Originally Posted by
Mark Rippetoe
What happens when you teach an 80-year-old woman how to fall, Andrew? Laying down on the floor is not falling -- what Gadders did is falling. Can you teach her anything about this without actually having her fall? And what happens when she falls that first time? And even the second or the third time while you're teaching her to fall? Good things? Do good things happen that first time she falls before our Far Eastern Martial Arts Sensei has successfully perfected her falling skills? No. Good things do not happen to 80-year-old women when they fall down. Even if they fall down on the soft fuzzy mat in the Dojo where Senseis teach Far Eastern Martial Arts. It takes about 0.2 seconds to fall, if even that long, and had his feet gone forward instead of sideways, he could easily have fractured his posterior skull. Happens all the time -- ask the ER guys in states where there's ice on the ground -- because when you slip and fall you are BY DEFINITION not in control of the movement, you don't know it's about to happen (like you do in The Far Eastern Dojo), and if you happen to fall backwards you cannot react in time to affect the outcome because your arms and legs -- the part of your body mass you can control quickly -- are out in front of you, in the air, on the way down. And the time spent teaching the 80-year-old woman this incredibly valuable skill could have more productively been spent getting her stronger, so she isn't as likely to fall. Of all the silly shit Mark "Every Post is a Vocabulary Lesson" Hurling has said over the years, this has got to be the King Hell silliest thing he's ever said, and I'm afraid somebody is going to believe him. Sorry, but this is ridiculous, and you ought to know better.