Breakfalls while holding something/someone

I just registered with this forum specifically to ask this question, with my forearm bandaged up from some nasty road rash.

I was trained in breakfalls during my childhood Taekwondo studies under a very intelligent instructor who adopted Bruce Lee's philosophy of learning from everywhere possible. The standard set of breakfalls - slapping the ground, rolling, taking it on the fleshy parts, etc. But... I've had a number of nasty falls over the years where I was holding something that I did not want to risk being damaged. And... I do not know of any techniques for safely falling while holding something fragile and/or precious. Does anyone have any useful information, suggestions, or advice?

Easy. Bring your hands in front of you but ensure you round your back, tuck your chin as normal. You have to jump into the fall. Make contact with your rounded arm through your shoulder, then back. Take the impact with your feet only. If you're athletic enough you can jump completely through to make contact only with your feet first.

I advise against trying it but I've seen people do forward rolls cradling babies to make the point.

We practice forward (actually side...) ukemi while holding a stick that someone holds out, either at an angle or horizontally above the mats. Your lead hand never gets near the mats.

I've done it with open cups of beer. With sufficient speed you don't lose much at all..... I learned in Army parachute training performing Parachute Landing Falls. Seemed like a good idea that summer evening a few decades ago.

NBK

That wouldn't work for either of the last few times I've needed a method of breakfalling. A couple of them involved going downstairs while carrying a small dog when I slipped; it was "take it on the rump" or "kill my dog." I'm looking for techniques that would work when carrying extremely heavy weights (as in this latest instance) or while on a staircase or other situation where acrobatics isn't really an option.

Let go of the dog.

Fragile, precious,small, room to take ukemi. Check. Judo territory.

Large, heavy, staircases..... You're in stunt man territory, not martial arts. I can't imagine anything other than tucking your chin and taking the fall on your butt.

If you're carry something heavy you can't afford to jettison to save yourself, that's what is typically marked 'two man lift'.

I guess this is where the 'don't do ukemi' proponents come in.

With many techniques, we do things as properly as we can when learning and gradually simplify them until we end up with a simple, sophisticated version that is efficient whilst remaining effective.  Breakfalling can be like that; as novices we breakfall every throw but as more advanced students we learn to roll with all but the fastest and hardest throws.  Maybe its different with judo, where the ippon throw can be do or die, but with jujutsu, the throw is just a change in height or plane and the fight goes on.  Learning to roll with the throw means we can be counter-attacking in mid-air or generating momentum for a counter-throw on reaching the ground.

In our junior class, kids learn to pick up a knotted belt off the mat whilst rolling or catch a lobbed knotted belt moments before rolling.  They don't have time to think about the perfect roll and have to trust their body to smooth out the impact and subsequent bumps.

So my advice or tip or whatever is to practice no-hands rolling and falling, both in controlled, solo situations and in randori.

Judo nage waza and judo ukemi were developed together so one could train forcefully but safely.  Even though more damaging nage waza had been devised in jujutsu, they are difficult to train due to the chance of injuring uke, so achieving high levels of proficiency with them is problematic at best.  With that in mind, the further we stray from the type of fall one takes from typical judo nage waza as well as the further we stray from the conditions of a judo dojo, the less applicable judo ukemi can be.
One example that comes to mind is the Parachute landing roll I learned in the military.  In this situation one is approaching the ground at relatively high speed, feet first.  Judo ukemi don't take this situation into account as it doesn't occur with any standard nage waza.  (Tori would have to lift uke in the air and drive him back down feet first).  Just planting the feet is dangerous with theses old Round chutes so you roll with it.  Contact sequentially is : the balls of the feet, the calf,  the thigh, buttocks and diagnonally across the back.  (or variations on that theme.)
No slap because you're holding onto your parachute risers all through so as to maintain control of the chute and keep the landing smooth.
In your case you've added too many complications for anything resmbling standard ukemi to apply.  Particularly the stairs.  Both judo ukemi and the Parachute roll presume a flat landing surface.
Yeah, hollywood stunts is probably the place to look for stair falling, which as I understand it is an art in itself.  A lot of the secret seems to be concealing padding under the stunt-person's clothes.
I agree that the more profitable course of study would be safe practices when moving heavy objects up and down stairs.  Avoiding the fall is better than trying to make the best of a bad situation.

NBK wrote:I've done it with open cups of beer.  With sufficient speed you don't lose much at all…

You, Sir, could be honorary belgian citizen.

Jihef wrote:

NBK wrote:I've done it with open cups of beer.  With sufficient speed you don't lose much at all…

You, Sir, could be honorary belgian citizen.

We used to call the ura nage variation with both hands in front the 'beer and chips (fries, for our North American friends) throw'. Entering low from the side, tori can throw whilst holding a pint in one hand and a punnet in the other, and remain standing to toast his work after uke hits the ground.

At the jujutsu worlds, I once threw a Canadian competitor so hard with that throw his (illegal) shin guards shot out his gi pants and flew clear across the mat! I wasn't holding beer and chips at the time but was within a few hours.

Jihef wrote:

NBK wrote:I've done it with open cups of beer.  With sufficient speed you don't lose much at all…

You, Sir, could be honorary belgian citizen.

I really enjoy Belgium. The people were very nice, the beer and food was just great, and the cobblestones didn't hurt near as much as I thought just from looking at them. : )

Many moons ago at a birthday of my sister.
A few of us (including yours truly) had become pop's and mum's with me being the proud father of a daughter. I was walking with my daughter of I think seven months or so sleeping in my arms through the debris of the living room. Children's toys all over the place. When I stumbled, lost my footing and went down face first.
During the fall I turned, landed on my back, using the upper part as a bridge. My baby girl in my arms, she did not even wake on impact. She slept through it all.
No harm done, I was not even scared. Looking back, I know it sounds funny, I got a feeling that it took a really long time before I hit the floor.

Happy landings (of which the above is my most beautiful example)

johan smits wrote:... Looking back, I know it sounds funny, I got a feeling that it took a really long time before I hit the floor. ...

In situations like that one - as a natural reaction, but reinforced by our kind of training, I guess -  the senses tend to become incredibly sharp, providing us with (perceived) plenty of time to decide and react. Even if the incident, in reality, only may last a few seconds, or actually just fractions of a second. I've experienced that several times in my life. One time even especially intensive, when, in a really life-threatening situation, I got the impression, as if everything around me went down to some kind of slow-motion, whereas I was still able to operate at normal speed. Sometimes, I guess, such a thing simply happens too quick, to be explained as a pure effect of adrenalin production alone.

Hi Robert,
That is quite interesting what you write.
I for myself can not recall if I experienced the slow motion phenomenon of my surroundings. I do recall I focused on my daughter. Until now I usually compared my fall with those antics the parkour of freerunning people show. Jumping up in the air, or from a building and almost lazily turning in the air and landing on their feet.
But somehow and altered experience of time, that sounds very interesting.
Do you care to elaborate on that?

Happy landings.

A great book to read is On violence by Dave Grossman. The content is the findings resulting from interviews with hundreds of soldiers, policemen and security officers who have been in combat. It looks at arousal levels and how the senses are increasingly distorted as sympathetic nervous system arousal levels increase.

For the martial artist, there are two main take-home messages: employ tactics to manage and de-esculate arousal levels; and build an arsenal of simple techniques that rely on gross motor skills and avoid those requiring complex and/or fine motor skills. Beyond those, there are many, many good bits of information.

The book deals, amongst many other things, with distortion of time.

johan smits wrote:Hi Robert,
That is quite interesting what you write.
I for myself can not recall if I experienced the slow motion phenomenon of my surroundings. I do recall I focused on my daughter. Until now I usually compared my fall with those antics the parkour of freerunning people show. Jumping up in the air, or from a building and almost lazily turning in the air and landing on their feet.
But somehow and altered experience of time, that sounds very interesting.
Do you care to elaborate on that?

Happy landings.

Doug,
Many thanks for the tip. I will certainly get a copy of that.

Happy landings.

johan smits wrote:Hi Robert,
That is quite interesting what you write. ...  But somehow and altered experience of time, that sounds very interesting. Do you care to elaborate on that? ...

Of course, Johan. But, as I'm afraid, that we might digress too far from the OT, and that this topic deserves an own thread, I did open a new one, and answered there: Altered perception under exceptional circumstances and in cases of emergency