Getting hurt and skateboarding

It can be painful to learning how to Skateboard. You can cover your body with padding, but you will fall, and you'll likely get hurt once in a while. That’s just the nature of the beast, so pick yourself up and rub some dirt in it.

Besides wearing protective skateboarding gear such as a helmet and pads, there are some things you can do to help reduce the damage. The main thing you should keep in mind, when you fall, try and not to use your hands to catch yourself. This will be hard to learn or unlearn its most people’s natural reaction to falling. If you lose your board and you are going to smash into the ground, you should try and let your shoulder and body take the first impact, rolling with the blow as much as you can. Catching yourself with your hand will likely result in a broken or at least a sprained wrist, and while wearing wrist guards can protect you from this, it's a bad habit you'll want to break, because at some point you will skate without the wrist guards.

For those times you do get hurt, what do you do about it? The best thing to do is to get up if you can, walk around and shake it off.

Every time you fall, your body will learn to avoid doing that again. Pain is a great teacher; however, you shouldn't get hurt too badly from skateboarding. Bumps and bruises are pretty common and the worst you can expect would be broken bones.

If you think you've broken a bone or injured yourself badly, get it checked out by a physician. You'll hate yourself if you find out a month later you were hurt badly, but the wound healed wrong and things are twice as bad now. If you see a doctor, take the doctor's advice! Wounds heal, and you'll be fine in no time. After you've healed, the most important thing of all is for you to get back on your board, and keep on skating.