I've told my story here too many times here, but I certainly did think myself injury prone. I had most of my injuries backpacking - an endless string of ankle sprains or strains, and a march fracture of a metatarsal. Then I fractured a fibula skating, during a fall, a bit over age 40, though I now believe the injury actually occurred before the impact, and was caused by excess muscle tension due to fear of falling, rather than the fall itself.
For half a year I was in a cast. For the next year I psychologically couldn't make myself go back on the ice. But I did make myself work on falling gently, and even took a couple lessons - one from an Aikido master, one from a modern dancer. Eventually, after an unbelievable number of hours spent in practice I reached the point where I didn't think I could be hurt falling as long as I am wearing some type of gloves and long sleeves and pants.
A little over-confident, perhaps. OK, for sure. There are always ways to get hurt. But with practice, athletic injuries can be reduced to a level of probability comparable to being hurt in some other way. That's a reasonable goal, that could give you the confidence to go back to having fun.
What fall practice (and hockey-kid-like collision practice) taught me was that I wasn't injury prone because of my body, I was injury prone because I was moving badly, and was responding to potential injury situations with fear. It also improved my reflex speed, and altered my reflexes to move better.
Any book on athletic injuries will tell you that the people most likely to be injured are unusually inflexible or unusually flexible. I'm inflexible. In that way only was I truly physically injury prone. So I also needed to learn to move in ways that isn't a problem. People with extreme flexibility need to learn to move in ways that full and partial dislocations don't happen, and a few other such things. A sports PT can help.
I went back to skating, skiing, some hiking, and whitewater boating, and tried some new sports, though I started too late to become a high level athlete. I'm close to 60 now, and have only suffered minor scrapes and bruises and one pulled muscle since fall practice - and those only because of the things I've dared to try that I hadn't dared before.
It helps to understand why injuries happen. E.g., knee, wrist, elbow, shoulder and back injuries happen because you impact on hard bone, or don't flow through a fall, or because you fight it so hard that muscle tension bends bone. (There are some repetitive motion injuries too, like cartilage injuries, especially if you move with poor alignment - again, sports PTs can help, and detect problems early.)
(At my website, I have a not-so-short treatise on falling gently.)
I had gotten that jerky marionette look that seems to plague adult skaters.
A lot of athletes who are very good young have to scale back their athletic aspirations as they get older.
I can "flow" much better now than I could before fall practice, and look better than most of the adults I encounter in public skating. But when I see almost any "senior level" skater (how can a 16 or 17 year old kid be called a "senior"?) they have a flow, balance, flexibility, power and control that I can only dream of.
I never had that kind of grace, but perhaps you did.
If you still feel a need for it, it may be a lost cause. Youth does have advantages. But if you are willing to work on falls and collisions, and/or other methods of injury prevention, and are willing to wear gloves and a reasonably well padded sweat suit (and other padding if you feel a need), you may still be able to skate with confidence, and more flow than most adults.
If you do give up skating, I hope you find a way to keep yourself active. If you are like me, it is one of the things I find most enjoyable in life.
Social dance? If you don't join the competitive side of things, social dance is a very friendly and accepting community.
Depending on your location, I might also suggest paddling club-based sea kayaking, but that might be hard on your back. (A 20-35 pound skin-on-frame kayak is easier to carry, and it may be shaped with a high enough area above year knees to let you sit straight without back strain, and shaped to allow you to lay on the back deck without trouble, would help, but maybe sitting inside the boat at all is too much for you.)
Topic: Why I finally left skating as an older adult. (Read 10932 times)