floor at some point or another. Vast majority of the time, it's not because you've crashed into another skater. Most of the time is you have gotten off balance. It's pretty simple. Most of the time, you get off balance because you have rocked your weight too far behind you and your skates kick out in front of you causing you to land on your back, your butt, maybe knocking yourself in the head. That is a lot more common than people falling forward. Obviously, no one shows up at the rink and is like, oh my god, I can't wait to fall. I just want to fall all the time. Most people want to avoid it. The easiest way that you can avoid falling is to obviously keep your knees bent and your hips down, rocking your weight from side to side as you skate. The other thing is once you find yourself unbalanced, and you usually find yourself unbalanced real quick because you go, oh shit. Usually when that happens, people make themselves bigger. They try to correct and they throw their arms up in the air and make themselves bigger. That is not a good idea. If you get scared and you throw your arms up as a way to correct yourself, you're going to fall. You're just going to fall from a higher position. When you're skating, you've got to practice this, but when you tell yourself, oh my god, I think I'm going to fall, get down low. When I tell you to get down low, most people interpret that as, look, no, I mean get down low. For a reference point, so you know, I want you to take your hands, touch your calves. If you can't get down that low and you're like, no, that ain't going to happen, touch your knees, touch your thighs. Think about this. From what position do you want to fall from? A nice big open position, or do you want to hit the ground from nice and low? Now, if you practice this, so you're going to just be skating along, skating along, and you practice getting down low, it's going to be much easier for you to assume the position as soon as you become unstable. Now, once you go to fall, sometimes you don't have choices. Sometimes you're just skating around again, minding your own business, and you just fall and you swear to god, it came out of nowhere. You're literally looking around like, who the hell hit me, okay, when in reality you just got unbalanced and fell and it was just a crazy thing that happened, all right? Now, if you have a choice and you know you're going down, pick soft spots of the body to fall. Preferably this area, the hard carb area, biscuits area, those are great areas to hit the ground because they're already soft and padded for you, all right? And if you're like me and padded a little bit too much, hit the ground, it won't be that big of a deal. If you hit the ground and you're in a low position, you will do a lot less damage to yourself, especially for wrists, if you hit the ground from a low position as opposed to high. So now we've established, I'm skating along, I don't want to fall, so I'm rocking my weight back and forth, keeping my hips on knees bent, but something happens, I become unbalanced, I'm going to get down low and I hit the ground. Once you hit the ground, mentally, you have to tell yourself, up, up, up, up, up, up. You literally have to make a rule for yourself. You have three seconds to get up, three seconds, okay? Hit the ground, you tell yourself, up, up, up, and start working on getting up. Why is that important? Listen, here's the deal. Falling down, you always think you're hurt. In reality, you're usually not. You're just shocked. Why are you shocked? Well, you spend the vast majority of the day walking around, you're at home, at work, you're not stumbling around, I mean, you're not falling down on the ground on a regular thing. I mean, I don't, I mean, maybe you do, I'm not here to judge you and your lifestyle, but the vast majority of the time, you're walking around upright most of the day and you'll sit down, lay down, whatever, but you're not falling. So when you put on roller skates and you fall, you're just shocked by it. When you're in shock and on the ground, you think, oh my God, have I hurt myself? Now, let me tell you this, if you really hurt yourself, trust me, you'll know. When you fall down and you're just shocked about falling down, that's usually followed by some semblance of embarrassment and some part of you or your friends is looking at you and laughing, right? And then you're just thinking, I'm down here, I'm on the ground, I can't believe this. And then this kind of leads into this whole thing where you're questioning your life choices and all that, and you're just, none of that needs to happen. The second you hit the ground, one, two, three, you are up. Get up. Tell yourself, up, up, up. By the way, this works for like every sport, every single sport. You get down, tell yourself, up, up, up, up, up, up. Help your friends. When they go down, you point at them and go, up, up, up, and make them get up, okay? So let's assume you've fallen down. Now you got to get up. How the hell do I get up? When you get up, I want you to look good doing it, okay? So you're going to have to practice this one, but this is how you can look good getting up from a fall. When you fall down, I want you to get to a position where you're kneeling. You're on one knee, okay? This one's up. Make sure that on this leg, your toe and your toe stop are firmly seated into the ground. I'm going to have you lean forward. So my chest is over this leg and this knee. I want you to reach forward so that you can use momentum to get up. You're going to reach forward and pull back and stand right up. I know what you're thinking. Well, yeah, sure, that looks easy. It probably isn't. You're right. It's not easy at first, so I'm going to need you to practice, but once you get it down, it looks real good when you wipe out and you get into this position, you just roll yourself up and keep skating, okay? Again, let's get down to the kneeling position. I need you to lean over this leg. What I don't need you to do is put your hands on here. You try to push. This is really hard to stand up from that position. You need the momentum. Reach forward. Pull your arms back to here. Now I'm on two feet. I can use the strength in both of my legs to just stand up, okay? This is going to take a little bit of time, but when you go to the rink or you're outside or whatnot, I want you to practice this a few times every time, maybe at the very beginning before you start skating. Just assume the position, reach forward, pull it back, and stand up like the beauty you are, okay? I hope you've enjoyed this video. I hope you give me comments and tell me what else you want me to show you. I love reading your comments, and I just want to say thank you so much, all the people with all your kind words. It's really, really cool to read what you write and what you want and what you're thinking about skating. I just love skating, and I love teaching people, so anything you write to me, I'll respond, and I will really do my best to put together a video that makes sense, okay? So if you have any questions, comments, write them down. Please subscribe and share. I would really appreciate it. You can help me get the word out. That would be great. So thanks so much for watching, and go practice falling from a low position and getting up and looking like a superstar, and we'll see you again soon, all right? Take care. Xavier, what are you doing? This is what Xavier's doing. Look at that. This is what he's doing while we're doing videos. My God! Xavier! You've got to take this stuff seriously!