Safest posture for riding and best way to fall?

[Darrell Wesh]

15 minutes ago, hyperair said:

The first time I fell at ~25km/h three years ago, I stumbled, fell with both arms under my body, kept my head up, and continued sliding to a stop. That slide felt like an eternity. You feel your skin burning, but you can't do anything about it until you've come to a full stop. You say that it's a one-two second fall, but you probably have closer to 10-20 seconds of sliding before you come to a complete stop. Each second you spend on that tarmac ablates off more of your skin (or gear if you're fully padded up).

You're right in doubting that I had time to have laser-like focus and slowed time enough to rationally analyze all of that. All of that is preparatory work. You do that before your crash, constantly while you're riding, not when your wheel has decided to give up on you. At the point where your wheel decides to go under, you should still have a vague idea of what's around you, and your hands should be free to come to your rescue. And rolling? If you don't have that macro in your head, you won't be able to even activate it during the crash. This is why I practised it and tried to make it instinctive.

Not really, I could have simply let myself continue sliding on my hands and elbows like the last time. Whereas this time I tried to angle my body in a way that would enter the roll, eventually, when the friction between the road and my hands had sufficiently torqued my body into a sideways roll.

You're right that I didn't actually roll correctly -- I couldn't activate the roll immediately upon impact. But it definitely wasn't pointless. The accident three years ago under similar conditions left me with abrasions at least twice as deep as this round's, on both hands and elbows. They took about three weeks to fully seal up. This accident only abraded my right elbow, and it's already healed up after only 8 days. As for those shredded gloves? They're 10 dollars a pair. I'm not too hung up about them, but they do take 2 weeks to ship from China, so I'll start keeping spares around.

I don't think I properly executed the roll, but I did manage to transition into a roll, and the results speak for themselves -- it's clearly better than nothing.

How do you feel about rolling vs sliding? In my previous post i said rolling is not preferred when you have armor on. I’ve never seen a professional skateboarder initiate a roll after coming off a trick when they have gear on; they slide on the pads. Why would you choose to roll instead of slide? You’re aware that rolling still creates abrasion? But it also compounds the danger of the fall by introducing repeated impact and flailing limbs. 

Also, just wanted to point out that no one slides for 10-20 seconds unless you got off at quadruple digit speeds (1000mph). The fact that you thought you were sliding for that long makes me question the validity of your entire story. I’d also like to challenge your belief that you felt your skin “burning”, as no one feels road rash until after the fact. 

https://www.motolegends.com/rokker-pant-slide-times

Edited May 29, 2019 by Darrell Wesh

[hyperair]

11 minutes ago, Darrell Wesh said:

How do you feel about rolling vs sliding? In my previous post i said rolling is not preferred when you have armor on. I’ve never seen a professional skateboarder initiate a roll after coming off a trick when they have gear on; they slide on the pads. Why would you choose to roll instead of slide? You’re aware that rolling still creates abrasion? But it also compounds the danger of the fall by introducing repeated impact and flailing limbs. 

I feel like I'd prefer sliding if I was fully geared and travelling much faster than 25km/h, but I'd still be wary about hitting the ground hard. I don't want to hyperextend any joints or break any bones from the impact. Rolling still creates abrasion, but far less than full-on sliding. The danger of repeated impacts is probably less at the speeds I go at, and as for flailing limbs, I think that's somewhat mitigated by the fetal position you get into while rolling. But hey, if we're talking about skateboarders falling, here's a video. Parkour roll referenced at 2:29.

 

11 minutes ago, Darrell Wesh said:

Also, just wanted to point out that no one slides for 10-20 seconds unless you got off at quadruple digit speeds (1000mph). The fact that you thought you were sliding for that long makes me question the validity of your entire story. I’d also like to challenge your belief that you felt your skin “burning”, as no one feels road rash until after the fact. 

I don't really know for sure how long I was sliding. It felt like 10-20 seconds, but it may have been shorter. Maybe it just feels like an eternity because of the adrenaline rush.

11 minutes ago, Darrell Wesh said:

https://www.motolegends.com/rokker-pant-slide-times

These tests are for motorcycle pants, and necessarily need to happen at far higher speeds than what I crash at from a wheel. I'd expect them to last much longer at the speeds I crash at.

[hyperair]

9 minutes ago, hyperair said:

I don't really know for sure how long I was sliding. It felt like 10-20 seconds, but it may have been shorter. Maybe it just feels like an eternity because of the adrenaline rush.

I see from this compilation that the slide time is likely to be closer to 5-6 seconds. But it's worth going through the compilation anyway. I see some rolls, some slides, and some slides + rolls.

[Darrell Wesh]

30 minutes ago, hyperair said:

I see from this compilation that the slide time is likely to be closer to 5-6 seconds. But it's worth going through the compilation anyway. I see some rolls, some slides, and some slides + rolls.

🤦🏾‍♂️ They’re going downhill, of course the slide times are going to be ridiculously long. They’re also wearing slide pucks which cause them to slide even longer. On flat ground you won’t ever slide even 5 seconds.

Edited May 29, 2019 by Darrell Wesh

[Darrell Wesh]

49 minutes ago, hyperair said:

These tests are for motorcycle pants, and necessarily need to happen at far higher speeds than what I crash at from a wheel. I'd expect them to last much longer at the speeds I crash at.

I linked that to show you that no one slides for 10-20 seconds as motorcycle leather can only sustain 4 seconds of slide and considered the holy grail of road rash protection. 

“Now it’s generally accepted that leather scores something between four and four and a half seconds. And most people acknowledge that leather delivers slide times that are way beyond what is necessary for normal road riding. You might need four seconds on a smooth race track if you come off at a three figure speed, but it's highly unlikely, on the road, that you'll ever slide for anywhere near four seconds on one area of material.

Any textile garment, therefore, that achieves an elapsed time that is anywhere near to four seconds is pretty darned impressive.”

Edited May 29, 2019 by Darrell Wesh

[Darrell Wesh]

44 minutes ago, hyperair said:

But hey, if we're talking about skateboarders falling, here's a video. Parkour roll referenced at 2:29.

1) those skateboarders have no gear, which you need in order to make sliding viable. 2) the parkour roll he did was in a falling position almost impossible to happen in an EUC fall due to the forward facing stance. Notice that in the beginning when he talked about falling forward he said to loosen your body and go limp; exactly what I said to do. 

[Darrell Wesh]

@hyperair This guy fell forward at 35+mph and slid for less than a second. 

Doesn't seem so possible now for your slide to have been 10-20 seconds now does it 😄

Crash at 2:21

[hyperair]

1 hour ago, Darrell Wesh said:

1) those skateboarders have no gear, which you need in order to make sliding viable. 2) the parkour roll he did was in a falling position almost impossible to happen in an EUC fall due to the forward facing stance. Notice that in the beginning when he talked about falling forward he said to loosen your body and go limp; exactly what I said to do. 

Here's your impossible parkour roll from an EUC overlean. I'm not saying that the parkour roll is the right move to take every time, but it's good to know it and be prepared to execute it so that if the situation calls for it, you can do it. The ragdoll break-fall that was mentioned in the earlier skateboarder video works better for lower speed falls, and this was something that was mentioned in the video as well, starting from about 2:24, where he introduced the parkour roll for faster falls.

1 hour ago, Darrell Wesh said:

🤦🏾‍♂️ They’re going downhill, of course the slide times are going to be ridiculously long. They’re also wearing slide pucks which cause them to slide even longer. On flat ground you won’t ever slide even 5 seconds.

Their slides happened all over their body -- on the torso, on the back, on their backsides. Almost none of it was on slide pucks.

1 hour ago, Darrell Wesh said:

@hyperair This guy fell forward at 35+mph and slid for less than a second. 

Doesn't seem so possible now for your slide to have been 10-20 seconds now does it 😄

Yes, I guess it isn't 10-20 seconds, but it wasn't less than a second either. Let's look at the timestamps of his crash.

• 140.4s: Starts flailing
• 140.7s: Right foot touches the ground
• 140.8s: Left foot touches the ground
• 141.0s: Hands hit the ground, in what doesn't look like a very good position
• 141.1s: Full body on the ground, sliding
• 141.6s: Rolling sideways, body perpendicular to direction of travel, back on the floor
• 142.4s: On his knees, still sliding sideways, looks like he's trying to get onto his feet, but tips over and falls onto his hip
• 143.3s: Hip hits the ground, followed by helmet. Stops rolling.

First of all, if you want to consider the time he begins sliding until the time he stops moving, there's 143.3 - 141.1s = 2.1 seconds. It's not a lot, but it's more than a second. Secondly, consider that he transitioned into a roll, and also tried to get up. Some of the energy from his crash went into that. A full slide would have taken longer to complete, I'm guessing in the 4-6 seconds range, similar to the longboarders in the video from before.

Also, his crash is something like what I went through, but at a much lower speed (23kph, not 35+mph), and I didn't try to get up before I had bled off all my momentum.

Edited May 29, 2019 by hyperair

[Smoother]

On 5/16/2019 at 9:05 PM, seage said:

Ive seen the msx case break from someone looking at it too intensely,

[Smoother]

On 5/28/2019 at 7:35 AM, hyperair said:

My hands went out in front of me as I went down, and while I skidded on the tarmac for a bit at the beginning, I had the presence of mind to transition into a roll instead of continuing to skid on my increasingly raw skin. 

Maybe a little less "presence of mind"on falling practice and more on the correct protective gear.  GLOVES! Who TF wears gloves as protection when they know wrist guards are available and superior?

Also if you wore your knee pads outside your jeans, they wouldn't have holes in them now,  just saying 

[Smoother]

On 5/29/2019 at 5:18 AM, hyperair said:

The first time I fell at ~25km/h three years ago, I stumbled, fell with both arms under my body, kept my head up, and continued sliding to a stop. That slide felt like an eternity. You feel your skin burning, but you can't do anything about it until you've come to a full stop. You say that it's a one-two second fall, but you probably have closer to 10-20 seconds of sliding before you come to a complete stop. Each second you spend on that tarmac ablates off more of your skin (or gear if you're fully padded up).

(EDIT: this response was written and submitted before I turned the page to read that the statement had been dealt with by others.  I leave it here in its entirety to maintain coherence with some following posts) 10 to 20 seconds of sliding! Do you really expect ANYONE to believe that.  Look at your watch and sit still for 15 seconds (average of 10 to 20)  that means you would have slid dozens of yards. Did you really slide that long?  No way , no how. No one in the history of EUCs has slide more than a few yards, and most only a few feet.

Maybe on a frozen lake in Siberia, but even that, 5 seconds tops. On a typical riding surface 1 to 2 seconds is a typical slide.  Get your phone stopwatch out and watch 2 seconds go buy.  It's longer than you think. ( I wrote this before turning the page and watching the "respect the beep" idiot. even at his insane speed he barely skid for 2 seconds, and he was riding about twice as fast as your 23/5kph crash.

 

You can't use @EUC Extreme as an example, he is expecting a fall every second, it's what he does.  He designed his own protectection. He didn't pick his handle by accident.

Hyperair your fighting a losing battle.  No body believe anything you say anymore. You've even got me agreeing with @Darrell Wesh  multiple times, and in the past that never happened .  And yes they were sliding on slide pucks, they are attached to their gloves (so their skin doesn't "melt off" ), also, in addition to going down hill as @Darrell Wesh pointed out, road surfaces are somewhat slippery smooth asphalt, AND the skateboarders are travelling very fast; faster than most EUC crashes.  And they are geared up to slide because sliding dissipated energy harmlessly  with the right equipment, plain old gloves or bare skin? not so much.

Edited May 30, 2019 by Smoother

[Darrell Wesh]

1 hour ago, Smoother said:

You've even got me agreeing with @Darrell Wesh  multiple times, and in the past that never happened 

🥰 see we CAN agree on things !

Edited May 29, 2019 by Darrell Wesh

[Smoother]

1 hour ago, Darrell Wesh said:

🥰 see we CAN agree on things !

[seage]

17 hours ago, Darrell Wesh said:

@hyperair This guy fell forward at 35+mph and slid for less than a second. 

Doesn't seem so possible now for your slide to have been 10-20 seconds now does it 😄

Crash at 2:21

I remember watching this video while i was still doing my research and deciding if i wanted an EUC, and at the time, i was like........this....this doesnt seem right.... And now after 1500+ km (not much compared to you guys, but i know more now, lol)...............I FEEL THE SAME. Its been a while so im sure he doesnt ride like this anymore, but damn, what was he thinking? Lol. riding in oncoming lanes, speeding all over whilst wobbling and looking so stiff. It looked like a beginner with a speed addiction. Even if I hadn't read the title when i first watched it, i would have expected a fall, or to be hit by a car due to all that oncoming lane riding. Part of me feels like he got that invincibility feeling due to his gear. He had the fancy fullface and upper body armor. Probably felt like a tank. 

 

On the positive side though, this video caused me to look for and find Wheellog. And martys suggestion to get the pebble watch. So even with all that wind noise, i can still feel my whole left arm vibrating from hitting certain speed limits. A quick check and i know where I am, and what my battery is looking like. Plus now they've added voice, so it dings me in my headphones (Which I wear to quiet down that wind noise). 

[hyperair]

14 hours ago, Smoother said:

10 to 20 seconds of sliding! Do you really expect ANYONE to believe that.  Look at your watch and sit still for 15 seconds (average of 10 to 20)  that means you would have slid dozens of yards. Did you really slide that long?  No way , no how. No one in the history of EUCs has slide more than a few yards, and most only a few feet.

Maybe on a frozen lake in Siberia, but even that, 5 seconds tops. On a typical riding surface 1 to 2 seconds is a typical slide.  Get your phone stopwatch out and watch 2 seconds go buy.  It's longer than you think. ( I wrote this before turning the page and watching the "respect the beep" idiot. even at his insane speed he barely skid for 2 seconds, and he was riding about twice as fast as your 23/5kph crash.

I dunno, I seem to recall conceding this point a few posts up, but you seem oddly hung up on dismissing everything I'm saying based on this one point alone. 

14 hours ago, Smoother said:

You can't use @EUC Extreme as an example, he is expecting a fall every second, it's what he does.  He designed his own protectection. He didn't pick his handle by accident.

@EUC Extreme is extreme, but he's also human, like the rest of us. These are techniques and preparations that are possible for humans to execute with some training. And even if we can't execute his techniques perfectly, even getting it halfway gets you some results.

14 hours ago, Smoother said:

Hyperair your fighting a losing battle.  No body believe anything you say anymore. You've even got me agreeing with @Darrell Wesh  multiple times, and in the past that never happened .  And yes they were sliding on slide pucks, they are attached to their gloves (so their skin doesn't "melt off" ), also, in addition to going down hill as @Darrell Wesh pointed out, road surfaces are somewhat slippery smooth asphalt, AND the skateboarders are travelling very fast; faster than most EUC crashes.  And they are geared up to slide because sliding dissipated energy harmlessly  with the right equipment, plain old gloves or bare skin? not so much.

Did you even watch the video? They spent a lot of time sliding on their backsides, elbows, knees, and I don't know, everything not covered by gloves. If the pucks are only on their gloves, I really don't see how that counts as sliding on pucks. Many of them weren't even geared up beyond casual clothes and pucked gloves. I'll also point out that slippery smooth asphalt is the condition I was riding on.

14 hours ago, Smoother said:

Maybe a little less "presence of mind"on falling practice and more on the correct protective gear.  GLOVES! Who TF wears gloves as protection when they know wrist guards are available and superior?

Also if you wore your knee pads outside your jeans, they wouldn't have holes in them now,  just saying 

Eh, suit yourself. I shared data from my most recent crash on the thread because I thought it was relevant to a thread about... you know, proper safe riding postures and falling techniques. Looks like it's not welcome and people should just focus on gearing up aggressively instead, so I'll just shut up now.

[mrelwood]

1 hour ago, hyperair said:

Looks like it's not welcome

It is. One’s sense of time gets out of whack in a crash, nothing new there. 10-20 seconds is just a very wide window, and obviously way longer than what actually happened, so people just got a kick out of it. Everybody loves to point out anything incorrect.

I have zero doubt that the sliding felt like forever. My first fall on mud (no damage) felt like I took 6 seconds to hit the ground from when the grip was lost, although it must’ve been well under a second.

1 hour ago, hyperair said:

@EUC Extreme is extreme, but he's also human

I don’t think he is though...  Seriously, perhaps you are not familiar with his story. I’ve been told he is a life-long motocross rider with Finnish nerves of steel. He has practiced falling from an EUC hundreds if not thousands of times, and his reaction time must be an all-time low. Nobody else in the world even remotely does what he does. Halfway there? Dunno, man. It would require a half-lifelong motocross career, nerves of iron, and a birthplace at least somewhere near Scandinavia...

[Darrell Wesh]

3 hours ago, hyperair said:

Did you even watch the video? They spent a lot of time sliding on their backsides, elbows, knees, and I don't know, everything not covered by gloves. If the pucks are only on their gloves, I really don't see how that counts as sliding on pucks. Many of them weren't even geared up beyond casual clothes and pucked gloves. I'll also point out that slippery smooth asphalt is the condition I was riding on.

Did you?

99% of the crashes he was sliding along on his slide pucks. It doesn’t matter if he was on his back, his stomach, his butt, he always placed the pucks down to slide on them. By placing the majority of his weight on the pucks it enabled him to slide long distances that would have otherwise not been possible. 

[Smoother]

10 hours ago, hyperair said:

I dunno, I seem to recall conceding this point a few posts up, but you seem oddly hung up on dismissing everything I'm saying based on this one point alone. 

I can see how you would think that, its reasonable to conclude.  But what you don't know is I wrote that post immediately after reading your sliding for 20 seconds comment, which is on the previous page.  Only once I submitted it, did I continue reading the rest of the posts and onto the other page to discover that the 20 seconds issue had been dealt with.  I apologise, I shall edit the post to reflect the series of event's.

And Incidently , my seat of the pants 1 to 2 seconds estimate was before you analysed "respect the beep's" video to come to your 2.1secs result.  Which, I might add included 1.7 seconds of rolling/tumbling (143.6-141.6) so, this example is a bit muddled because of the sliding/rolling combination.  I fully expect that if he had slid it to a stop, it would have been slightly less that the combined total of 2.1 seconds. However, this is all splitting hairs, because even at 2.1 seconds combined, the estimate by me and @Darrell Wesh was pretty close to reality

Edited May 30, 2019 by Smoother

[Smoother]

10 hours ago, hyperair said:

so I'll just shut up now.

At last we agree on something 

[uekarashi]

Wow, that got ugly hard and fast. I'm not sure I see why either sliding or rolling isn't a valid way of dealing with a crash when it happens, or the point of mocking someone else's gear without knowing all the details. 

[Mono]

36 minutes ago, uekarashi said:

I'm not sure I see [...] the point of mocking someone else's gear without knowing all the details. 

It's so much fun though , going to get a bag of potato chips and start reading from the first page...

Edited May 30, 2019 by Mono

[Smoother]

1 hour ago, uekarashi said:

Wow, that got ugly hard and fast. I'm not sure I see why either sliding or rolling isn't a valid way of dealing with a crash when it happens, or the point of mocking someone else's gear without knowing all the details. 

What details do you need? He said he wore gloves, not wrist protectors, that's 2 details. He said he wore knee pads under his jeans, that's a detail.  He said he wore no elbow pads, that's a detail, he said he was doing mid 20s kph, then he said he must have slid for 15 to 20 seconds, those are words, but not correct words, still a detail of sorts.  And other stuff like burning flesh, and having the presence of mind to roll off his melting hands, etc.

@uekarashi you fell recently; how much presence of mind did you have while sliding/rolling to a stop?  I would wager, not much.  One is pretty much a sack of potatoes in most EUC falls.

So while he's extolling the virtues of rolling it out, he's completely ignoring that the easiest way to prevent injury during a crash, is to wear good and appropriate safety equipment in the first place.  More than that, he actually tried to build a case against sliding, referencing extreme example like EUC Extreme, etc, which several people took issue with.

Then with everyone, mostly experienced riders (and crashers)poking holes in his story, he defends it like a dog with bone in its mouth.

When someone pops up and espouses a controversial theory and backs it up with wildly exaggerated numbers and obscure examples, you bet people are going to pounce.  Beside, it's worth it just to imagine @Mono chuckling to himself over a bag of chips. .

Lastly, to set the record straight, I see nothing inherently wrong with rolling if you manage to pull it off, but as you may know personally now with your "body thumping episode", it isn't always an option.

To quote Marty Backy on a previous issue quite a few people "called bull shit" on this one.

 

[tenofnine]

I believe one of the all time great songwriters wrote a song about his very topic, Sir Limp Bizkit -

"Alright, partner 
Keep on rollin', baby 
You know what time it is

Throw your hands up 
Ladies and gentlemen 
 

Keep rollin' rollin' rollin' rollin' (what?)
Keep rollin' rollin' rollin' rollin' (come on)
Keep rollin' rollin' rollin' rollin' (yeah)
Keep rollin' rollin' rollin' rollin'"

Sage advice really...

He later gives step by step instructions of his riding style

"Move in, now move out 
Hands up, now hands down 
Back up, back up 
Tell me what you're gonna do now 
Breath in, now breath out "

crucial and poignant.

[Darrell Wesh]

4 hours ago, Smoother said:

What details do you need? He said he wore gloves, not wrist protectors, that's 2 details. He said he wore knee pads under his jeans, that's a detail.  He said he wore no elbow pads, that's a detail, he said he was doing mid 20s kph, then he said he must have slid for 15 to 20 seconds, those are words, but not correct words, still a detail of sorts.  And other stuff like burning flesh, and having the presence of mind to roll off his melting hands, etc.

@uekarashi you fell recently; how much presence of mind did you have while sliding/rolling to a stop?  I would wager, not much.  One is pretty much a sack of potatoes in most EUC falls.

So while he's extolling the virtues of rolling it out, he's completely ignoring that the easiest way to prevent injury during a crash, is to wear good and appropriate safety equipment in the first place.  More than that, he actually tried to build a case against sliding, referencing extreme example like EUC Extreme, etc, which several people took issue with.

Then with everyone, mostly experienced riders (and crashers)poking holes in his story, he defends it like a dog with bone in its mouth.

When someone pops up and espouses a controversial theory and backs it up with wildly exaggerated numbers and obscure examples, you bet people are going to pounce.  Beside, it's worth it just to imagine @Mono chuckling to himself over a bag of chips. .

Lastly, to set the record straight, I see nothing inherently wrong with rolling if you manage to pull it off, but as you may know personally now with your "body thumping episode", it isn't always an option.

To quote Marty Backy on a previous issue quite a few people "called bull shit" on this one.

 

😄 I just keep imagining a 15 second slide. And the sensation of burning flesh. I could finish a whole 100meter dash race and he’d still be sliding. Gets me every time 

Its all fun and games though, no one is laughing AT @hyperair, just at his story. Which was indeed written quite descriptively like a story 

Edited May 30, 2019 by Darrell Wesh

[Rywokast]

knees straight and hands in my pockets is how i always ride.. probably the opposite of the safest posture but hey its comfortable

Edited May 31, 2019 by Rywokast