The Most Important Martial Skill

I know this is one of Sensei Boggs' frequent points, but I think it's impossible to over-emphasize. There is one skill that all students should take away from martial arts training:

We all should know how to fall safely.

At Broad Ripple Martial Arts this is called 'unfalling'; the japanese word is romanized as ukemi.  We teach 'break-falls' for when a student is falling forwards, backwards or on their side.  We also teach 'roll-falls' as a safer way to fall with forward momentum.  These techniques are close to standard across the entire range of asian martial arts, probably because they are effective and important.

There are two reasons we all need to know how to fall safely: 

1) Falling is one of the most common causes of injury across many agre groups accounting for appoximately 30% of injuries requiring medical treatment (see, e.g. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_10/sr10_241.pdf).  I believe that many of these injuries can be avoided with some training. 

2)Throwing techniques are part of our karate curriculum, and it's hard to practice throws if your training partners keep getting injured.

For what it's worth, falling is the only part of karate I have used outside of the dojo without any modification at all.  I have flipped over bicycle handle bars, slipped on ice, been tripped playing soccer and landed in very nice breakfalls or roll falls.  Most recently I very stupidly dislodged my home pull-up bar.

That last one really highlights the value of training breakfalls.  Despite having unexpectedly fallen from nearly five feet in the air onto an unpadded floor, I did not injure my head, I did not have the wind knocked out of me, and I immediately regained my feet.  I did bruise my elbow enough to have to change my next workout, which I take to mean I should practice falling until I get better at it.

Once you have the basic technique down (learned on a mat), I highly recommend taking your falling skills outside.  Start slow and gentle, on grass on level ground, and progress (carefully and slowly) to rolling on clean asphalt (new basket ball courts are fairly gentle).

Seems to me it's better to pick up a bruise or a scrape in careful practice than to find out you don't really know to fall the next time you fall for real.