In my humble opinion, being able to fall safely is one of the most important skills you can learn, and competence in these skills should come before any other athletic training. By approaching these skills of injury prevention first, many painful setbacks during your athletic training can be avoided or reduced in severity. Your performance can be enhanced by being able to recover smoothly from a miss-step, and you can build quite a bit of mobility, strength and fitness capacity through a focus on these skills.
In the traditional Japanese martial arts that I have studied, and practiced for over 20 years, and taught for the past decade, Ukemi (breakfalls and rolling) are the first things learned for beginners, and it is something that we revisit consistently at the beginning of every class. Once a certain level of proficiency is reached, the martial art I practice explores and expands on these techniques to apply them to acrobatic feats such as dive rolls over obstacles, running up vertical surfaces, jumping and landing safely from great heights, and other skills like handsprings and cartwheel. It can get quite dynamic and fun if you're interest is in taking it to that level, but the bare basics is where it all begins, and at that level, this skillset is for everyone.
Falling safely is really a reflection of your relationship with gravity and the ground, and how present you are in the moment. How familiar and comfortable you are with quickly and smoothly transitioning from standing to lying down on the ground is a good indicator of how much you can trust your instinctual reaction to losing balance.
Resisting (as opposed to receiving) a fall that is already happening is a sign that your mind is fixated on your past state, trying to cling to standing, instead of readily accepting the reality of how your situation is unfolding. If you're falling, you can choose to fight against gravity, or you can accept it's invitation and go along for the ride. When we break it down, falling is really just a swift transition from standing to lying down. Once you've lost your balance, you probably won't win a fight against gravity. But if you're comfortable with the skills of falling, and ready to change with the flow of the present moment, you'll probably allow the fall to happen, and take a short detour before getting back to all that standing you were trying to do!
Get Along with Gravity
What I mean by your relationship with the ground is literally like a relationship with a person. There are surely people in your life who you pass by every day, maybe smiling and nodding to one another or exchanging a few cordial words, but you don't really know them. You're not sure if they will catch you during a "trust fall" exercise. But when it comes to someone who you spend a lot of time with, you know how they feel about things. You know what their strengths and weaknesses are, what upsets them, what makes them happy, and whether or not you can reliably trust them to catch you!
Your relationship with gravity and the ground is much like the aforementioned metaphor. How much time do you spend on the ground. How many times do you get up and down from the ground every day? Is the ground just a stranger that you smile and nod to when you see them, or do you ignore it altogether? Even worse, do you constantly suspect them of attacking you, ready to flinch and stiffen up anytime they approach you? This is what most peoples' relationship with the ground is like. If that was a person, there's no doubt that this would be a toxic relationship. The only reason you assume such volatility is because you haven't taken the time to get to know them. The ground is really a friend you can trust if you take the time to develop your relationship.
If you don't know someone and they run up to you and hug you, you'll most likely try to keep some distance, distrustfully, and wonder what their motive is. But if your beloved friend approaches you with open arms, you'll probably open your arms to receive their embrace without questioning their motive.
Likewise, when you start to lose balance and fall, is your reaction going to be to embrace the ground and gracefully ride the loss of balance to a lying down position? Or is your reaction going to be to stiffen your arms to post them against the ground in a effort to fight against the fall? Do you practice breakfalls and rolls? Do you get up and down from the ground several times a day for practice? If not, you're probably going to be fighting against the fall. If you do exercises for fitness, but you don't practice breakfalls and rolls, why not integrate them into your warm up, or as cardio once you get better at the skillset?
Depending on your chosen level of intensity during practice, a training session focused on breakfalls and rolling can be pretty exhausting and demanding on your endurance, strength, mobility, and cardio once you get a handle on the skills. Not only are you building your physical fitness, but you're also refining these vital skills. It's easy to integrate these skills into your existing training routine.
Reprogramming your Habitual Patterns
Programming a new skill, and being able to rely on it when you don't have time to think about what to do, demands repetition. You have to replace your current habit, and without a lot of repetition, you can't build a new habit to the point where it will replace the old one. To be able to use breakfalls and rolls, you have to practice them consistently until you have internalized the movement. Even when you have reached a level that you're satisfied with, you should practice at least a few times per week to maintain the skill. It's not enough to just learn then techniques and practice a few times. For a skill to be useful in an emergency, when you don't have time to prepare, the development of unconscious competence is a necessity.
Whatever other activities you enjoy doing, your skills of injury prevention will help avoid setbacks or dangerous situations. Even if you don't really play any sports or do much physical activity, I can pretty much guarantee that you will fall at some point between the time of reading this and the end of your life. That fall may or may not result in an injury, but your chances of walking away from that fall unscathed will be greatly increased if your Ukemi (safe-falling) skills are up to par.
Ukemi for Fitness
Injury prevention is obviously my angle in this article so far, but the drills for developing rolling and breakfall abilities also build the foundation for fitness, core strength, and whole-body mobility. It's likely that you will not be able to do some of these techniques at first, and will require some conditioning drills based on that technique in order to unlock the ability to do it. These kinds of inabilities are probably limiting you in a lot of other movements as well, so addressing these weaknesses and immobility issues will carry over to your ability in many different activities, as well as potentially correcting some structural issues in your body as well.
Once you learn these skills, you can practice them more quickly and with more flow in high repetition to challenge your endurance and strength. You'll be surprised how much of a challenge you can get out of getting up and down from the ground a bunch of times!
4 Drills to Refine your Breakfall Skills
Check out this follow-along video compilation I made of these 4 excellent drills for refining your breakfall & rolling techniques that you can safely do even as a beginner. Practice this sequence every day for a few weeks to see the cumulated results on your technical ability and fitness level. Below you'll see the full video, but under that I will write a bit about each of these 4 drills, and you can click the title of each of those sections below to go directly to that part of the video for quick reference. This routine can also serve as a core workout, cardio, and mobility development session all rolled into one:
With breakfalls, the most important thing is the end position, and familiarizing ourselves with the vital components of that end position is paramount. The lying side roll is also great for spinal and whole body mobility.
Start in the Back Breakfall position. Hands out about 45 degrees from your torso, chin tucked and as upright as possible to prevent the neck from whipping back when we land. One knee is bent with the foot flat on the ground, while the other leg is extended, no higher than 2-feet off the ground. From this position, roll sideways onto your belly, then continue rolling onto your back, resuming the breakfall position with the opposite leg extended. You can roll back and forth like this. You can use this drill to cycle between each of the breakfall positions.
If you want to increase the intensity, try flipping yourself from your prone to supine position in one quick motion. You can repeat this several times in each direction for more of a fitness challenge.
Front rocking is a great way to develop our ability to round the back and tuck the knees for a smooth roll. It's also a great way to develop coordination as a sense of how to transfer your bodyweight and use momentum to power the exit of your roll. I also get some pretty epic spinal adjustments when I do this right. Use your hands against the ground if you have trouble with this.
This is a simple exercise with a few variations and a great tool to use to build up your ability to get up from the ground without using hands, and to help build the back breakfall as well. We start by rocking to a seated position, then the next progression is rotational rocking, then rocking to a standing position.
The beauty of this progression is that the fall is only from a few inches off the ground. This allows your body to get used to getting into the right position when it feels the impact, and helps you train to be able to disperse the force of the fall over a wider base, which is what we want.
Start by getting into a crawling position with your fingers facing forward or out to the sides. Raise one leg, then all at once, slide your arms so they are no longer supporting you, and quickly get into your breakfall position. You'll feel the impact without any discomfort, and can use that information to determine where your weaknesses are, or what parts of your body are not getting into position. If you're not ready for the impact, you can lower yourself down slowly.
If you want to increase the challenge, try starting from standing. Descend slowly, then spring back to standing as quickly as you can. Repeat several times on each side.
If you've tried rolling before, you've probably experienced a bit of a clunky motion, like a few thunks on the way through. How smooth your roll is will largely be determined by how much you can round your back, tuck your legs, and how you coordinate your breathing. control of the direction and speed of your roll will depend on your core strength and stability, and this drill really helps develop this characteristic.
The Back Roll Toe Touch drill is a great core exercise, engaging the hip flexors, rectus abdominis, and obliques to name a few. The idea is to lay on your back with your arms about 45 degrees from your torso for leverage. You'll start by raising your legs and tucking your knees, then reaching back with your legs over one of your shoulders. As soon as your hips come off the ground, you should slightly rotate at the waist. Keep your knees together and think about tapping your feet on the ground behind your shoulder before returning to the lying position.
Many people are not able to touch the ground with their toes. You can position yourself with your head about a foot away from a wall or couch, and touch that instead, moving further away as you get better and stronger. The father you get to the wall or object, the closer to the ground you'll have to reach with your feet, the close you are to the wall, the higher up on the wall you can tap. You can play with your distance to find the sweet spot, and over the weeks, gradually get farther from the wall.
You should be exhaling throughout this whole movement. Air in your lungs takes up space in your torso, making it harder to create a circular shape with the back, so exhale as your legs come in toward your chest.
If you want to use these 4 exercises as a workout, it can feel like a warm up, or a high intensity interval training workout depending on how much you challenge yourself, i.e. how quickly you do each repetition, how quickly you transition from one exercise to the next, how many repetitions you do, and how many sets of the circuit you do. I strongly suggest never to increase intensity to the point where your technique gets sloppy. If you can't maintain your best execution of the technique, you're probably moving at a level of intensity that outpaces your level of skill with the movement, and it's important to take the time to develop a skill to the level that you're challenging yourself before turning it up to that notch.
The different between whether this is going to feel more like a warm up or a workout will depend on your pace. A warm up will be slower, and involve short breaks between each exercise. That's perfect, especially if you're still working on developing these skills, as the slower pace gives you time to really focus on refining your technique. A workout is going to involve a quicker pace, quickly resetting between each repetition, and moving directly into the next exercise without taking a break between sets. Once you're comfortable enough with these techniques, here is a recommended protocol for a warm up / workout with this circuit:
Lying Side Roll - 5 repetitions per side
Front Rocking - 5 repetitions with each leg in front
Crawl to Forward Breakfall - 3 repetitions per side
Inverted Crawl to Back Breakfall - 3 repetitions per side
Back Roll Toe Touch - 5 repetitions per side.
You can do 3-5 sets of this circuit, optionally taking 1-minute breaks between each set, especially if you're finding it harder to focus on the quality of your technique.
How to Learn More
Breakfalls and rolls are absolutely essential in my approach to training, but it's something that takes refinement and consistent practice to make reliable. You now have the tools to get started, but if you want some more comprehensive guidance, you might want to consider enrolling in my Ukemi Foundations online course, which involves a deep exploration and development of the back, side, and forward breakfall, and the back, side, and forward rolling techniques, along with the elements of mobility, strength and balance that are necessary to hone this skillset.
These techniques are taught in the course in a progressive manner starting with learning the positions from lying down, then from crawling and sitting, then from squatting and kneeling, and finally from standing.
Some of these skills demand a certain level of strength and mobility, which is also developed through the course.
I also run cohorts where you can work through the content with a group of people over an 8-week period. Have a look at the link below for detailed about enrollment:
I also have a video explaining the details of the course and what exactly it entails, which is a little easier to grasp than through reading this text. Have a look at the Program Overview Video below:
Hope you found this article helpful, and I hope to see you in the program!
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