Theme of the month March 2009: Beautiful breakfalls

Our second theme of the month -- we resumed in February -- will be beautiful breakfalls.

Anthony demonstrates the side-breakfall warm-up exercise

Breakfalls are truly the foundation of our system.  In order to practice throwing techniques we need to be able to fall safely.  While mats help, breakfalls allow us to dissipate the force of a throw by rolling and/or slapping the mat.

We practice breakfalls  as our warm-up and -- in the form of rolls -- to cool-down.  I have previously written about some of the many benefits of breakfalling.

Once practical benefit of knowing how to breakfall is that when you fall over (which happens to most of us occasionally) you are much less likely to break something.  This is self-defence against one's own clumsiness.

Beautiful breakfalls

This month we will be aiming to improve the standard of our breakfalls - make them louder, more efficient, and -- through better form -- more beautiful.

We will go through as many of the supplementary breakfalling exercises as I can remember, and also delve into some of the applications of breakfalling to offence, including some sacrifice throws.