The “Safe Fall – Safe Schools” seminar is part of the programme of the Judo Festival Porec 2024, and Óscar Del Castillo Andrés delivered an exceptional class at the Intersport Centre.
Now, understanding and mastering the art of safe falls is not only a fundamental aspect of judo but also plays a crucial role in injury prevention. Whether you are an educator, a judo enthusiast, or someone keen on promoting a secure learning environment, this course aims to equip you with the knowledge and skills necessary to teach and implement safe falling practices in schools.
During the seminar, individuals were taught several exercises on how to teach a novice [non-judoka] the basics elements of safe falling. All exercises start from an analytical position. Mr Del Castillo André explains further;
The principles are to protect your head, centre of gravity, rolling, and falling by the whole body. Our current focus is to teach PE teachers and judo coaches all the skills necessary to prevent injury. The exercises are the same, only difference is that with judo coaches we are able to use more breakfalls.
Unfortunately, there are many children die everyday as the consequence of an unintentional fall and we need to do something about it. We as judoka know how to fall via our ukemi and learning judo. We need to adapt it and deliver it to the public to protect children off the mat too.
The most common question people ask me after I ran a session like today is ‘do I need to have mats?’, the answer is: No. It is not nessecery. With judo coaches is given but with PE teachers is not and for them there is no necessity to have mats to teach how to fall safe. All they need is balls and ropes, that’s all. So there is no need for huge investment to implement this project.
We have the best opportunity to bring judo to the World Health Organisation (WHO) so they can recommend judo to prevent injuries from unintentional fall. For me this is the ultimate goal.
When taking up this course, students can learn and assimilate a protected and safe way to fall in the event of an unintended fall (falling skill), actively contributing to the reduction of the risk and severity of injuries resulting from this phenomenon. Find out more via the following link.
Images: Carlos Ferreira
Author: Szandra Szogedi