I never fall. Never have (well, once). I guess I’m blessed with extraordinary balance. But now that I’m well into my 70s, I notice that I have to catch myself more often, and have to turn more slowly to avoid an incident. We go to strength/balance exercises three times a week. It doesn’t involve heavy weights, just doing stretches, etc. that help minimize one’s chances of taking a tumble. It also builds muscle memory so that your body is better able to cope with unexpected movement. Our instructor is a physical therapist and these sorts of exercises are easily found on YouTube.
I have been a skier most of my life, but decided as an adult years ago to pick up snowboarding. I took a couple of lessons, and one thing taught was how to fall to avoid injury - wrist, elbow, and shoulder injuries being the most common. The suggested technique was to always keep your elbows bent, so if you fell your arm would be in the strongest position to absorb the impact thru your elbow, upper arm and shoulder, as opposed to an outstretched arm, wrist and lower arm (which has a lot more and smaller bones, and can bend the wrong way).
The other advice, and this works in most non-snow situations, is not to fight it - if you are going down, prepare for impact. I think a lot of injuries happens when we twist and contort to fight the fall. I have done the exact same thing as QtM while hiking - slipping on some gravel like its ball bearings. But rather than try to prevent it, and possibly make it worse, I’ll just try to get down easy and quick as possible, and as controlled as possible. Of course things happen suddenly and its not always controllable.
Sorry to hear about your fall. Whether one knows how to fall smartly or not, falls can have really bad consequences, most notably concussions and broken hips. At least some component of your emerging unscathed was luck, even if it was a relatively small component. Very glad that you’re OK.
One thing I will add to your informative post about fall avoidance, which I think was implied but not explicitly stated, is that when one is old and decrepit (I’m referring to me, not you) it’s important to recognize one’s limitations and avoid potential fall situations. Two that immediately come to mind are stairs and ladders. I don’t mean that oldsters should avoid stairs (although sometimes that’s warranted) but rather that they shouldn’t attempt things that they’re no longer fit for, such as (for example) carrying stuff in both hands up or down the stairs so you can’t grip the railing.
Another one that scares me these days is doing work on stepladders – even the supposed trivia of changing a light bulb. Mainly because changing a light bulb is not quite trivial enough to be the basis of a joke when there is a tricky enclosure that has to be removed first. I have a good stepladder with wide steps, support handles at the top, and a large tray divided into compartments and tool holders, and I still came very close to losing my balance and falling when changing a kitchen light because there’s no way that stupid enclosure can be removed with one hand. Leaving those with less than three arms with no means of support. And the kitchen floor, if I had fallen, is tile. Hard ceramic tile. (Thus there was a risk that my head, crashing down on the floor, could have cracked a tile! 
)
I have various services that do routine stuff like gardening in the summer and snowplowing in the winter, but who you gonna call to replace a damn light bulb? Don’t get me started on the topic of short-lived shitty LED lights.
Agree with all that. Any fall has the potential to be life altering. I hope I didn’t come across as smugly “too much of a ninja stuntman to get hurt”. That wasn’t my intent at all. I know I was lucky. As I have also been in other similar slip/fall events on smooth unexpectedly wet floors in buildings. One of these days one of those won’t go so well.
And you’re spot-on that recognizing your gradually increasing limitations before they bite you is key. It’s been a number of years now since I switched to always having a hand on the bannister while using stairs. Whether carrying stuff or not. Took awhile to burn that new habit in and now I’m glad I have it long before I really “need” it.
Lightbulbs. Or really any overhead work. Aye, there’s the rub.
Once you have to tilt your head way up to see what you’re doing, your balance quality declines a lot. Very easy to go over backwards inadvertently. One of the accommodations for that (besides just not doing it) is to be especially picky about putting the ladder or stool in exactly the right spot. Climb up & find yourself wishing the ladder was 2" to the left or 1" further forward? Climb back down & move it. Can’t get it into position because of obstacles? Move the obstacles, get a different ladder, or stay on the ground. Ladder a wee bit too short, so you’re stretching upwards? Get a different ladder or stay on the ground.
Safety is an attitude first that leads to behaviors second. Lack of safety is the same way.
Holy crap, that is hard! I’m 52, in great health, but I’ll have to work on that one.
I did have a fall recently also. I had been sleeping on my back, with a dog using my hip as a pillow, and when I got up to use the bathroom, my right leg was dead asleep. Luckily I missed the dresser when I went down.
There are a surprising number of ways to flunk getting out of bed. I’ve done most of them, but it’s been awhile. Not having critters helps avoid many potential screw-ups.
One of my habits is to sit up on the bed edge for a couple of seconds before standing. Take a moment to ensure I’m awake enough, feet or hips aren’t tangled in sheets, blood pressure is up enough to not get dizzy, wiggle toes to ensure they’re there, etc.
Sleeping as I do in so many unfamiliar rooms, it also helps me to ensure I know which way to go. Turn left vs right, feel whether it’s carpet or tile or wood floor, etc.
Prevention/hazard elimiination is key in avoiding injury from falls.
Shortly after we moved in to our new home, I installed reflective strips on key stairway risers, especially near the bottom of the stairs and before a landing. We were used to the number/rhythm of stairs in the old place and I figured lack of familiarity with the new stairs might cause trouble. I have since added stick-on motion sensor lights for good stairway illumination.
I also have invested in a large stock of ice-melting compound and spread it heavily during icy winter weather.
Some years ago I avoided injury in what could have been a nasty fall outside the hospital when I didn’t register uneven pavement. Somehow I managed to instinctively roll instead of plopping down precipitously. I don’t know that I’d be able to do that again.
About balance and that standing on one leg eyes closed - allow to repost from another thread.
Tl;dnr? Poor balance, especially inability to do it more than 10 seconds, predicts ALL cause mortality, not just from falls. Possibly lots of fear of fall keeps us from doing things that keep us alive.
o boy, i inspired a thread!
my own balance has deteriorated over the decades. it used to be quite good. but a mild peripheral neuropathy made me slow down and get more cautious a few years ago already. reduced proprioception is more than just a nuisance, as has been noted previously in this thread. this was my first significant fall, though,
fortunately, i took judo as a kid and learned how to fall when someone threw me. unfortunately, no one threw me a week ago so those skills didn’t kick in. ;-D
despite that, i did instinctively protect my noggin, even at the cost of my arm. i’ve seen the results of enough head trauma in my life to try to avoid that!
Not worth it. The cats, or I suppose more accurately the connection with the cats, is/are part of my essence.
i’m glad my dog was not to blame for my fall. tho he sure didn’t act sympathetic or concerned as i lay there screaming on the road. and now he looks so disappointed in me every damn day when he comes to me for ‘walkies’ and i have to refuse him.
it is true, pets do cause a lot of morbidity/mortality for the elderly. BUT they also reduce said m/m by providing companionship and motivation for getting out and walking and socializing, and also by improving mood and helping to reduce loneliness.
While out walking on an uneven trail, my husband brought up a reddit thread that stated that the most dangerous jobs actually have fewer accidents than the not-so-dangerous jobs. Link to study.
We discussed how complacency leads to accidents, so I mentioned that I was watching the trail because I know it’s uneven, as one of the secrets of surviving a fall is not having one in the first place.
You know what happened next. I got caught up in the discussion and stopped watching the trail and tripped. I did not fall, because I managed to catch myself. But it could have resulted in some nice injuries.
I know better. And all the studies and talking in the world doesn’t make up for me walking too fast on an uneven trail.
The data is behind your choice.
Okay that article is dog ownership, and some bits of dog ownership, the walking them keeping people more fit and experiencing the world outside the home, may not translate to cats, but I suspect the emotional bond is part of protection.
Yes there is risk. QtM did fall walking his dog after all. But the getting out along a favorite path walking the dog and pet bond benefits outweighs the risk.
And we are all grateful you did! As long as you have your brain intact you can figure out how to type one handed and we can still benefit from your posts. It is just us being selfish to want that!
And seriously better shoulder than hip. Least harms …
When I was a pre-teen, I took taekwondo lessons for two years; part of that was learning to fall (though throws and falls weren’t as big a part of that sport as they are for, say, judo).
Decades later, I was playing in a three-on-three basketball tournament, being held outdoors, on the streets surrounding Grant Park in downtown Chicago. During one of our games, I was running after a loose ball, when I lost my balance, and began to fall – my angle would have led to me landing hands-first, on asphalt pavement, which would have undoubtedly resulted in nasty abrasion injuries. My old training kicked in, and without even thinking about it, I tucked and rolled, and landed on my back, without sustaining any significant injury.
I still have no idea how, exactly, I did that, but I was tremendously thankful for that reflex that the training had given me.
Our dogs are specifically trained to show good manners on stairs and doorways. It’s part of basic and advanced obedience and part of Canine Good Citizen training.
That said, I fall every few years. I’m a good faller I guess; I’ve taken some major falls but have never had a serious injury. During the actual fall, time seems to slow down a bit.
I’m going to link one of my posts on that thread, too.
It’s made a huge difference in my balance. My bedroom floor it’s carpeted, and it’s not at all slippery to stand in socks. I suppose if your bedroom has a more slippery floor that might not be as safe to try.
We are hopeful Pluto will not one day kill us by dragging us off the front porch while on leash, in a frenzy to catch That Damn Squirrel.
Meantime, thanks to this thread I have a Tom Petty earworm.
I’m learning to fall
'cause I ain’t got wings
Going down
is the hardest thing
I had a fall last week - we recently moved into a house where some of the outdoor areas have a paved slope instead of steps - I can only assume this was in order to push a lawnmower up them or something as they are way too steep to be there for any sort of accessibility accommodation.
In wet weather, they become slippery because of algae - there’s no point killing the algae as it would just grow back in a short time. I was walking down one of these slopes in the rain and suddenly my feet were just gone - I fell on my hip, elbow, then back (I’m OK apart from bruises and a graze, but my head narrowly missed the edge of a stone wall) It happened almost instantly - I was walking, then I was hitting the floor - I don’t think any trained reflex could have helped.
So I’m going to say that whilst learning to fall seems like it could be an interesting skill in itself, from a risk management perspective, safety is improved by making surfaces safer to walk on (the slopes are going to become steps this summer), maybe having better footwear, and just avoiding slip and trip hazards where possible (there’s a set of steps a little further along the wall - I was taking the shortest route from the lawn to the front door, because it was raining).
Prevention is always the most effective approach. Of course as long as prevention doesn’t mean greater costs than the risk.
Bit of a digression from the immediate subject of falls, but I have very strong opinions on the subject of dogs. Dogs are a lot of work, a lot of expense and trouble, but they’re worth it, not just for the immediate joys they bring, but from what I believe is a genuine impact on longevity.
But it can be a double-edged sword. I, too, fell walking my dog. It happened when my large Bernese Mountain Dog who was normally calm and totally ignored both cats and rat-size yapping little dogs suddenly decided – as we were walking down a rocky path – that he wanted to have a conversation with another dog that was just going past the other way. He made off in that direction in a hurry, and as he weighed around 110 to 120 pounds at the time, and I was firmly holding the leash, I fell. And I fell hard. Fortunately the only damage was dental, mainly a broken front tooth.
But, dammit, dogs are good for you, good for your life. There are countless psychological studies on the subject, and the evidence of the good that therapy dogs do just by visiting people, but for me the evidence is much more personal. Just meeting a dog, petting a dog, or quite literally just seeing a picture of a dog, brings me joy and I bet could be objectively shown to lower my blood pressure. Dogs are the best friends of man, they are the children that never grow old.