the art of the effective arse plant

perfectionism is a disability

What’s the first thing that you learn when walking on stilts?

That, dear reader is a rhetorical question.

My guess is that few of you have ever walked on stilts and wouldn’t have two sweet clues what the experience is like.

So given this obvious bit of fuckery on my part, let me be clear:

The first thing you learn when learning to walk on stilts is how to fall.

The goal is not to prevent falling.

Nor is the goal to equip the stilt walker with safety gear or padding to decrease the pain from the impact of falling.

The goal is to know how to use what you already have to fall effectively in order to prevent injury.

Judo has a similar bit of training.

You don’t begin by merely picking up little Japanese dudes and chucking them across a room.

you begin by learning how to roll to dissipate the energy from being chucked across the room by a little Japanese dude.

The rules are simple: bone on pavement hurts - don’t roll down your spine if you can help it. In fact? roll on a diagonal from shoulder to…