Highly recommend Rodney Mullen's public speaking on the greater value of Skateboarding and the importance of falling (i.e., it teaches you how to get back up).
Falling down when you're 50+ is a HELLAVA lot riskier than falling down when you're younger.
This appears to be a blog post about risk tolerance - which of course changes dramatically depending on lots of factors. If I fall as a middle-aged person, I'm much more likely to cause permanent, irreparable harm to myself - which, maybe not worth the rewards.
“ If you take a lot of chances, that adds up eventually and you'll have some big wins. Just do it safely, so that they don't add up to a lot of big losses, too.”
“Just” do it safely. If it’s safe, you are not really taking chances.
I've gotten much more cautious since I had a fall a few years ago and realized that I'm not so invulnerable now. I was ice skating - I'm a very good skater and grew up on skates around the same time I learned to walk and played on traveling hockey teams my entire youth. Someone fell on the ice and I reached down and was helping them up when my skates slipped out from under me. I fell backwards and cracked the back of my head on the ice. I swear I felt my brain slosh in my head. Luckily no concussion or other injury but since then I've just taken way fewer risks and I don't plan on changing that.
> If you take a lot of chances, that adds up eventually and you'll have some big wins. Just do it safely, so that they don't add up to a lot of big losses, too.
And here is great contradiction in this whole essay. You can't "safely" take a lot of chances and not lose big, when in most cases to have big wins, one has to do unsafe things...
This is also why folks who have a safety net (in terms of family wealth, etc) tend to do better as entrepreneurs. Not sure this essay is helpful.
I picked up inline skating at ~39, I realized that for all my cycling and lifting my balance and propreoception was crap and skiing once a year wasn't going to solve that problem.
I slapped on all the padding I could and it took me nearly a year to get my bodyweight outside of my feet and really carve at high speed. Why? Because my flexibility, strength and muscle activation all had weird gaps.
I ended up getting a slackboard as well about a year in.
I am basically impossible to knock over now, I can wear sperrys on ice, my legs and core are incredibly strong in a way lifting heavy never accomplished, I no longer have weird little muscle pains, all the muscles are strong.
When cycling I used to have occasional knee pain in my left exterior of my knee. No longer.
I've found 3 fast stretches to do after... I mean, rollerblading is basically yoga (which I find boring) at 15mph with pebbles and no ability to bail, it's fucking awesome and pretty damn hard.
I wear all the pads and it's glorious, I'm ~40 and I haven't felt this athletic since my late 20s.
I was getting sore before I started, that creeping old man shit, now I skate between 3 and 30 miles a week and its great. I skiied 3 days straight at 11k ft elevation and had no muscle soreness and no multi day fade, it was unreal.
The thing is, falling down (ie. failing at things) can take a lot out of you, physically, mentally, financially, spiritually.
For most of us, taking calculated risks is better than simply taking more risks.
And the risk calculation changes based on your personal circumstances: physically falling has a greater impact on an old person than a young person, making a financial mistake has a greater impact on someone who has no savings than someone who is wealthy, etc.
So "let yourself fall down more" isn't really one size fits all advice.
I'll join the chorus of saying that falling down at age 40 means my skinned knee is still healing three weeks later. I'm very risk tolerant, but it's striking how the tides have turned on healing.
> Falling doesn't have to be dangerous. You can fall a lot without getting hurt, if you learn to fall safely. With inline skating, you have protective gear (helmet, knee/elbow pads, wrist guards) which protect you, and you have techniques for falling which let you use this gear to its fullest potential.
Is that actually true? Is it possible with enough protective gear, that falling can be safe, even for older people? Doesn't your own body weight come into the picture, despite helmets and knee pads? (Genuinely curious!)
IME yes, it absolutely can be. I am approaching middle age & still comfortably enjoy pushing myself in physical activities where falls are likely, with zero significant injuries aside from a couple sprained ankles from playing basketball (& technically the ankle rolling came before the fall in these couple mishaps; letting my body roll/fall out of it just helped reduce the severity). Also it's more about technique & familiarity/reflex training than safety gear, although I do wear a Zamst ankle brace on my weak ankle whenever I play basketball & started wearing a helmet for snowboarding a few years ago. Jackie Chan & Buster Keaton were even better at this, although they pushed it a lot farther & did sustain major injuries in their stunt careers.
However, there's a big caveat: I've been practicing falling safely since a young age & really mastered it in my teenage years practicing martial arts & snowboarding. I'm sure it's much harder & more dangerous to learn if you first start in middle age, although I'd imagine it's still possible with the right training & appropriate caution.
Thank you. Yeah given the caveat I think it's probably hard then, unfortunately. (For context, I'm someone who's generally very uncoordinated, didn't play any sports growing up, etc, and a few months ago at 39 I fell from kitchen-counter height or possibly even just footstool-height and somehow managed to fall awkwardly on my side and fracture my hip (acetabulum), which took a couple of months to heal. I'm told that this kind of fracture is unlikely in people this age unless there's high-speed impact or osteoporosis involved, but well, I have a talent for awkwardness.)
The broader point of the post I actually agree with though, but the lesson I'd take away is to engineer environments such that it's ok to fall/fail safely.
This really isn't useful advice since physically, economically, and reputationally, "falling down" when you're younger incurs exponentially less risk.
Virtually all legal systems make a clear distinction between "children" and "adults" precisely because of these sorts of external and embodied judgment factors.
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[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 42.6 ms ] threadhttps://player.vimeo.com/video/77731599?title=0&byline=0&por...
This appears to be a blog post about risk tolerance - which of course changes dramatically depending on lots of factors. If I fall as a middle-aged person, I'm much more likely to cause permanent, irreparable harm to myself - which, maybe not worth the rewards.
Every time you use a question mark in place of a comma? A kitten dies.
“Just” do it safely. If it’s safe, you are not really taking chances.
And here is great contradiction in this whole essay. You can't "safely" take a lot of chances and not lose big, when in most cases to have big wins, one has to do unsafe things...
This is also why folks who have a safety net (in terms of family wealth, etc) tend to do better as entrepreneurs. Not sure this essay is helpful.
I slapped on all the padding I could and it took me nearly a year to get my bodyweight outside of my feet and really carve at high speed. Why? Because my flexibility, strength and muscle activation all had weird gaps.
I ended up getting a slackboard as well about a year in.
I am basically impossible to knock over now, I can wear sperrys on ice, my legs and core are incredibly strong in a way lifting heavy never accomplished, I no longer have weird little muscle pains, all the muscles are strong.
When cycling I used to have occasional knee pain in my left exterior of my knee. No longer.
I've found 3 fast stretches to do after... I mean, rollerblading is basically yoga (which I find boring) at 15mph with pebbles and no ability to bail, it's fucking awesome and pretty damn hard.
I wear all the pads and it's glorious, I'm ~40 and I haven't felt this athletic since my late 20s.
I was getting sore before I started, that creeping old man shit, now I skate between 3 and 30 miles a week and its great. I skiied 3 days straight at 11k ft elevation and had no muscle soreness and no multi day fade, it was unreal.
For most of us, taking calculated risks is better than simply taking more risks.
And the risk calculation changes based on your personal circumstances: physically falling has a greater impact on an old person than a young person, making a financial mistake has a greater impact on someone who has no savings than someone who is wealthy, etc.
So "let yourself fall down more" isn't really one size fits all advice.
> Falling doesn't have to be dangerous. You can fall a lot without getting hurt, if you learn to fall safely. With inline skating, you have protective gear (helmet, knee/elbow pads, wrist guards) which protect you, and you have techniques for falling which let you use this gear to its fullest potential.
Is that actually true? Is it possible with enough protective gear, that falling can be safe, even for older people? Doesn't your own body weight come into the picture, despite helmets and knee pads? (Genuinely curious!)
However, there's a big caveat: I've been practicing falling safely since a young age & really mastered it in my teenage years practicing martial arts & snowboarding. I'm sure it's much harder & more dangerous to learn if you first start in middle age, although I'd imagine it's still possible with the right training & appropriate caution.
The broader point of the post I actually agree with though, but the lesson I'd take away is to engineer environments such that it's ok to fall/fail safely.
Virtually all legal systems make a clear distinction between "children" and "adults" precisely because of these sorts of external and embodied judgment factors.
Some comments are literal: "but I actually won't be able to get up again" and that's fair.
I would say a more complete version is: "take risks that won't end you and learn from the feedback."