Tuesday, July 27, 2010

FOOSH!

The acronym of the day is FOOSH.  It stands for Falling On OutStretched Hand.  John Coles has written an informative post on FOOSH injuries.

I just like the sound of the word.  Say it out loud: "FOOSH".  But I bet that's not what you would say if you sustained a FOOSH injury!

This is what a FOOSH injury looks like:


Ouch!!  Search YouTube for "skateboard wrist break" for more disasters.  Link.

This old post explains how the judo alternative, trained breakfalls, can lower the risk of FOOSH in day-to-day life.

4 comments:

John Coles said...

Thanks for the plug.

In over thirty years of teaching and training jujutsu (among other martial arts) I've seen relatively few FOOSH injuries. However, one always comes to mind.

Jan de Jong and I were teaching at a seminar in Malmo, Sweden. The technique was a hip-turn, or koshi-gaeshi where uke is taken over tori's hips. The seminar participant, a brown belt at that, stretched out his hand and landed on it - shattering, not breaking, shattering both the radius and the ulna.

As I say in my article, evolution sacrificed this chaps upper limb to save the head and torso. Learn breakfalling techniques, and use breakfalling techniques to improve on the evoloved response and reduce the risk of injury to the upper limb.

Cheers

John Coles
www.kojutsukan.blogspot.com

Michele said...

FOOSH - I like the sound of the word.

One student in our dojo had a FOOSH injury. This teenager was jumped by three older teens at a community carnival. He landed wrong and sustained a compound fracture. It was a nasty break and he continued defending himself despite the injury. The student was a brown belt.

Anonymous said...

That guy in the video is a real idiot: skateboarding without any protection on everyday objects is just asking for an injury. He's lucky he didn't break his neck instead of his wrist. I doubt even JJ breakfalling could save you from serious consequences when falling like that. Then again young people are prone to do stupid things: I remember I once climbed a rooftop with a friend: we were both seriously drunk and it seemed like a good idea to climb a 2 story wall using a rope with knots in it: slipping or loss of balance would have resulted in a fall some 6 to 7 metres deep and even my training in JJ wouldn't have saved me from the consequences. The friend who I was with thought it'd be cool to walk a ledge on the roof to prove his mettle: even intoxicated I knew this was highly dangerous (falling 10 metres unto a hard surface has about a 90% certainty of fatality) and I urged him to refrain but he wouldn't listen. Luckily he got back ok but man were we stupid...

Robert Bergin said...

An interesting post, but one that brings back painful memories! I think you are more prone to FOOSH injuries if, like me, you are quite gangly. If you have a lot of reach, you get used to using it and to posting with your arms instead of rolling. Most of the people I've seen injured this way are long-limbed. It took me forever to break the habit.