Monkey Roll

Everyone knows that in roller derby you fall on your knees.  It's almost the first thing anyone will ever teach you.  They tell you that's what your pads are for.  99.9% of the time it doesn't hurt and allows you to recover quickly and get back into the game.  But .1% of the time it fucks you up, and you have to multiply that .1% over a career leaving you with thousands of dollars of medical bills and permanent damage to you knees.
No thanks.  I've experienced about as much of that sort of thing as I care to.
Last night we worked on monkey rolls.  I want you to picture this:  30 women in full gear on roller skates crouched in lines facing a coach who's facing them.  The coach points to one side and suddenly all 30 women throw themselves at the ground in some variation of a sumersault.  Sounds kind of ridiculous, right?  It feels kind of ridiculous too. 
The thing is, the theory behind doing either a sumersault or sideways roll is a good one.  If you fall first on your hip and then use your momentum to roll rather than putting it into the ground you'll cause less impact to your body.  As our coach last night was saying, if you think that falling on your hip is painful  it's just because you haven't fucked up your knee enough yet [as a point of comparison].
The classic argument against monkey rolls and sumersaults in derby is the liklihood that doing so will increase the incidence of low blocks and tripping.  It's probably not a good idea to go bowling for rollergirls.  However after watching the two players in our league who use them the most often, I personally haven't observed them getting a lot (or any) low block calls.
Of course the best prevention for knee injuries is to avoid falling altogether.  I'm going to keep working on that one...
<posted on 4.18.12>