Suppose you had to jump from a height of about 6 metres on to a hard surface.
What would be ideal landing, to minimise the risk of injury?
I think I’d try to land with knees slightly bent and then fall forward onto the hands.
dv said:
Suppose you had to jump from a height of about 6 metres on to a hard surface.What would be ideal landing, to minimise the risk of injury?
I think I’d try to land with knees slightly bent and then fall forward onto the hands.
probably want to look at some stunt types and see how they do it
dv said:
Suppose you had to jump from a height of about 6 metres on to a hard surface.What would be ideal landing, to minimise the risk of injury?
I think I’d try to land with knees slightly bent and then fall forward onto the hands.
Similar to parachute landing.
PermeateFree said:
dv said:
Suppose you had to jump from a height of about 6 metres on to a hard surface.What would be ideal landing, to minimise the risk of injury?
I think I’d try to land with knees slightly bent and then fall forward onto the hands.
Similar to parachute landing.
“Paratroopers’ goal is to fall sideways in the direction the wind is carrying them — in no way resisting the momentum of the fall. When the balls of their feet barely reach the ground, they immediately distribute the impact in rapid sequence up through the calf to the thigh and buttocks. Then they roll over on the latissimus dorsi muscle, the large, flat muscle running laterally down the side of your back, and kick their feet over, shifting their weight so they end up supine with legs bent in front of them.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/24/well/move/the-right-way-to-fall.html
What is the motive behind the jump? If you hang yourself over the edge first you’d reduce the height by a couple of metres…
dv said:
Suppose you had to jump from a height of about 6 metres on to a hard surface.What would be ideal landing, to minimise the risk of injury?
I think I’d try to land with knees slightly bent and then fall forward onto the hands.
No, the advice is to avoid using your hands to break the fall. They can’t take anywhere near as much stress as the legs.
>Land on both feet. In any type of jump, landing on one foot effectively doubles the amount of pressure on that foot. Do your best to keep your legs and feet together throughout the jump. This will maximize the chances of your feet hitting the ground at the same time.
Landing on both feet is more important if your jump is high enough. An imbalanced fall can result in severe injury.
Don’t try to break your fall with your hands. Hands can alleviate some of the shock on your feet, but they can generally withstand only a fraction of the pressure that feet can.
When you land, try to land on the balls of your feet, shoulder-width apart.
Another method is to roll:
Perfect a landing roll. It’s not just a thing for action movies. A landing roll is arguably the best way of absorbing shock from a fall. If you’re landing from a height, you should aim for a diagonal roll. Pushing yourself into a roll with one foot will avoid placing stress on your spine.
As you fall, aim a shoulder to the ground in the direction you want to roll in. As you’re rolling, take a foot and hit the ground with it to give you the extra force you need to complete the roll.
Rolls are difficult to master and should be left to trained athletes. It should be said as a high-difficulty alternative to landing on both feet.
Try rolling on both sides. It’s a good habit for athletic versatility, and you may find you prefer one side over the other.
For practice, regular “gymnastics rolls” (without a jump) will get you used to the experience of rolling. They’re relatively easy to do provided you have a degree of fitness and flexibility. If you want to practice with diagonal rolls, a playground (with a soft ground) is a good place to start.
Rolls lead well into continued movement. This is why they’re so highly recommended in sports like parkour.
https://www.wikihow.com/Land-a-Jump-from-a-High-Place
Feet together, knees bent, arms held tight to your body. Try to land moving slightly sideways. When you do land, absorb the shock by rolling over, first onto your lower leg, then thigh, then torso. You’ll probably find that you won’t need to roll over past your back.
That’s what I was taught (and I still use) when I learned to skydive. It works well for me.
I suspect spending as little time on your feet and introducing a roll component would be better. Hands and arms aren’t that great at impact stuff.. I think a should roll would be better, keeping you head and neck tucked out of the way.
Tarsals and meta tarsals fracture easily.
Arts said:
I suspect spending as little time on your feet and introducing a roll component would be better. Hands and arms aren’t that great at impact stuff.. I think a should roll would be better, keeping you head and neck tucked out of the way.Tarsals and meta tarsals fracture easily.
As that ref says, rolls work well if you know how to do them but if you don’t, an emergency is probably not the best time to experiment.
Landing on both feet, letting your knees bend, going limp and hoping for the best is probably the best bet if you’re not athletic and haven’t practised falling rolls.
my daughter fell from 8m onto a soft fall mat and still broke three metatarsals… I’d say her relative light weight and general athleticism saved more injury, she has quite strong leg muscles from trampoline and acrobatics work… but she still didn’t get out of it without injury.
Now given that with the fall DV is describing it is deliberate, The chance for injury is high for anyone not trained in some way. But getting off your feet as quickly as possible would help IMO
Arts said:
my daughter fell from 8m onto a soft fall mat and still broke three metatarsals… I’d say her relative light weight and general athleticism saved more injury, she has quite strong leg muscles from trampoline and acrobatics work… but she still didn’t get out of it without injury.Now given that with the fall DV is describing it is deliberate, The chance for injury is high for anyone not trained in some way. But getting off your feet as quickly as possible would help IMO
I’d imagine a jump from 6 metres onto a hard surface would normally result in injury.
Superhero landing… duh!
I imagine that you wouldn’t be minimising the risk so much but instead minimising the consequence…
esselte said:
Superhero landing… duh!
that only works if you are stronger than the impact surface
furious said:
- I’d imagine a jump from 6 metres onto a hard surface would normally result in injury.
I imagine that you wouldn’t be minimising the risk so much but instead minimising the consequence…
If you haven’t practised rolling jumps and don’t know how to do it, you might be looking at serious head or neck injuries if you tried it for the first time in such circumstances.
PermeateFree said:
dv said:
Suppose you had to jump from a height of about 6 metres on to a hard surface.What would be ideal landing, to minimise the risk of injury?
I think I’d try to land with knees slightly bent and then fall forward onto the hands.
Similar to parachute landing.
Pinteresting but when parachute landing there is usually a major horizontal component so you can run into it a bit. Also, from a 6 metre drop you’ll be landing at 40 km/h vertical, which is faster than the verticle speed of a parachutist, usually.
But I suppose this raises a separate question. Is it better just jump straight down or would it be better to take a running leap? Maybe you could make a roll out of it.
Arts said:
esselte said:
Superhero landing… duh!
that only works if you are stronger than the impact surface
Yeah I’m think that right knee would cop some damage.
If the drop is a wall and you hung yourself over the edge to reduce the distance to the ground, and you had your wits about you, you might be able to push off the wall at a lower height to get that horizontal movement – though I wouldn’t want to try it…
As a lad I used to jump off our roof without injury but a) that was only 5 metres and b) the surface was grassed and c) kids cope better than adults with these things: better strength to weight ratio and so on.
dv said:
Arts said:
esselte said:
Superhero landing… duh!
that only works if you are stronger than the impact surface
Yeah I’m think that right knee would cop some damage.
I.. I wasn’t being serious guys.
Most important thing is to protect the head. It’s possible to survive breaking bones and damage to organs in the torso and such, but everyone is going to die if they crack their head on the ground falling from that height. So use all your body below the head as a shock absorber, to cushion the blow and reduce the deceleration that the head experiences. Keep your muscles relaxed, extend your toes, bend your knees slightly. Avoid finishing the landing by falling backwards, better to sacrifice the hands and arms by finishing the fall forwards or even better than that to the side.
5 metres?! That’s insane…
furious said:
- Suppose you had to jump from a height of about 6 metres on to a hard surface.
What is the motive behind the jump? If you hang yourself over the edge first you’d reduce the height by a couple of metres…
Fair.
Suppose the motivation is to escape fire, an imminent explosion, an assailant etc.
dv said:
furious said:
- Suppose you had to jump from a height of about 6 metres on to a hard surface.
What is the motive behind the jump? If you hang yourself over the edge first you’d reduce the height by a couple of metres…
Fair.
Suppose the motivation is to escape fire, an imminent explosion, an assailant etc.
for an assailant I would run then stop just short and step aside then watch the assailant fall, see how they did it, see what damage, then try to do it better.
Arts said:
for an assailant I would run then stop just short and step aside then watch the assailant fall, see how they did it, see what damage, then try to do it better.
If it was a Dalek I’d throw my hat* over its eye stalk to temporarily blind it, then push it off the edge.
*assuming I was wearing a hat.
Arts said:
dv said:
furious said:
- Suppose you had to jump from a height of about 6 metres on to a hard surface.
What is the motive behind the jump? If you hang yourself over the edge first you’d reduce the height by a couple of metres…
Fair.
Suppose the motivation is to escape fire, an imminent explosion, an assailant etc.
for an assailant I would run then stop just short and step aside then watch the assailant fall, see how they did it, see what damage, then try to do it better.
What if your assailant is not Yosemite Sam?
Bubblecar said:
Arts said:
for an assailant I would run then stop just short and step aside then watch the assailant fall, see how they did it, see what damage, then try to do it better.
If it was a Dalek I’d throw my hat* over its eye stalk to temporarily blind it, then push it off the edge.
*assuming I was wearing a hat.
do you also get the idea that DV is not thinking this through? :)
Bubblecar said:
Arts said:
for an assailant I would run then stop just short and step aside then watch the assailant fall, see how they did it, see what damage, then try to do it better.
If it was a Dalek I’d throw my hat* over its eye stalk to temporarily blind it, then push it off the edge.
*assuming I was wearing a hat.
A Trilby perhaps
In real life you’re likely to use your hands just to protect your head & upper body, no matter what the experts say.
I can report what I did (instinctively) after jumping on a big stout cardboard box and unexpectedly bouncing off, at the tip last year. I did try landing on both feet but bounced forward again and broke the fall with my hands before rolling onto my side.
Lots of pain in the hands/wrists for a while afterwards but fortunately no real damage.
From 6 metres onto a hard surface I’d imagine there’d be more likelihood of broken hands.
dv said:
Bubblecar said:
Arts said:
for an assailant I would run then stop just short and step aside then watch the assailant fall, see how they did it, see what damage, then try to do it better.
If it was a Dalek I’d throw my hat* over its eye stalk to temporarily blind it, then push it off the edge.
*assuming I was wearing a hat.
A Trilby perhaps
they can cause a lot of trouble.
Bogsnorkler said:
dv said:
Bubblecar said:If it was a Dalek I’d throw my hat* over its eye stalk to temporarily blind it, then push it off the edge.
*assuming I was wearing a hat.
A Trilby perhaps
they can cause a lot of trouble.
ahhhh that’s Tribbles.
PermeateFree said:
dv said:
Suppose you had to jump from a height of about 6 metres on to a hard surface.What would be ideal landing, to minimise the risk of injury?
I think I’d try to land with knees slightly bent and then fall forward onto the hands.
Similar to parachute landing.
Yep. Minimise maximum decelaration.
Also consider how motorbike racers land to avoid serious injury when they are thrown off a bike in a crash.
dv said:
PermeateFree said:
dv said:
Suppose you had to jump from a height of about 6 metres on to a hard surface.What would be ideal landing, to minimise the risk of injury?
I think I’d try to land with knees slightly bent and then fall forward onto the hands.
Similar to parachute landing.
Pinteresting but when parachute landing there is usually a major horizontal component so you can run into it a bit. Also, from a 6 metre drop you’ll be landing at 40 km/h vertical, which is faster than the verticle speed of a parachutist, usually.
But I suppose this raises a separate question. Is it better just jump straight down or would it be better to take a running leap? Maybe you could make a roll out of it.
Yes, and you might even fit a pike in.
Peak Warming Man said:
dv said:
PermeateFree said:Similar to parachute landing.
Pinteresting but when parachute landing there is usually a major horizontal component so you can run into it a bit. Also, from a 6 metre drop you’ll be landing at 40 km/h vertical, which is faster than the verticle speed of a parachutist, usually.
But I suppose this raises a separate question. Is it better just jump straight down or would it be better to take a running leap? Maybe you could make a roll out of it.
Yes, and you might even fit a pike in.
I’d pike it.
dv said:
As a lad I used to jump off our roof without injury but a) that was only 5 metres and b) the surface was grassed and c) kids cope better than adults with these things: better strength to weight ratio and so on.
Yes me too. I used to do the hand and drop out of my favourite tree at about 3-4m, landing on my feet and giving in with the kees until my arse stopped a couple of cm off the ground.
Wouldn’t dare try it now as an adult.
Peak Warming Man said:
dv said:
PermeateFree said:Similar to parachute landing.
Pinteresting but when parachute landing there is usually a major horizontal component so you can run into it a bit. Also, from a 6 metre drop you’ll be landing at 40 km/h vertical, which is faster than the verticle speed of a parachutist, usually.
But I suppose this raises a separate question. Is it better just jump straight down or would it be better to take a running leap? Maybe you could make a roll out of it.
Yes, and you might even fit a pike in.
9.8, 9.6, 9.4, 9.5
Arts said:
Peak Warming Man said:
dv said:Pinteresting but when parachute landing there is usually a major horizontal component so you can run into it a bit. Also, from a 6 metre drop you’ll be landing at 40 km/h vertical, which is faster than the verticle speed of a parachutist, usually.
But I suppose this raises a separate question. Is it better just jump straight down or would it be better to take a running leap? Maybe you could make a roll out of it.
Yes, and you might even fit a pike in.
9.8, 9.6, 9.4, 9.5
10, -10, 10, -10
There are a lot of parkour instructional videos on YouTube that describe how to land.