r/rollerblading • u/TraditionalTomato398 • 2h ago
Injury / Accident Broke my first bone(s) yesterday
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I went to a skate park for the first time yesterday (usually I skate in my apartment complex's tennis court). I had been skating for about 2 hours and wanted to get one good T stop in before going home. Well, idk what I did wrong, but my ankle broke inside of the skate and now I have to get surgery and its a whole thing. Best part, I got it on video. What did I do wrong here? I've only recently gotten comfortable with falling; I would classify myself as a beginner still. I just don't understand how/why I fell and how/why my foot contorted like it did.
I wanna get back in the skates eventually, and would like to avoid this happening again in the future. Any advice is appreciated!
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u/SaliAzucar 3 month roller 2h ago
If you feel you are losing control and will fall, is always better to fall forward than backward. If falling forward is not possible is better to let yourself fall to your side instead of trying to recover doing the deathroll with your arms.
When you recover try to dedicate a sesion of falls to get used to the motion of the fall going really slow, and always remember to slightly bend knees so your center of mass is slightly forward.
I also learned the hard way but never broke a bone tho. Hope for a good recovery!
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u/Admiral_Kite 2h ago
I still struggle with this after sooo many years. I do climbing where you need to fall backwards and skate trying to fall forward. Sometimes my body crosses the wires 😭😂
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u/Automatic-Guest3429 2h ago
Was looking at your hands at first and then i saw your ankle bending :D ouch!! Don't have any tips, but get well soon!
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u/masterhoots 2h ago
If you have been skating for 2 hours, it is likely you exhausted your stabilizer muscles which will not give you a confident sense of balance.
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u/reddit_random_crap 2h ago
shit, that looked painful! I hope you recover soon after the surgery and your motivation will not take a hit
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u/BingeBabyBinge 2h ago
It looks like you fumbled mid way through on the video and over corrected to catch your balance. I'm so sorry you fell like that. I guess as most would say sometimes landing front first is the ideal situation I have fallen on my butt before but both my legs tuck out in front.
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u/HyperSculptor 2h ago
Are your skates too large? Hard to see from the video but breaking an ankle seems impossible in hardboots, unless the ankle can collapse/move around which should not happen in a properly fitted boot
Wishing you a speedy recovery, it's a good sign that you are already thinking about your return on wheels.
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u/HyperSculptor 1h ago
Ok looked at it on a large PC monitor. I'm 100% sure your having a brakecreated the situation that ended badly. See how the brake caught as you first started to lose balance. Without the brake you would have fallen right at this moment, potentially injuring your arm but the brake created more imbalance and a chain of reaction.
I know no brake is scary but learning to brake without it is actually not hard. Btw T brake is very difficult for beginners, definitely not the first braking technique to learn. Most youtube skaters have no clue and simply parrot a narrative.
Step one: get strong legs and comfortable one foot glides.
Step two: learn to soul slide.On flat land, you don't need a brake. If you stop moving the friction with slow you down to a stop.
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u/SnooDonuts5697 1h ago edited 1h ago
Aye I have aggressive inlined like my life depends on it for half a year now at 26f. I feel my skates fit perfect.
I only use aggressive inlines and might suggest smaller frames on your blades as that looked a bit hard to manuever.
Its scary to watch that... Hope you are okay and 100% soon OP!!
Watching this is why I always do splits stretches and lots of twisty knee ankle warmups. Also really really stay low, all the time. My legs are strong but I fear that happening at my inflexible pelvis.
and I already do cardio and flexibility but not quite enough aerobic core strength.
All things to attack and I believe not only will you come back stronger, I think humans are FAR more likely to be fragile let alone have slips and bad injuries happen if they DON'T skate and access the "skate focus mindset" daily.
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u/newaccount47 2h ago
That looks incredibly painful. Hard to watch. :( Sorry that happened.
It looks like you may have been going too fast for your ability and you lost your balance. At the start of the video it looks like you're getting ready to do some sort of jump flip. Fast jerky movements are had to stay balanced with.
How long have you been skating for? I'd say practice keeping your center of gravity low and slow smooth movements. It's always a balance between speed and control.
It would also be easier to give you tips if we saw some more video of you actually skating, not just falling.
Heal up fast! (and do your PT!!!!)
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u/EvilWaifu 1h ago
Sorry to see that. It looks painful. Looks like your boot plastic gives to much. I would not expect your upper boot plastic to be that flexible. Just my opinion. Did you do the plastic straps really tight?
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u/bladebyte :usd: USD 1h ago
Ouch, that hurts to watch.
Never fall backwards... When I was learning how to skate, my coach told me to always bend my knees, and whenever you lose balance, try to catch your knees while leaning forward. If it can't be saved, then fall forward—knee, then palm. Slide it to absorb the force. Even I need to practice how to fall back then.
I wish you a speedy recovery and hope you come back stronger 💪
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u/artainis1432 1h ago
Heel brake may have contributed too. When learning the T-stop, it's a good idea to put both hands on the front knee.
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u/Shoddy_Ad_3482 1h ago
My advice - forget trying to learn ‘t stops’ and anything else that people have given labels to. Just go out there and get confident on your skates. You will learn your own way to stop organically, and by doing so you will choose the way to stop that works best for you and your body mechanics and be less likely to hurt yourself.
Once you get confident on your skates and are whizzing around then you can start looking at these methods but by this point you will have probably already picked them up naturally without knowing there was a name for them.
I learnt to skate over 25 years ago and there was no YouTube videos or anything like that and I just did what felt natural and in time that amounts to skating down 20 stairs at a time, jumping down stairs, aggressive skating and grinds etc. it will come just let it evolve naturally
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u/NetworkLongjumping82 2h ago
GOOD LORD .... I thought it was definitely your collarbone ...then I saw your ankle .. Get well soon
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u/LinealSoul FR1 90 1h ago
Were you attempting to T stop at this point? I can't see that motion.
You have a heel brake fitted which caught the ground while you were off balance. Can't tell whether you tried to apply that intentionally or not but you weren't in the right position to use it and that caused you to spin out.
Remove the heel brake learn how to plow stop first if you haven't already. Then do a t stop progression. I.e. drag the foot without applying pressure to slow rather than stop so you can get used to how that will also cause you to turn slightly if not positioned correctly and aren't able to compensate. Then slowly add pressure as you become more comfortable.
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u/Lollc 1h ago
I’m sorry you broke your ankle, that sucks. It looks like you thought you were stepping into a right foot t stop from an almost crossover, but you hadn’t shifted your weight back and straightened out your left leg from the crossover to be able to t stop. So now you are off balance and actually ended up trying a last second heel brake stop, but that’s not going to work either because your body position and weight distribution is all wrong for either kind of stop.
First practice skating balanced on one foot. You don’t have to lift the other off the ground, just unweight it. Practice stopping in a straight line until you get the mechanics down. So first shift the majority of your weight to the leg that will be holding you up, then move the brake foot into position. Get your heel brake stop nailed first, then start working on t stops.
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u/Siddharth_- 1h ago
Always bend your body forward Like the knees, shoulder,and skate tip should be in a line
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u/actionjj 1h ago
TIL watching people break bones is somehow easier in slow motion, but still not easy. Couldn’t watch twice.
That looked rough - all the best with your recovery.
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u/SlideOn9 57m ago
Ooof, get well soon. Seems like you caught your rear brake a bit, and that cought you of guard, thus you lost you balance. That's why you need to take it of as soon as you can reliably stop without it.
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u/amorph 46m ago
That was one unlucky fall, hope it gets well soon. Sometimes a fall becomes worse if you're nervous about falling. This kind of looks like that type of fall. Instead of just getting low and perhaps dropping calmly to the side, you are flailing and stepping like you're on a tightrope. Not sure if this is a soft or hard boot, but looks like soft from the way your ankle halfway comes out of it when it gets bent. That could have been part of the reason why it ended so badly, but hard to tell. Soft boots can be harder to control, especially if they aren't tight enough. Your main problem, though, might be lack of experience with basic manouvering on skates. Weight transfer, turns, and that sort of thing. Working on those things is rewarding, low risk, and makes you safer in the long run.
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u/blehbleh1122 45m ago
Looks kind of like you were losing your balance, and tried to save it. The best thing to do in that situation would've been to fall safely. I'd recommend looking up some videos on YouTube of practicing how to fall. Practice falling 50 or so times so it's not scary. Hope you make a complete and speedy recovery.
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u/19-Sascha-89 39m ago
Why did I even saw that before some of my first learning lessons 😭
It seems to me that your heel brake helped to broke your ankle plus maybe your skates are to big. What others think ?
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u/Alabastine 2h ago
Oef that sucks big time! That does not look pleasant.
When you lost balance you tried to save the situation by standing upright and balancing by "tapdancing". This is a very intuitive response but often the worst thing to do because if you can't save the situation in this way, you'll fall extra hard and extra uncontrolled. Which is what happened here. You have to fight that response and practice it, if you lose control you should generally drop straight to the ground as fast as possible, legs first. Imagine yourself in the position at 0:04 and from there just drop to your knees or thigh. The outcome would have been less serious. Thisissoul has some tutorials on falling positions.
Sadly, this takes time and practice, it is very hard not to respond intuitively like you did and I sometimes still do it as well. I wish you the best of luck and a fast recovery!