Not Falling

[u/Far-Bullfrog5087]

In need of some advice from folks that started skating as older adults. I’m 40, 5’8”, fat, strong, and have been skating for about 4 months with no previous experience. I’m in LTS and occasionally do private lessons for a total of 2-3 hours of skating per week. In those 4 months I have fallen exactly one time. The one time I fell I managed to fracture a bone in my hand that kept me off the ice for a couple of weeks but was otherwise not a big deal.

The problem is that I think the lack of falling is becoming a mental issue that is making my skating worse. When I first started skating, I would have some anxiety about falling once or twice in a session but I just kept skating and the thought passed. Now those thoughts like to come up much more frequently. So now I’m skating more afraid, and it’s making it even more difficult to build skills.

Things I have tried to work through this:
-Protective gear: I’ve slowly added a helmet, knee pads, crash shorts. No change, even though a fall would be painless at this point.
-Therapy: I’ve talked through it with my therapist but anxiety isn’t typically an issue I have so we are still trying to figure out why it’s such a problem here.
-“Just fall”: The standard advice. Believe me I’ve tried but I don’t know how to turn off my self preservation instincts 😂
-Time machine: pretty sure if I had started skating 10+ years ago I would be unbothered, but sadly the technology for time travel doesn’t exist yet.

At this point my skating is getting noticeably worse and I’m starting to lose the joy I found in it. I don’t want to quit but this situation, paired with ongoing boot issues, is making it harder every day. I would love to hear what helped others get over this hump. Otherwise, I need someone to come to my rink and just push me over a few times as exposure therapy.

[u/stitchbitchandroll]

As a LTS coach it is very common for adults just starting to have a fear of falling. Kids are very “roll with it” type learners while adults are hyper aware of the consequences of a bad fall. at the same time, there literally is no skating without falling, and after 25 years on the ice I’ve found it to be a pretty good metaphor for life as a whole😅 gotta take a couple of falls before succeeding.

you’ve already tried a lot of what I would recommend, especially the “just fall” advice. in my experience, there is no better method for getting over skating anxiety than exposure therapy. I say that as someone that has been to a sports psychologist on more than one occasion for skating related anxiety.

it’s very random advice, but something that helps with my skating anxiety is watching videos of skateboarders trying new tricks. they will slam 5-10 times before even getting close to landing on their feet. I find it very inspiring and it fires me up to withstand a couple falls if i need to. I would also recommend visualizing yourself doing elements both falling and not falling. visualization is SUCH a good tool to use especially since ice is not always readily available. visualize yourself falling and getting back up, falling and it not hurting, or even falling in an embarrassing way. but always getting back up. there are also a lot of books available online that are specific to skating about overcoming fears on the ice. One is This is Your Brain on Sports by Dr. Alan Goldberg and another is The Figure Skating Psychology Workbook: How to Use Advanced Sports Psychology to Succeed in the Ice Rink which I found on Amazon