Let's talk about safety.

Falling

First of all if you're going to learn to skate you will be falling. The more safety equipment you wear the less bodily damage you will suffer. That means to be fully prepared you should be wearing a helmut, wrist guards, knee pads, and elbow pads. However, I will not lie to you, if you don all this equipment it's somewhat constricting so you have to decide what you are willing to risk. Personally, I would say wrist guards are a must, a helmut is also right up there. You'll never be sorry for wearing knee pads. I have to say that perhaps once in the last 10 years did I ever fall on my elbows.

Let's discuss what happens when you fall while skating. You will experience two parts to the fall. The initial impact on the black top followed by the sliding motion that brings you to a stop. That initial impact can cause the real damage (bruises, broken bones, stress fractures, torn ligaments), the sliding motion can cause tremendous skin damage in the form of "rasberries" and abrasions. The latter can really sting and take a long time to heal but should not cause any real long term effects. The former can cost you dearly. I don't know if it's just me but I usually suffer the abrasions. The worst impact fall I ever had was when I was standing perfectly still on my skates when they suddenly moved our from under my body. When I hit the pavement I thought I had broken my knee cap. Fortunately I hadn't. There are two main things that will cause you to fall. The first is a skating mistake. Basically you mess up. Common causes are your skates knocking into each other, a shift in your center of gravity that puts you in a compromised balance situation, etc. The second cause of falls is from hitting something like a twig or pebble. That's all it takes. A little twig can offer such instantaneous resistance to your skating that sometimes you go down so fast you will not believe it.

To minimize your falling you must keep a constant vigil looking for and avoiding twigs, pebbles, etc. Never take your eye off the road. The falls from skating mistakes will decrease in time as your skating gets better.

If you're skating forward and you fall forward you will probably land on your knees and hands. If you have on knee pads there is no problem. If you are not wearing knee pads try to get your hands down before your knees hit the black top If your skating forward and your skates move too forward while your body leans backwards you will fall backward. This can be a nasty fall. This is the fall where you can hit your head on the pavement. I believe that falling when your skating backwards is better especially if you are wearing a backpack. When you fall backwards while skating backwards you can use the technique that Judo teaches where you slap your hands on the ground to absorb a lot of the energy of the fall. You had better have on your wrist guards. Another technique to reduce bodily damage in a fall is to sort of go with it or roll with it. So if I'm skating backwards and fall I will go into a partial back roll and end up with my legs over my head. If you roll with the fall you sometimes prevent the nasty abrasions.