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Comment by the_third_wave | Hacker News Reader

Go for it, wear some wrist protectors and you should arrive in one piece. That is the only protection I use given that it actually work as intended and broken wrists are fairly common in all forms of skating.

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The first thing hitting the concrete when falling is your palms, so having a glove with plastic protection will help not losing any skin from your palms.

Also wear a helmet.

When I was a 13 or so, in the early '90s, I took an "extreme rollerblading" class on the weekends. The class started by teaching various kinds of stops (T-stop where you drag one skate behind you sideways, spin stop ...no one ever used a brake), and then moved on to going down stairs, performing jumps, and so on. We were required to wear elbow, knee and wrist guards as well as helmets. But one thing they taught us early on was how to fall correctly, or come to a falling stop. You want to try to go down with a kneepad first followed by the wrist guard, so you're using the knee to brake. This was something we practiced.

It's been over 20 years since I was on rollerblades and I don't even know if I'd have the balance anymore, but I wouldn't do it without at least one knee guard and both hard wrist guards.

I nearly entirely rely on the T-stop, most of my skates never had any brakes and I removed it from the ones which did since it is only in the way and of questionable efficacy. The disadvantage of dragging a skate is the enormous wear it puts on wheels but apart from that it serves me well. Knee protection might work for some but I never felt the need and just feel those things are in the way, the same goes for elbow protection. Having skated for decades without damaging either knees or elbows I'll probably be OK but by all means use them when you're just starting off, I did this as well.

My favorite were spin stops - I'd do that 90% of the time, or drag a T until I was slow enough to do one. The other problem with a T is your foot can catch if you're on a sidewalk. But playing hockey I would intentionally take a knee sometimes, so I think that would still be something I'd do automatically.

> The first thing hitting the concrete when falling is your palms

Yes, if you're young and have good reflexes, you can break your wrists. If you're old with slower reflexes, you can't get your arms out in time so you break your hip instead.

If you're looking for good gloves for rollerblading I recommend looking at motorbiking gloves. They're a bit expensive but they can be super comfortable and have a ton of protection around the wrist and knuckles.

Motorbike gloves do not include the essential part of wrist protectors, namely the hard plastic backbone which is meant to catch the fall and keep the wrist joint from overextending. If you want to wear them, fine, but make sure to use wrist protectors - with a rigid backbone - as well.

Not all of them do but as far as I can tell some of them definitely do. I don’t ride motorbikes so I’m not an expert in this but my friend who does showed me her gloves which do include wrist protectors. I’m in Europe if it makes a difference…

This is exactly why I stopped rollerblading. I had a coach who made us all sign “contracts” promising we wouldn’t rollerblade because so many players were injuring their wrists.

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