Special case of situational awareness: I read a discussion among martial arts students of whether they’d ever found their art useful. About half of them said they’d been avoided getting hurt from falling. (Sorry, no cite, but it was on usenet.)
Note that falling safely when expecting to be thrown is not the same as landing safely when falling unexpectedly. The latter is probably a special skill, not specifically trained for in martial arts. Here is some discussion:
Breakfalling may even help you get through a training session where you get tossed around a 100 times or more. But, when you slip and fall off the mat your training will most likely not kick in and save you.
Special case of situational awareness: I read a discussion among martial arts students of whether they’d ever found their art useful. About half of them said they’d been avoided getting hurt from falling. (Sorry, no cite, but it was on usenet.)
http://kojutsukan.blogspot.com.au/2010/12/can-martial-arts-falling-techniques.html may be a useful starting point for further research.
Thanks very much.
Note that falling safely when expecting to be thrown is not the same as landing safely when falling unexpectedly. The latter is probably a special skill, not specifically trained for in martial arts. Here is some discussion:
I don’t actually think that’s thanks to situational awareness but rather from drilling breakfalls a lot.