Falls, rolls and breakfalls, I must admit, are just as much as an eternal struggle like the actual martial arts themselves.
Even having taught seminars on the very subject, I still feel there's a long way to go yet. For the last few years I've been working on making every fall to be as soft as possible (for the style of aikido I practice we often use a hard way of falling, which is very easy to learn and the softness of the mats forgive you, but it obviously wont be as pleasant on asphalt). I have pretty good control of my falls, maybe sans my feet every once in a while, and I can for example do a soft high fall pretty close to what these guys are doing
click. The problem with learning 'feather fall' is that at some point you just have to throw yourself out there in the deep and pretty much any mistake will fuck up your shoulder. The first two months after I discovered this kind of falling I had to sleep on my back or stomach as my shoulders were beaten badly... so it kinda defeats the purpose of the fall (not to get injured
). It's still fun to learn though.
For some tips on basic forward and back rolls I recommend this video:
Meeting the Mat. It's really about the basics of the rolls, and I'm sure you'll know most of the stuff he says in the video. But nevertheless it's really nice to have him clearly illustrate what works and how it works and it defintely helped me on my rolls.
