Safety positions are a set of consciously performed motor actions that tend to become automated with practice. They aim to transition from a potentially harmful position to a safe one, helping with the process of falling and reducing or even eliminating potential harm in falls.

The main safety positions can be classified as follows:

Lowering the Center of Gravity.

During the descent of our center of gravity in the act of falling, we decrease the distance of this trajectory and, most importantly, the distance our head travels during a potential fall. Lowering the center of gravity in a controlled manner proportionally reduces the force with which the body could impact the ground.

Curling Up.

Once we've lowered the center of gravity, we curl up to prepare for the next phase in our controlled falling action. This is a preparatory phase in which we consciously position our body for the subsequent moments of the action. The importance of this gesture lies in not falling flat, thereby avoiding a dry impact on our body and the transmission of impact vibrations throughout the body. This significantly reduces the resonance effect as the body absorbs the vibration produced by the impact.

Protecting the Head.

One of the primary concerns when falling is to protect our head from any impact, even at the cost of injuring other parts of our body. It's essential to remember that vital organs for our functioning are located in our head. Therefore, when falling forward, the first reflex action is to place our arms, which stops the fall and prevents the head from hitting the surface of contact, even if it results in injuries to the bony, ligamentous, and/or muscular structures of our upper extremities. Learning to fall avoids head contact with the ground through the correct positioning of the head, protecting us from any type of cranial trauma.

Rolling on the Back.

Rolling on the back allows us to progressively absorb the kinetic energy of the body during the impact with the ground, transforming this energy into a rotational force that dissipates at multiple contact points. This is different from what would happen if we didn't roll, where the energy would concentrate at a single contact point. Rolling also helps reduce the time each point impacts the contact surface, thus reducing the intensity of pressure at each point of contact, which positively correlates with the reduced probability of injury.

Arm Impact (Damping).

The fundamental importance of the impact on the fall's surface is that it transforms kinetic energy into impact energy. This impact is actually made with the hands, forearms, arms, and even the feet. For the human body, absorbing all the energy produced in the fall at a single point would be traumatic. The different body segments that hit the ground at the moment of impact represent a set of contact points that increase the surface area. This increase allows the distribution of all the kinetic energy during the impact over a larger area, thus reducing the impact energy at each of the contact points. We can add to these observations the usefulness of having a contact and support point on the fall's surface after impact, which allows us to exert force against this surface to tense certain parts of our body (such as the neck to lift and position the head correctly or the abdominal area to raise the legs) and, in turn, create, maintain, or fix the desired body posture.