Breakfalls: An Exercise Everyone Should Practice
Falls are a major source of injury and death, particularly as we get older
Jumping off a wall to practice breakfalls by Sarah Cocke is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Thanks to my mother for this photo of me practicing breakfalls in 2014. Thanks also for reading every essay, Mum!
I went for a nice walk in the countryside with my family over the Easter break. We were on a steep path with lots of loose pebbles, when one of my feet slipped. Luckily, I have been practiced breakfalls most days for more than a decade, so I slapped the floor with my arms while spreading the shock over a wide area and keeping my head up. I was able to pick myself up, shake it off and continue the walk without suffering even a bruise. My dignity was the only victim.
Falls are a major risk factor as we get older (I am 54). The World Health Organization (WHO) says falls are the second leading cause of unintentional injury deaths around the world. Some 37m falls a year are serious enough to require medical attention, while around 684,000 individuals a year die from bad falls. Death rates are highest among people above the age of 60.
I first started thinking about falling in my 30s and 40s as I was building a home gym in my back yard (Barcelona has 300 days of sunshine a year, as mentioned here). An American strength coach and author called Dan John recommended looking into what he called “tumbling” as one category of exercise that could save our lives as we get older, or at the very least free us from serious time feeling uncomfortable in hospital waiting rooms.
Despite some serious indignity at first, I was able to gradually build up to a half-decent level after accepting this excellent advice. In the photo above, you can see me jumping off a low wall and preparing to dive straight into a shoulder roll on my right-hand side at the age of 44 in the summer of 2014.
Nowadays there are plenty of tutorials on how to fall on YouTube. The skill can be quite hard to pick up from video, though, as it is hard to keep track of where your arms and legs are meant to go without a second pair of eyes. It is worth investing in a private class or three to develop this skill. Coaches in judo (a Japanese martial art based on hitting people with a whole planet) will be happy to help you develop a few basic breakfalls. If you can’t find a judo coach, other options include coaches in judo’s sister art, Brazilian jiu jitsu (BJJ), as well as experts in parkour or gymnastics.
On a related note, young children tend to spend a lot of time on the floor. The time we spend on the floor will often tend to decrease throughout our lives. Some older people often struggle to get down on the floor or back up again afterwards. As a way of staying in contact with the floor throughout our lives, Coach John strongly recommends crawling as a warmup to strength training. A few internet searches for “bear crawls” and “Spiderman crawls” would be a good place to start. Expect indignity the first time you try this! If you find basic animal and superhero crawls easy, look for “inchworm crawls.” You can thank me later!
As well as breakfalls and crawling, it is a good idea to alternate vertical exercises (like kettlebell swings) with horizontal exercises (like pressups) when you go to the gym, as Coach John recommends. Switching between standing and the floor will be good for you in ways that are hard to describe exactly in words. Coach John also promotes an American football warmup called “fun time.” Set a timer for five minutes or so. Now get down on the floor and get up again. Repeat this a bunch of different ways. As before, you can thank me later!
You can combine the ideas mentioned above in creative ways. Why not start on your feet, get down onto the ground, crawl for a bit and then do a breakfall before getting back to your feet? Now repeat the same exercise with the same breakfall on the other side. Try it again with a different crawl. Rinse. Repeat. If you do this regularly, sudden contact with the floor will become much less risky for you. You don’t need to change into a tracksuit when you do this, unless you are planning to do a very long session, but I do recommend emptying your pockets first.
Unfortunately, there is always a risk when we talk about exercise on the internet. Imagine you take my advice and take a few private lessons on breakfalls with a local judo coach. If you make the mistake of mentioning this on social media, I can guarantee someone will tell you that you must get a black belt in judo. Someone else will tell you that you must compete in mixed martial arts (MMA) to get the full benefits of your training. A third person will tell you that you must move onto extreme moves in parkour. I call this “the hardcore fallacy.” It is particularly common among young men who take their hobbies a little too seriously in the years before starting a family.
We can see the hardcore fallacy whatever new activity you happen to choose. If you start alternating jogging and walking with the aim of completing a 5k race in 45 minutes within a year, I can guarantee you that someone on the internet will tell you that you must run a marathon within three hours, while someone else will tell you that you must run ultra-marathons, preferably in the desert. If you start alternating kettlebell swings with pressups, as I mention above, someone will tell you that you must compete in powerlifting, preferably in the super-heavyweight division.
Of course, as a person of the internet, I am also guilty of this fallacy. Why did I illustrate an essay on the importance of breakfalls with a photo of myself jumping off a wall? Why did I mention inchworm crawls? Self-awareness can be a terrible thing!
The hardcore fallacy is silly for three main reasons. The first involves risk profiles. As we mentioned in the essay on toxicology, the dose makes the poison. A little of something can be good for you, but a lot of it can be bad for you.
Learning to do some breakfalls with a friendly judoka should be a very safe activity. Competing in MMA… not so much. Slowly working up to a moderately paced 5k running race will be fine for most people, while ultra-marathons in the desert will be significantly harder on your body. Building a home gym is good for you, particularly if you stay within your limits with good form while developing the training habit, but powerlifting comes with certain risks, particularly if you chase big numbers in competition while letting your brain over-ride feedback from your body.
Secondly, the people on the internet who promote the most hardcore iteration of an activity often assume that everyone wants to get to the highest-possible level, even if it means hurting yourself in the process. This is short-sighted. There is value in persuading more people to reach a lower level in whatever activity you choose with more sensible risk profile.
If we look at the bigger picture, around one in eight of the world population were obese in 2022; and adult obesity has doubled since 1990, while adolescent obesity has quadrupled, according to the WHO. We should strive to encourage as many people as possible to become more active at a basic level, rather than telling beginners to ruin their enjoyment of perfectly safe activities in the name of excellence in competition.
We can see something similar with the many nutrition gurus we briefly mentioned in last week’s essay on hunger and discomfort. If you really believe in the benefits of a vegan diet for the planet, for example, wouldn’t it be significantly better to persuade a dozen people to go vegan once a week than it is to get one person to go fully vegan?
Thirdly, people who subscribe to the hardcore fallacy often lose sight of the bigger picture in another way. For example, people who practice BJJ often spend many hours over many years training for a hypothetical one-on-one duel with a single unarmed person, which ends up on the floor. This training is a fine activity if you enjoy it, but please don’t assume the underlying scenario is the main risk you will face in your life.
To quote Coach John on the main risks we all face:
Don’t smoke. Wear your seat belt. Learn to fall and recover. Eat colorful veggies. Exercise about half an hour a day. Don’t let your weight get over 300 pounds.
From a European perspective, 300 pounds (136 kilos) looks much too big, but the basic point is sound. I would add that it is important to listen carefully to your doctor’s advice if you are diagnosed with a serious illness. Internet gurus who tell you that your doctor is part of a global conspiracy might not necessarily have your best interests at heart. It is also important to vaccinate yourself when faced with a major pandemic.
In fact, there is an interesting parallel between breakfalls and vaccines. Actively seeking out contact with the floor on a regular basis for years and years can make sudden falls much less harmful as you get older. Likewise, deliberately exposing yourself to small doses of pathogens in a controlled setting can make dangerous diseases significantly less deadly.
This week’s essay comes with homework. If you are under 60, please look up a YouTube tutorial on shoulder rolls from your knees. Try one on each side after emptying your pockets first. How was it? If you are over 60, please set a timer to one minute. Get down on the floor and then get back up in different ways during this time. How was the experience? The comments are open. See you next week!
Further Reading (Previous Essays on Sharpen Your Axe)
The importance of daily practice for skill development
If you want peace, prepare for war
Avoid woo when you talk about your hobbies
This essay is released with a CC BY-NY-ND license. Please link to sharpenyouraxe.substack.com if you re-use this material.
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Opinions expressed on Substack and Substack Notes, as well as on Bluesky, Mastodon, Post and X (formerly Twitter), are those of Rupert Cocke as an individual and do not reflect the opinions or views of the organization where he works or its subsidiaries.
I googled "shoulder rolls from knees" and got exercises involving moving *only* one's shoulders. I also got "how to do a proper BJJ shoulder roll", where the starting image showed a person on the ground, but nothing about knees - and sure enough, the demonstrator did the first roll from a standing position. (Later he starts with one knee on the ground, from a posture I doubt most over-40s can assume.)
This was google, not you tube's own search, but at a guess youtube is even worse. (It has a very bad rep.)
I was, however, being naughty. I'm 66, so of course I looked first at the under 60 assignment.
p.s. I agree about the hardcore fallacy. I parted company with a personal trainer some time in my 40s because I just wanted to age-proof myself, and he couldn't imagine a maintenance state rather than constant push for improvement.