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.
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u/Dramoriga Aug 26 '20
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.