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A few days ago, I was listening to a discussion of parkour and they mentioned two painful falls you should avoid. One I recognized, the scorpion, which is basically a faceplant where you have sufficient momentum that you wind up with your legs going up into the air and toward your head.

Scorpion fall

The other was a "suitcase" fall and it's driving me crazy for some reason, trying to figure out what they're referring to. Is that like the "taco" for a backfall where you land on your back (or the back of your head) and your legs flip forward and over your head?

The context was this ParkourEDU video where they're mentioning that a particular diveroll is superior to "suitcase or scorpion" when recovering from a peel-out. I've left a message asking for explanation, but I figured I'll keep this query up here as well.

Sean Duggan
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1 Answers1

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The people at ParkourEDU got back to me. Indeed, this is the opposite of a scorpion, where you're falling on your back with forward momentum such that you're landing on your back to the top of your head with your legs flopping forward and up. They also sent me a video of Ryan Ford falling into a suitcase as a result of a foam block slipping out from under his feet during a flip routine.

It also makes sense in the context of it being mentioned in the context of a peel-out, since that provides the perfect storm of forward momentum and backwards rotation.

Sean Duggan
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  • Looks like one would be at risk of getting a heavy knee to the face. – Alec Aug 24 '17 at 10:27
  • {nods} And of course one with a high risk of trauma to the head and neck since that's what's taking the blow. Although, as per the "taco" backfall I linked in my question, there's a potential for the legs to absorb some of the impact by virtue of transfer (although I think that's primarily if you're expecting the fall). – Sean Duggan Aug 24 '17 at 11:45
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    Yeah, with the taco fall, it looked like he was pushing his legs and hips upward to shift his center of gravity upwards during impact, to distribute the fall over a larger period of time, meaning less force is put on the body at any one time. – Alec Aug 24 '17 at 11:47