I don’t know, going elbow first on hard concret sounds like it’s going to be painfull af and you’ll likely break something, while your hand naturaly knows how to deal with impact, the worst you’ll get on your open hands is cut and abrasion, which sounds less difficult to heal than a dislocated helbow
forearm maybe, don’t know
but maybe I’m wrong
also I guess it all depends on what kind of speed we are talking about falling from
I’ve had all my falls elbow first and the worst I’ve gotten was on a normal skateboard that should have dislocated my shoulder, but that only happened because I fell on the side of my arm and it got twisted under me. Felt like I had hit my shoulder on the ground but there was no burn or scrapes and the scrapes on the arm weren’t possible with normal arm and shoulder movements.
Shoulder dislocations may hurt like a MF but are easier to fix than a broken wrist. Plus if you’re unlucky a wrist/hand breaking can be bad enough to cause permanent nerve damage.There are some shoulder stretches you can do after a fall on the elbow that work very well to loosen things back up and help reduce the pain. (for most falls where there is no dislocation)
You can still use your hands in a fall after hitting your knee and elbow. I might have left that out on accident
I thought you were supposed to land on your ass and roll sideways
When I said it heals easier I mean after the injury is fixed by an orthopedic doctor or ER doctor. Putting a shoulder back in place yourself is a dumb idea and I didn’t think I needed to say that
Random tips in no particular order:
Learn to somersault, forward and backward, and practice it as much as you can. I didn’t learn somersaults until college but after that I found myself doing them a lot, especially in backward falls.
It’s one thing to know, intellectually, what to do in a fall. But by itself that mostly just leads to knowing afterward what you should have done before you got hurt. 
A lot of it is just getting comfortable with tucking and rolling out, and being relatively relaxed as you do it. That’s often safer than fighting the fall. You often won’t have time to choose that course of action, but if you practice enough you’ll just do it automatically.
Wear lots of gear, especially the stuff with hard plastic armor. When you hit that ground, armor helps you slide rather than stick, and that helps a lot.
My fastest crash so far was about 30mph in a velodrome. I got speed wobbles, went down, and slid for a looong ways (plus a tumble), and got up unhurt. That was 50% armor saving me, and 50% nice smooth concrete working really well with the armor. I slid for what seemed like forever, so the only impact was me falling to the ground - not from me going 30mph-0mph in a heartbeat.
When you’re in a situation where you a fall seems imminent, crouch. Getting low means you’ll have less distance to fall, and that helps no matter what happens next. Being low also helps recover from sketchy stuff, so you might even avoid the fall that way.
Vert is a good place to practice knee slides, because you can learn pretty quickly to drop to your knees and slide away, and you’ll get lots of practice in a short time, and on vert there tends to be relatively low impact. (Tends to be. There will be exceptions.) You fall vertically, but the ramp gradually redirects you to moving horizontally.
Sliding out on your knees is a good skill to have, but it’s not one-size-fits-all. Less-than-vert pools left me with sore knees for a while before I realized that with less transition I need to run a couple steps before dropping to slide (and sometimes just running it out is all it takes.)
I have a lot of experience falling from all sorts of things, and I’ll be honest, ESK8 is the most difficult discipline to fall well in.
The falls frequently have no advance signals, you are going fast as fuck, and you are basically standing up on a plank 3 inches above the ground. Your best shot is tucking into a roll, or sliding out on kneepads if momentum hasn’t completely fucked you over already.
My approach is to prepare for the fall. Wear all the pads and a full face. I can’t always fall well, but I can mitigate the damage when it inevitably happens.
I’ve got some experience here! All my gnarly falls were because of my Zealot losing connection to the throttle via bluetooth which straight up put’s the brakes on cause of the hobby king VESC in it! It’s BS and real! Not just a loss of power throwing you forward but a straight up stop for a sec, enough to throw anyone off of it. It’s happened at 27 mph, 22 mph, 20 mph, n 10 mph…the latter times I knew if may happen and it still threw me even at 10 not enough for my crashing roll to be needed!
that’s the key I think…the roll…take one stride to dump to your back when hauling ass and roll, or yoiu will blow ACL’s n knee stuff like that which is much worse long term than getting bloody! I got out of the 20 mph wreck rolling directly to back cleanly, except for the broken screen on my laptop that was in my backpack, but that backpack n laptop totally helped cushion the back roll! I keep a backpack on with something in it for cushioning now! I rode my zealot like people use cars cause it was mine and rode it everywhere, charging it 3x a day putting on 1000’s of miles over a year!
Sorry about the long response, but the long and short of wrecking on a board with minimal damage is definitely the roll! Trying to run out of anything over 20 mph is risking potential long term knee damage. I was a street skater in my youth and used the roll often so it wasn’t weird to start doing it again in my 40’s! I’m building my own board now and don’t use the zealot cause it will put on the brakes when the bluetooth throttle loses it’s connection to the ESC, and I simply can’t trust using it at all, it was awesome and so fun for like a year and a half riding a min. of at least 10 miles a day.
Just going to requote this so it really sinks in
Essentially this
Don’t straighten your limbs on impact, the elbow/knee WILL break on you.
For falling on your back, use your butt to cushion the initial impact, then roll to your shoulders, and use the further parts of the limbs (between knee and foot or hand and elbow) for landing. TUCK YOUR HEAD INTO YOUR CHEST! This method will almost guarantee no road rash and only minor superficial level injuries to your joints.
For falling on the front… good luck landing this one safely without gear. If you got hard gear, then slide, you should be mostly fine but the impact won’t be cushioned AT ALL so you are bound to be EXTREMELY sore for the following days. If you got soft gear, you’re as fucked as naked when you land on the front. If you’re like me (when racing and doing stupid shit) and use soft gear inside with hard gear outside, you’ll most likely shrug it off easily.
All this being said, try to fall on your ass… falling on your face is too gear dependant and most people only ride with bucket helmets, so you’re not saving your face/chin from the fall anyways. Falling on the ass will make it easier to survive the fall. It’s just how it is.
I’m seriously surprised to read this in most answers, I would have thought you have more chance to snap your neck or mess up your back by falling backward than forward,
but I guess I never ride faster than 40km/h the falls I think about are mostly the kind you can run out off while you guys speak about crazy fast falls
Sorry one last post…
A 1-2 stride run, 3 max., off the board when over 20 mph…then a very gentle 2 arm plant off the palm of your gloves your GLOVES! to the start of your roll/rolls. Beginning the roll after dumping maybe a 1/3 your speed with the 2 leg stride to the forward roll ( like you taught your toddler to) all the way down the back or the spine, then another and another, depending on your speed. There is a a shoulder first roll option to the side that will leave you bloodier but not so awkward if you can’t pull the head over heels option!
I don’t know how you could go to your butt or do anything else anyone has mentioned here unless you are going slow and those are just scuffles! LOL! or do anything else than the stride/rolls if your cruising fast, definitely for anything over 25 mph. (faster than any human can run I think… so don’t try) I rode my zealot at 28-30 mph daily in total control and safety until the bluetooth signal loss to ecs stops the motors…Ouch!!! a few times over 25 mph close to 30 using stride/roll wreck strategy last year and still alright. One of the last times it happened I was going 20 n tried to run it out with like 3-4 strides and almost blew an ACLO for sure so no go one the run too!
Ok so a lot of different advice here and I’ll give mine.
A little bit of background. I’ve been skating for over two decades, been downhilling and racing for over a decade, been electric skating and racing for over two years at the pro level. I’ve taken spills from the first push all the way up to about 60mph.
GEAR! Obviously gear helps, most people know about helmets, but most people really don’t know how important SLIDE GLOVES are. The only other contender are the wrist protectors, but I’ve never used them.
As a downhiller slide gloves are a must, many events don’t even allow you to skate without them. It’s the way you learn it’s the way you fall. Having pads are always a good idea, but you can get away with a lid and a pair of slide gloves if you like to keep gear to a minimum. In my opinion, it’s very much the same for electric. The only difference is that electric has brakes and people never needed to put a puck down to slide. In downhill learning how to slide to slow down comes with learning how to fall with slide gloves in the process.
At slow enough speeds running it out works, at certain speeds a run to a fall on your slide gloves works. If you got knee pads falling on your knees to slide works in conjunction with your slide gloves. If you can fall on your knees without hands like in vert, go for it.
When you’re going fast often times you can get straight up tossed and you don’t have much of a choice and ideally you shoot out with both arms straight out in front of you bracing for impact with your slide gloves kind of like a push up. If you aren’t rocking knee pads you can actually focus on the toes of your shoes and slide the whole way in a true push up stance. More than likely you’re just going to slide on your gloves as your lower body just dangles as you eventually come to a stop. This is the most ideal way to fall BY FAR. Many of my friends including myself have fallen this way at speeds of 45+mph with nothing but some road rash and ripped up jeans. The reason why it’s so ideal is because you are far from slamming your dome on the pavement and if done correctly is way less gnarly on your body.
Tucking and rolling can work too, and I’ve also found myself in that position crashing at 50+mph. Depending on how you’ve been ejected from your board sometimes you don’t have a choice.
Now some people may make claims that this technique puts your wrists in harms way. This may be true to a certain extent, but because of the way the pucks slide it’s actually much better on your wrist than gripping (bare hands, gloves with no pucks). The slide action seems to put more pressure on the whole arm and shoulder rather than jolting impact on mainly the wrist. I have never had wrist issues from this nor have I broken my wrist doing this. Now the only downside is the strength of your arm and depending on how you fall it can put stress on the shoulder in ways you don’t want. I’ll say I’ve been fortunate enough to have never slammed my dome, knock on wood, but I have messed up my leading shoulder (goofy stance, right shoulder). I’ve subluxed it a handful of times due to falling SIDEWAYS and slamming hard with this technique. Now the idea is when you’re cruising at speed is to actually be in a tuck or somewhat in that stance. Because if you fall you’re falling straight forward vs sideways. In addition to falling, it is also more stable to be forward facing in a lower crouched position anyway. The key with all of this is fall forward and not sideways.
Now some people may be wondering about holding their remote with full slide slide gloves. I’m here to say it can be done and that’s what I’ve been doing for years. Group rides, races, etc. I do not ride any boards going over 10mph without slide gloves. You can position the puck to fit your remote and personally I’ve done so that I can hold my remote even while falling and recovering with my remote in hand while I’m still riding. Basically you can bring the board back to you and stand back up as if nothing happened. This is something that’s common in downhill, but I never seen anyone else do this in electric.
I’ll post up some content so you can see it in action. I’m always down answer questions. If anyone is serious about this to know more please let me know, because I also instruct online or in person.
Falling at about 60MPH with slide gloves, full face, and full leathers.
2nd angle
I slide for about 5 seconds, which is probably around 200ft. Exactly right when I stop sliding is when I get back up.
Hitting the Botts Dots (concrete painted dividers) I smashed them and my pucks saved my fingers. This was the first time experiencing that and goes to show that pucks can also save you from obstacles on the ground that could eat up your fingers or hands.
Leathers saved my skin, no road rash.
My leg was just a little sore from hitting the other dots and my fingers had some very minor scuffs. Also had some finger throbbing from the initial slam, but that was about it.
Walked away, skate another day 
Does this forum not work with Instagram links? Only thumbnails are showing.
I seen some people post Instagram stuff not sure how though. So what pucks do you use?
I’ve used all kinds, UHMW is the standard, but I’ve also used Delrin. I am currently working on slide gloves with my business Vulk.
Yes! Was this answered? I need this information, I’m curious if I’m already turtle maneuvering?!
I worried everyone but us 2 has the turtle thing down?! Is this a youthful thing? Lingo? Clue the old broken guy in I need to know
Im assuming it’s falling to your back with feet up in the air like a turtle stuck upsidedown on its shell.