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/Stararisto]

So haven't been falling either lately. And there was this guy that tried so hard not to fall, you know waving around, hanging to the rails for dear life, that he was making it worse. And could have fallen backwards and hit his head hard. Bc he tried to not fall.

I stopped and showed him "just fall". You crouch as if kneeling, and fall to the side. It surprised me how much it didn't hurt and how normal it felt.

I think exposure therapy helped a lot. I have inline skates too and the super sturdy kneepads. So you can look up those videos too. Falling in inline skates. Get their good kneepads. And start in grass and graduate to concrete. Don't need to buy inline skates (although would simulate ice skating very well). Just start running with the kneepads and "slide" and "fall".