To Get Good at Falling, Practice Falling
If you want to get good at falling, practice falling.
If you want to get good at taking risks—take more risks.
And if you want to get good at failing (which, by the way, is the only way you get good at anything new)—you have to get used to failing.
Recently, a friend told me she took her daughter roller skating and said something I've been thinking about ever since:
The whole time we were skating, I was terrified of falling. I kept thinking—what if I break my wrist? My hip? My knee?
My immediate reaction was: So what if you fall? Just fall.
Then it dawned on me: the reason I thought that is because I'm used to falling. I do it all the time in Backbody Project. On purpose.
Practicing falling looks like: jumping to the ground, rolling to stand, pushing my balance right to the edge until I tip over (better core activation!). Deceleration and control. Single-leg loading. Ground transitions. Lateral movement. Inversions.
And because falling is something I practice, I'm not afraid of it now at 45—and I won't be at 55, 65, or 75 either.
👉 The fear of falling, failing, and taking risks has very little to do with the fall—and everything to do with how often you've been there.
Most of the risks we're afraid of hinge on a lack of familiarity. Try something often enough to gain competency, and it becomes not just comfortable, but your new normal.
_________________________
As we get older, one of the first things we lose is the ability to sit on the floor with ease—which parlays into falling well, too.
I've worked with enough people to see this up close: men and women in their 60s (which is not old, btw) who struggle to sit down on and get up from the floor. Not because they're injured, but because they Just. Stopped. Doing it.
That's how your world shrinks. Not with a specific intention or a quit date, but because you stop practicing your capacity.
Skiing. Hiking. Playing on the ground with children. Touching your toes. Sitting criss cross (my mom couldn't do that if I offered her a check for $1,000,000. Seriously.)
If you can't fall with ease and get back up fluidly, you're setting yourself up for future limitations—not all at once, just little by little.
The life metaphor here goes beyond movement. Think about things that feel terrifying to some people and completely normal to others:
public speaking
applying for jobs you might get rejected for
eating alone at a restaurant without your phone
going to a concert by yourself
traveling solo
putting your thoughts on the internet (no but this really is scary)
starting over from SCRATCH.
None of this is about being fearless. It's about being familiar.
It's exposure.
It's how many times you've done the thing, failed, and realized you're still fine.
We're all just living inside what we've practiced enough to make normal.
So practice falling. Practice getting back up. Practice being bad at things until you're not.
The goal was never the outcome. It was always the falling.
XO,
