Falling

Okay, so let’s have a chat. By now, you all know about me having Cerebral Palsy (CP). CP comes in many forms, and effects people in many different ways. Some people have limited mobility or control. In severe cases, an individual might not be able to do anything independently at all.

Thankfully, that’s not my situation. My CP is considered to be very mild, which means that I can get away with doing things that may seem pretty questionable for someone like me.

One of those activities is bouldering. Bouldering is climbing up a wall without a rope and either free falling or climbing down after finishing a route. Some people consider bouldering to be scarier or harder than rope climbing, but I beg to differ. Bouldering to me feels more like a power workout. It requires more mental control on my end, and the routes being short means that the problems are arguably more complicated than a typical rope route.

That said, I do still love it. Figuring out how to complete a moderate level route is sometimes frustrating, but very entertaining. And the fun thing about bouldering is that if you need to come down because your solution didn’t work for the climb, you can always just hop back on without having to complete a long part of a route first.

So Melissa, how do you get down from a boulder route?

Well, I tend to just drop. Depending on how I’m feeling, I’ll either drop straight down from the top of a route (a typical boulder wall is about 10-12 feet), or I’ll climb down and drop from a lower point on the wall. Either way though, I tend to just drop.

But Melissa, how does dropping up to 10 feet feel?

Well to be honest, it’s scary. As I’m falling, or when I’m about to fall, I tend to think about the fact that I could snap an ankle by mistake. Especially when I get up high and there isn’t a reasonable way to climb down. I often would rather just drop than to get too tired trying to climb down and falling anyway.

On the other hand, it’s also really fun. There’s something really freeing about taking a 10 foot fall. The temporary free fall makes me feel light, and happy. For a very brief moment, I can pretend that I don’t have a disability.

Yes, but what does the landing feel like?

Oh, well that’s also really fun. The sudden catch at the end feels powerful. As long as my legs are beneath me, they can absorb the shock and then I can either stand right back up or just sit. My drops do look a little strange though. My feet don’t align with my knees. My feet turn outward when my knees are straight (this is called knee-knocker). As a result, I end up in a W sit before springing back up. Onlookers, especially those who don’t know me as well, will sometimes come and ask “Doesn’t that hurt?”

The answer, in short, is no. My legs just fold that way naturally. The distance of the drop doesn’t effect the feeling of the impact. It just effects my level of fear. And that doesn’t always happen. Sometimes they fold straight forwards and then I roll forward, landing on my hands and knees.

What happens when you fall unexpectedly, or when you don’t land on your feet?

That’s a little more complicated. It took a long time to figure out how to fall at all. Getting myself to drop from high up took even longer. Figuring out how to protect an unexpected fall is a recent development. I actually had to do a lot of core work to get to that point.

Why core though?

You might not realize it, but the ability to stop your back from collapsing backwards and causing your head to ricochet off the ground when you fall backwards comes from your core. I would describe it as a reverse crunch, because a person is unfurling backwards upon hitting the ground. I’ll sometimes also fall to the side, wherein the obliques will take over so that I don’t bang my head sideways.

So… can we see??

Yep! I’m putting some examples down below the text of the post. Watch how my legs fold inward, or just forward, when I hit the ground. I tend to roll forwards onto my hands, but I’m in complete control of it…usually. I’m also including a few falls that aren’t planned, where I don’t have my feet directly beneath me. None are from that high up, so it’s not all that bad, but I figured they’d be fun to show. Enjoy!

Here’s an example of me climbing down before dropping off a wall. When I climb, I gauge the likelihood of a fall, and what the fall would look like. If I feel like a fall is going to be painful or not well controlled I’ll bail on the climb. Depending on the climb and the move I was afraid of falling on, I may decide that the fall won’t be all that bad and take the risk. Or I’ll decide to just skip the climb entirely.

This one’s an example of a fall that I knew would be less within my control. I used momentum to try to grab a hold that wasn’t all that good. It would for sure have been better if I’d used my left hand, but I couldn’t get there. Since I went for a left-hand hold with my right hand without being able stabilize with my feet, I got thrown off the climb. My momentum kept going so I ‘barn-doored’ to the left and landed on my side. Ben is spotting me because I knew the momentum might throw me off. My main fear was flying off the mat entirely. The fall itself was totally fine.

I don’t always know exactly when I fall. In fact, I will sometimes do something until failure, which means I’ll fall because of fatigue. This is an example of that. I was doing a ‘no hesitation’ campusing drill, where I have to just reach for what I can grab without thinking about where my hands are going. It’s a fun drill, but a fall is imminent. In this video, I went to grab a hold and slipped off, which threw me off the wall. I didn’t think about whether I could actually use the hold (which is the point of the drill) so I ended up falling off.

I’ve been working falling since I’d started bouldering. Over the years, I would drop from higher and higher points just to test the limits. This video shows one of the farthest falls I’ve ever taken. This is one of those times where climbing down would’ve been too much work so I just dropped. Since I chose to fall, my feet were beneath me and I was in full control.

And those are some of my bouldering falls! It took a long time to get comfortable with falls like these. And these are just bouldering falls! At some point I’ll talk about what it’s like to take a lead fall.

In the meantime, feel free to email or message me about your experience with boulder falls! Falling is terrifying so it’s always exciting and useful to hear other peoples’ experiences with falling.

Cheers!