Although no rider ever wants to find themselves getting intimate with the dirt, knowing how to fall is one of the most unspoken and inevitably important skills you can learn if you plan on riding off-road. I attribute many of my adventure bike skills to growing up on a dirtbike. My experience riding — and more importantly falling off — dirtbikes has taught me to stay loose and push away from the bike if I feel I’m going down. In fact, I’ve gotten so good at it, I even get compliments!

There’s a few things you’ll want to consider before taking your dirt-capable bike off-road. First, prep yourself: stretch, stay in shape and have good protective gear. It’s worthwhile to outfit your adventure bike with a set of crash guards, as general protection for those “oh crap” moments. 

Staying relaxed is important while riding, but especially while falling. It’s instinctive to tense up or put out a foot to try to keep the bike upright, which can quickly lead to injury. Instead, stay loose and try to get away from the motorcycle. 

When riding off-road and at slower speeds, it’s easier to step or roll away from your bike. If you’re standing up while riding and you feel the bike tipping, I find it best to weight the peg opposite to the motorcycle’s direction of falling. This will slow down the fall and give you more time to get your lower foot out and to try to place it on solid ground away from the bike. Once you have foot placement on the falling side of the bike, you can put weight on the grounded foot and walk away from the bike. You can practice this on a bicycle on soft ground.

If and when you do fall, STOP, check yourself over, and make sure that you don’t have any scrapes, strains or injuries. Next see if your buddy got it on film, and after a few laughs are exchanged, make sure your bike is in a good spot to pick up. What I see often is when people ride off-camber hills or turns, the bike will drop on the downhill side. If this happens, instead of exuding a lot of additional energy picking up the bike in a downhill position, I find it easiest to grab the handlebars or sometimes the wheel of the motorcycle to rotate the bike around 180 degrees to bring the handlebars to the uphill side to
allow for better leverage while picking it up. 

Now here’s the important thing: if you fall, try to let the bike fall to the right. It’ll make your life just a little easier having the gear shifter and kickstand accessible. This will let you make sure the bike is in gear so it doesn’t roll when attempting to pick it up, and have the kickstand down, so you won’t need to worry about balancing the bike once upright. 

There are a few ways to pick up your bike, but I find it easiest to walk the bike up backwards. This is easy to do by first turning so your back is facing the bike, then grabbing the lowest grip on the handlebar and finding a good hold near the backseat of the bike. Then, lower yourself down so your butt is close to or on the seat, and with a straight back and neck, using only your legs, walk the bike back and up from the squat position. 

Make sure your motorcycle is in gear and the front brake is engaged; both of these will stop the bike from rolling unexpectedly on you. If you’re unable to pull the brake lever while lifting, you can wrap something like a bandana, strap or glove around the brake lever and hand grip to make sure the front brake is engaged. If you have friends around, always get them to help you. 

Before you start riding again, have a good look over the bike. Jeff Davison recently wrote of his experience in the April 2025 issue of Mojo, that it’s easy to miss a small hole in your engine case, and leaking oil can be detrimental to the bike. Make sure your bike has no gouges, scrapes or bent levers that might inhibit its operation.

I do not encourage you to try to crash your bike, but it’s good to know how to react in these situations, even if only in a theoretical sense. If you want to try some of these skills, get to an area with flat soft ground with a few friends, practice picking up your bike and perhaps try a slow-speed tip over to understand how to step away from the bike. And considering taking an off-road course. 

These suggestions are merely an observation of the skills that have helped me to stay safe throughout the years.