Falling and injuries

Falling in figure skating is... inevitable. But you cannot be afraid of falling if you want to progress in skating, because you would concentrate on not falling instead of learning new skills. Tell that to an adult figure skater! Adults are more aware of the danger of falling than children and afraid of the possibility of injury.I fall mostly when I learn or correct something, like a jump or the posture. But I also fall because somebody crosses my way or I just catch something in the ice. Some days I fall few times, but I also have weeks when I don't fall at all.

Good news, falling on ice is not like falling on concrete. The fact that you are sliding after the fall, makes the force with which you hit the ground dissipate across the surface. So falling on ice while figure skating doesn't always hurt and doesn't automatically mean injury.

There is a "proper" way of falling. I was taught in my first beginner group class, first off-ice and then on ice, to fall on the lateral part of the buttock and  roll on the side, similar with how you would fall in martial art. My most important points are trying not to break the fall with my hands as wrists are sensitive, not to fall on my tail bone and not to hit the ice with my head. All this applies when you fall backwards or to the side, falling forward while rare for me ,it's harder to save, I use my forearms to break it, again not my hands, and usually I end up with blue knees.

There is also a proper way to get up:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oE5Tn79U6o

If you are prone to fall on a particular body part, you can use pads or guards, wrist guards, knee pads, hip and tailbone silicone or foam pads, a thick head band.

My worst fall was from just standing on ice and looking down at my skates, then, as I looked up, I lost my balance and I fell straight down on my left wrist. While it wasn't broken, it was tender for months. The next one was while doing backward crossovers and  playing with leaning more into the circle I lost an edge and I fell kind of forward but at an angle. I used my arm to break the fall and my shoulder was sore for few days but I hit the inner side of one knee hard. It also felt like I twisted the knee. Again, nothing serious but it took probably a month to heal completely. 

A skating  injury worth mentioning is the overuse injury. That happened to my left ankle because of a series of technical mistakes (not transferring the weight but picking laterally on the ballet jump, stopping the back spin with a lateral hit of the toe pick, then pre-rotating the Salchow on the toe pick...). I started to hurt even when spinning. I stopped doing all those moves but I kept skating and that's when I started ice dancing.

Almost every figure skater I know has a story about falling... off ice... like ice in the parking lot, in the house catching the rug corner... and me.. I fell on the slippery laundry floor. I had the basket full of clothing in my arms and I didn't se the floor was wet. It wasn't a terrible fall I though, but it bothers me for a month now! It seams that I pulled a muscle. As the pain wasn't so bad, even if I felt I didn't have my usual muscle power, I continued skating for a week. It was not only that that particular spot wasn't healing but everything around started to hurt, down to the ankle! I learnt that that is called overcompensation. So I cancelled my lessons, took one week break, while icing, rolling and lightly stretching. I'm determined to let it heal completely before starting to train (push) again. Last 2 weeks I skated very lightly and just 3 days.