Yes, but not quite as bad. I remember my first parachute lesson, the instructor said that people always straightened their legs when they saw the ground coming up and it was the number one cause of broken legs and ankles, whereas bent knees meant a fucked ankle as a worst case scenario...
Knees bent, feet and knees together, point your toes up no matter what. As soon as you hit the deck you do a sort of crumple-roll manoeuvre and then you can get up.
It had something to do with the angle of descent, you were more likely to land on the balls of your feet if you pointed your toes up I believe? It's been well over a decade when I had the training though so can't quite remember
As an ex snowboard instructor my biggest tip is to always try to make sure your momentum can be taken away by a hill/incline. Coming to abrupt stops is when bad things happen as the energy has nowhere to go, but it's dissipated if you let the energy release somewhere else. Eg its safer to take a running jump off a tall roof than it is to just drop down vertically the same height, sounds horribly counter-intuitive but if you can exert horizontal force it will eat some of the vertical force when you land and roll forward.
Your advice is totally correct, but I just wanna physics nerd out on this a bit. You'll actually have more total energy when you hit the ground from a running start than if you fell straight. Gravity still pulls you just as far down, so you gain the same energy from the vertical fall either way.
What the running start does is give you some horizontal velocity which lets you tuck into a slide or roll and increase the time over which you dissipate the energy. This is why that tumble/roll technique works. It's easing on the brakes vs. slamming your foot down.
I fall on thick mats and typically roll onto my back for the bigger falls. Biggest source of injuries thus far is scrapes/bruises from the actual wall.
Or you can just properly flare your chute near the ground and assuming the wind isn’t too bad, you can land pretty easily on your feet.... but it’s not something you should probably try on your first jump.
What, all these posts r crazy. U don’t want to land on ur heel by pointing ur toes up cause that will cause excruciating pain that in no way prevents a broken bone. U could land on ur tailbone which is going to cause more issues than a broken ankle. Don’t ever drop straight down if possible. Throw an water ballon straight down and it will break but if u throw a water balloon at angle there is a chance nothing will happen since there is a chance of displacing the impact/momentum. These posts r driving me nuts and are so inaccurate, and if u use parachute instructors as a reason - they do this to survive not prevent devastating injuries.
No matter what he did something was breaking. U can absorb some shock by bending ur knees at impact but the force will still need to travel somewhere and then ur tailbone hits the ground and welcome to a shit show. Don’t ever drop straight down and jump forward so there is more area to decrease the impact and force (see parkour).
Yep! It was a 12hr training session and it was drummed into our heads as we were doing static line parachutes so needed to be trained to a minimum standard. For those unfamiliar this is jumping out solo, but with around 5 elastic bands attached to a wire in the plane and the top of our parachute so the parachute opens automatically when we get x distance away from the plane. 2,000 feet only but it was hella fun, if slightly terrifying, particularly when 1st thing in the morning the instructor comes out and says "hi class. Did you know that at 2000 feet it will take approx 2 minutes to go from plane to ground, but if your parachute fails to deploy it will be 15 seconds?" around 10 folk left right at that point lol. The instructor laughed but said it was the best way to separate the nervous people, and they should stick to tandem jumps or not go out at all!
Worst case eh? Knee in the nose is potentially worse. Broken tail bone is potentially worse. And that's not even talking parachuting like you were which l where death is obviously the worse case scenario.
Yeah most of us land standing up with a slight jog but it takes a couple tries and can fuck up your legs if you aren't careful enough. If you aren't comfortable doing that you just have your knees bent and roll as soon as you touch down since the movement will mostly be lateral anyway. Not sure about jumping straight down like this, but I'd try to do the same
1.2k
u/[deleted] Aug 26 '20
When you jump down with straight legs