How To Save Someone From A Deadly Fall: IRL 

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For the last test, my fear is that as you pull up the other person, their dead weight pulls you forward and you go head first over the cliff.

In a lot of movie scenarios, the person on the cliff catches the falling person while they're in the process of falling, meaning that they would have more momentum falling down. It definitely depends on the person and of course this would be pretty dangerous to test out, but catching someone who was in the process of falling could potentially lead to the person on the cliff being dragged down with them.

I feel an underrated part of this video is how strong Olivia is. Her climbing up from your ankles is pretty impressive!

The thing is though, these two are both very fit and know what they do and how to climb. Adrenaline will probably compensate for the lack of strength a bit, but if the person you are trying to save is scared out of their mind, doesn't think rationally anymore and is possibly working against you, you are screwed.

I think there's not a single person that didn't ask themselves this question while watching a scene like that, this is the best! You're answering our deep dark questions 🤣

keep in mind that Ben is a trained athlete with very good grip and pulling strength even compared to the average fit guy, I don't think that the average fit guy on the gym can even hold on let alone someone who does not work out

6:26 I have to give Olivia's dramatic death scene a 💯/10

So what I've learned is if I'm able to dive towards the edge of a cliff and manage to grab my love interest's hand before they fall into the abyss, I'll be able to say goodbye before dropping them into it.

Okay can we all appreciate Olivia for being able to hold herself during the cliff scenario 🤣

One key thing about grabbing the arm of a falling person in movies is that they always reach and grab the person mid-fall. In these tests, you just start with your hand around the wrist. The most implausible thing about those scenes has always been being able to grab their wrist without the momentum carrying you over with them.

3:50 The actual movie scenario typically is wore: The person first cannot be saved because your arms are just a few centimeters short, even if both of you stretch to your limits. Then the victim slips / last rope tears / rocks fall and suddenly, in a last attempt, your arms are long enough to get a firm grip :)

Seeing how athletic Oliva was and the amount of teamwork needed. I realize if I was in this scenario I would probably be screwed lol

I once tried to rescue a homeless man who fell into the canal in my city. _(he must have been about 70kg)_ I'm 67kg, 183cm tall (6'0) and I'm a decent fighter (MMA)and I couldn't for the life of me get him to safety. One of the car mechanics who was working there noticed the situation and pulled him out of there like a dumbell. He must have been around 90kg of pure muscle. God bless his soul and strength. Pulling someone up like this isn't easy

I feel like a minor problem with the "hang from something and swing the other person to safety" is the fact that, in most movies, they're holding onto some sort of rope with is much harder to hold onto with one arm than gym rings or similar

This happened to me when I was young, i was hanging off a cliff in the forest for dear life. I was so scared in that moment, my grip was failing me and I couldn't hold it anymore, my body just let go but luckily there was a landing spot which I did not see since the foilage were covering them. Unlike the movies, my life did not flash before my eyes. The only thing i remembered was being so scared of falling and i was crying in that moment.

I have an observation here 3:43. It seems to me that it is more effective to pull a person when you cross to the opposite arm. I tried to mimic that movement and I realized that it’s more comfortable for the one on top, to do a pulling motion with crossed arms because it recruits the lats, the rhomboids, rear delts and the biceps together, instead of doing it in a straight position.

Damsel in distress: Help meee! Me : Are you an athletic and fit person? 😲 if yes... I might be able to help you.

I got my first ever bodyweight chin up just other day and I literally thought to myself “Would I finally be able to save myself if I was dangling off a cliff?” What a well timed video.

As a fit guy myself, I'd say that Ben's grip strength is way, way higher than most people's who work out. There's no way the average athletic person can do these.

I think the unrealistic part of the movies in the last scenario - and the part your test failed to cover - is the notion that you could grab their wrist as they're falling and actually do so with enough force, while somehow simultaneously bracing yourself, to fully stop their momentum and break their fall to begin with. You started with Julia in a fairly stable position where she reached up and grabbed you as you grabbed her, but in movies the person starts falling and the hero lunges and lands on the ground on their chest and grabs the falling person's arm all at once, and that's where it breaks down. You might be able to grab them with enough force that your arms are locked, but you're not going to stop the fall. They're gonna keep falling, and you'll just get pulled down with them.

In movies they usually hold on for the very last second to pull, but in real life you're not gonna get that magical adrenaline boost so you should act right away, the longer you hold the harder it is

Regarding the last scenario where the distressed person has no grip strength: It seems counter intuitive, but stepping on or putting your own hands on the fingers of the hanging person actually helps them tremendously - given the ledge isn’t too sharp of course. Then you can reposition your own body or recover energy while they are just hanging there helped by your weight.

The one thing that can't really be accounted for is the raw strength that can be mustered up in death defying situations like that, I'm certain that could give everyone at least a bit of an edge.

I had a feeling the swinging one would be the easiest. The swing momentum does all the work for you. You basically just have to be strong enough to hold them for a moment and know when to release them. It's over so fast, there isn't really time for you to buckle to the stress unless your grip or arm strength was already compromised beforehand.

4:51 this was actually scary. What if you lost your balance and fell over. Shit man, I don't wanna think of it

Olivia is such a gem ! Love her cartoonish sense of humour

Mechanically the easiest way to get up from laying over a ledge while holding another person would be to slide one knee forward and to the side, then rolling most of your bodyweight onto that leg to bring the other one forward. Then from the seated kneel you can get your feet underneath you and stand up for a dead lift. The hard part would be trying to do that fast enough that you don't burn out your arms and drop the person, but with practice it would become pretty fluid.

Yep... tried the same thing with the wife at a bounce place. Got pretty much the same results as you. I'm 6'0, 225 lbs . what's did help tremendously, was letting her hold one wrist with both hands while I pushed off the ledge and get to my feet and basically do a deadlift.

Two people at my work died when one of them almost fell off the roof but was able to grab onto the edge in time. His buddy ran over to pull him up and they both fell to their deaths unfortunately.

In other words most of these movie scenarios would not have ended well... Cause really what percentage of people is that fit? And more importantly the weight difference would have to be optimal. Imagine lifting someone close to your height and weight or even harder lifting someone heavier than you... Gravity would prevail. Try doing it the other way around and have the girl save you. I honestly am curious to see if that would still work. Fit or not I suspect having the heavier person dangling would be an automatic no go.

Olivia dropping with the adding dramatics is what got me to like the vid during watching 😂

Saw lots of it in the comment about if 50kg is light or not, here is an example, you might be able to bench press 100kg but that cuz u are doing bench press, your body in normal position cannot even get close to 100kg if you push(considering being able to bench press 100kg) and those are weights, (they are balance) now imagine a body that is 50kg and can change its downward force. It could be from easier to hell hard, because the downward force could shift to a direction where you cannot exert 50% force,let alone 100%. With that, imagine a frantic person is hanging by ur hand, you wont even be able to pull the person properly unless he "stop" moving for a few sec

With the cliff edge/building rescue, I'm always thinking, even if you had the strength, the person over the edge is just gonna pull YOU over the edge. Unless your feet are clamped to edge. But that rescue you did here was good.

Her climbing up his body from his feet was low key very impressive.

I used to do this all the time in high school, there was a life guard house we would climb up but you needed to be tall and fit to reach it so once I got up I’d hang over the edge and the person I’d be helping, usually a 50 kg girl, would grab my wrist. However, I’d never try to pull them with my arm instead I’d use my free arm to get my feet under me and from there simply deadlift them up. It was a really easy and reliable way to do exactly this and it scaled up well even with heavier people as long as we got a good wrist to wrist grip

3:05 wow Olivia is amazing

Now I can always refer to this video when I refuse to help someone dangling off a cliff, thanks!

This was actually a very good video! No unnecessary chatting, good explanations on point, we learned something from you and we could see that those scenes are not as unrealistic as one might think at first. Definitely earned the like! 😊

This was fun to watch, and very fun to see that things can or cannot work like they do in the movies. Take into account life or death situation means adrenaline will be pumping, thus your body will be in overdrive, someone who is healthy, not necessarily fit, could potentially perform these acts of heroism.

Wow!! This is a real eye opener and does make me think. I'm currently overweight but before that, I remember being able to pull myself out of a swimming pool without hurting myself. Now I wouldn't even attempt it. Having some upper body strengh will help the person saving you if you are dangling off a ledge but this comes down to a basic principle; help them to help you. In order to save yourself, you have to be prepared to put in the effort long before a cliff hanger situation. Anyways, that's what I took from this and an increasing desire to be able to lift my body weight and have good health and all round strength for those types of situations because you never know

When i was young i felt down stairs and my mother catch my by the legs. I remember what i was doing before the fall but not the rest. She told me i was screaming don't drop me. I don't know out she bring me back. Note: I fell from the opposite side of the stairs. We do something similar to get people out of the water in Rafting and ice canoe. People are usually not strong or agile. We grab them by the lifejacket.

I actually saved someone with one arm like this before while he dangled from the side of a 10 story building at a rave. I couldn't use my strength to pull him up but I didn't want to tell him that because I would freak him out. I ended up singing to him the Pokémon song to amp him up, then telling him he is Charizard, he scoffed at first but when he realized he was going to die , he slowly sang along and scaled to my elbow, then my shoulder then my head and over. He did not like the way I sang Pokémon to amp him up enough to focus and climb while he was about to die but it worked. PO-Key-MON!

So like this is actually very interesting, to add to the "what I would do" in the last scenario, I'd probably try to hold on for as long as possible while someone comes to help and we can probably do it in two or more. Unless of course you're in the middle of fuck nowhere, if you choose to help you have to accept the reality that you might end up losing grip eventually

Whenever I see a scene like that in a movie, I instantly mumble "that's not possible" to myself. Nice to see you put this to the test. The most impossible scenario I ever witnessed was the one in "Batman Begins", where Bale catches an unconscious Neeson sliding down the icy hill, while he himself is laying on his back. Then proceeds to pull him up, arms fully spread. One would instantly tear off ones pectoral muscles trying to do that 😄..

"Take my strong hand!" is one of my favorite movie quotes, but nobody ever gets the reference. You made my day! Oh yeah, I really enjoyed the video as well

As a filmmaker this is gold! It adds to the tension of an unimaginable tense situation.

2:58 lol!

Awesome video, but I would like to see the first test repeated with a rope like most movies show. Gripping a bar and a rope are two completely different things. Your fingers are strong against stress pulling 90 degrees straight away like the bar. While you still need a strong grip, it's relatively easy to hang from a bar with one hand. Hanging from a rope is quite difficult because the stress is more lateral and requires insane grip strength to keep the rope from sliding through your hand.

For the last one, I think I would slowly shift my hands lower on the persons arms one at a time until I could grab them underneath their shoulders, then have them grab onto me, shift myself until I’m at an angle to the cliff, then roll away from it. That’s how I imagine it at least, I don’t know if it would work.

Honestly even hanging by yourself with one hand for more than a few seconds is impressive

Thank Goodness Olivia is strong enough that whatever happened she could handle it. Thanks for showing this!

Always thought when watching this scenes, that they got it of way to easy. You two where struggling now imagine two "ordinary" people. Fun video 💪👍

Me: watching this tutorial while holding someone that's dangling over a cliff.

1:49 i thought he grabbed the air for a sec

0:25 well that escalated too fast. It got dark in two seconds

Maaaans is always coming up with something we’ve all thought about at least once in our life. Good stuff man love these vids 🧈

damn this is lit man, such forearm strength (both of you). Keep up the good work

This makes me think you should come up with some tandem/partner ninja challenges where you can’t succeed unless both people get across the obstacles and maybe only one person is allowed to touch each part, or something like that. If there were bar gaps big enough for a single person, but only one person is allowed to touch each bar, you would have take turns swinging each other to get across the gaps! That’s a more extreme example, but I think it would be dope to see some ninja partner challenges.. like wall boosting, or two parallel courses video game style where you have to drop ropes and bridges for your team mate… idk I’m excited thinking about this now and I’m starting to think of all kinds of cool ideas.

I'm a screenwriter trying to write a scene where one character is trying to save another and this is super helpful for me.

Olivia's acting was sooo fun :D

Can we all appreciate Olivia's acting 😂😂

First time watching your video... Subbed! Also Olivia is so fun to work with

This was brilliant! Once again it pays off to be fit!

Remember that scene from Batman Begins? This video puts Batman's strength into perspective.

doing the first tests on rings was basically playing on easy mode: its super easy to grip a ring compared to gripping the top of a wall, and an additional advantage is that the ring is free to rotate and allows you to put your arm musculature into the most ergonomic position. Hanging on a wall you'd be forced to have the palm of your hand face the wall.

Love that he included the corridor crew video in the beginning about this topic :D

in the last scenario, assuming the person wasn’t unconscious, they may be able to use their legs to help push up depending on the terrain. I’d really hope for that myself in that scenario

This question is asked since movies exist… thanks for answering it for us Ben! 😄💪

I love Olivia's reactions to everything 😂

I needed this video! Thank you.

I wonder to what extent adrenaline kicks in to assist when trying to save a life.

gotta appreciate the strength of Ben, swinging with 1 arm while holding another fullgrown woman in the other. I´m 6.2, 210 lbs and for me.. this would be freckin hard if not impossible. Aint got the climber´s strength

Genuinely wanted to know a good technique for a scenario like this and I’m not mad with this. Thank you

Short and to the point. What a great video!

This was so cool. I've often wondered this. I do think most people just actually wouldn't be able to handle the one arm swing on their shoulders tbh. Most people do not have strong shoulders. And yeah most people do not have good grip strength either. Moral of the story: train to be useful 😉

You're an amazing video editor!

Ty ❤. This motivated me to go to the gym this morning.

This video is too good - how have I not watched your channel before.

We need a proper strategy for this situation!

This video was awesome. Imagine doing that with a full grown man!

Olivia is the real star of the show in this one! Great job girl, very inspiring!

I was more than happy to watch this video after what almost happened to a worker of mine. I can't tell you how relieved I am that he *survived* falling off a cliff. I was a jerk to him in my colleague's office, and I didn't realize it in my time of being "righteous." I spoke to him about his outgoing, tactile behavior at work. Told him he shouldn't touch anyone without consent. Just handshakes. I said we needed the workers to be comfortable in a good work environment, that he pretty much shouldn't talk about anything other than work and school. How he shouldn't tell his stories because they may be inappropriate to some degree to the other workers; funny to him only. I think he’s about 25. He seemed pretty quiet and uncomfortable during my speech. Answered a question or two with a nod and headshake. Then, that early evening, I saw him hanging from a cliff in a mountainous forest. It was horrible. He was all, "John!! Please help me!! I know I've made some mistakes at work, but I can change!! I can do better!! I can't hold on much longer!!" Instantly IDGAF about his mistakes; I'm sprinting to save him, only it was too late. His grip loosened and he fell, screaming in agony. My heart shattered in pain. I actually thought he had crashed fataIIy. I couldn't see him from the height and forestry canopy down below. I instantly realized I was kind of harsh in the office. *_Beautifully,_* I discovered that he hadn't crashed after all. That a few thin branches and a big bush intervened the crash. He had a few minor scrapes and bruises, but he was okay. In fact, a couple of hikers with First Aid were nearby when he landed and took care of him while calling for paramedics. Everything was okay. But I should've been more delicate and sensitive when speaking to him at work. More filter, less touching at work? Yeah, but compromise would've been fine. Like, only touching friendly coworkers he gets along great with. It's perfectly natural to causally touch or tap people *without* it being creepy. He never meant to be that word. He just needed some limits. I should’ve shown more patience and respect. A brief talk in the hall, not formerly in the office with his boss present. And I shouldn’t have asked her if there anything she wanted to add. Plain insensitive. The guy never meant any discomfort or harm. He deserved better from me.

This was fantastic and great motivation to loose more weight and get in shape

Although all this is awesome and you did a great job replicating and testing, I was thinking while watching this that in a situation where one knows it's life or death, the amount of adrenaline coursing through your body can give you a huge burst of strength. That adrenaline would probably not kick in, in these lab/gym setting tests. Just my two cents. So if it can be done here, then as long as you can manage to grab the person IRL(which is actually the hardest part I think), it should be possible there too. Cheers

Something I've always wondered...glad to see a video about it

Glad to see this. I often think about two examples in movies--the first: Batman Begins when Christian Bale pulls unconscious Liam Neeson up; the second: Avengers: Age of Ultron when Cap is saving a/some Sokovians--where both feats entail one arm rescues and imagine just how difficult it must be.

Even though this might be the closest we get to the real deal, I still don't think these tests are completely optimal. In these kinda scenarios you kinda have to take in consideration that your adrenaline goes crazy. Still, pretty interesting video.

But in the first case usually the hero is holding a rope, I believe the grip would be much more difficult to swing

Brilliant, educational, and hilarious. 👌 Her "death" at the end tho 🤣

Olivia is a gem. Such good vibes

I feel like the adrenaline and some other factors may take place in a real scenario. E.g. a story of a mother partially lifting a car to save their child. TBH this is just from reading some article that may be completely false but to paraphrase, the brain naturally limits the capacity with which we can use our body on a day to day basis and only unlocks it for life or death type scenarios at the cost of damaging these muscles. A statement I found online: "Your brain sends pain through your body when you exert yourself, as a signal to not push yourself too far. Because if you could muster 100% of your strength, 100% of the time, you'd tear your muscles and break your bones. In fact, you might not even survive using your full strength."

However, i feel like hanging on a ledge from one arm, catch someone falling and swinging them up is not really possible 😅

When I was a kid I always wondered why the people hanging off the edge of the cliff didnt use their feet to push up off of the wall. That’d make it so much easier for everyone involved.

First time watching one of your videos and I love the effects

This was soooo good! Thank you for nice realistic show

Being able to do one pull up makes a huge difference in your survival as the person who fell. Very interesting.

1:29 Yo that maplestory Henesys market music! Let's go my fellow former mapler!!

6:26 very realistic dying by Olivia. Great acting 😄😄 Great Video 😉

So cool man! Keep it up be safe!