Dear LPG, 

I was taking a look on the internet one day not so long ago and I found a statistic which was worth a second look.   I found a website which tells that about a third of UK people aged over 65 are likely to fall at least once a year while that number rises to over half when you get to age 80.

What I read went on to explain how much this costs the NHS and the feelings of distress, pain, injury, loss of confidence and loss of independence that are also often a result of such an experience.

One session of surfing often leads to another and, I soon found myself reminiscing on YouTube with the martial arts films of the 1970s and 1980s.  Can you remember how super cool Bruce Lee was when he was flinging his limbs in every direction in films like ‘Enter the Dragon’, while you cannot look at the films of the 1980s without paying a little homage to the Karate Kid.  So many of us got really engaged when Mr. Miyagi got Daniel to do all that car polishing and fence painting before realising where it was all leading to. 

Those films were the inspiration many of us used to go and find a Martial Arts club to attend.  I remember sending my children to such a club after school once a week.  They would disappear into the Dojo, and I never really knew what they were being taught.  I was soon asking questions and found myself taking my own first lesson… 

I always remember the ultimate lessons of defence being the ones we learned first.  The most important being how to fall correctly so that we were prepared for all that being knocked to the floor that would happen before the success of being the opponent who got the upper hand.  

Having laid my Karate Gi down many years ago, I tripped and took a fall recently but those martial arts lessons on how to do it properly kicked in.   I remembered and it is a bit like riding a bike. I am now in my early-seventies and know that, in the bigger picture, I am still a relatively young oldie but there will be falls.  I was surprised how quickly all the break-fall rules came back.  Hitting the floor with your arms to minimise the impact on your other joints, making sure that if your forearms are going to hit the floor, they don’t do it at a 90° angle where your upper arms take the full impact. I know that nothing is fool proof, but we need to use all the skills we have.

Falls happen without a lot of notice and in seconds, but each of them seems to last a lot longer than you would expect and perhaps, the rules that were taught to us older ex martial artists back in those days might be quite useful if ever you feel you are on the way down… 

KN, Penge

KN has found a few links to videos showing a few of the lessons he learnt back in the day. While he is not advocating that all pensioners should start practising all the techniques in the videos, he hopes that just watching will bring back a few memories of the lessons learned by ex-martial arts students of days gone by, while they might also give a little insight that might be recalled if needed whatever your age... 

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