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Maggie,
I agree that falling on concrete is a pretty stupid thing to do! I've never been injured doing it...but there is such a low level of forgiveness any mistake in the technique and one could probably be injured. I prefer an austere level of spiritual and physical training in my personal and technical growth as an aikidoka. While concrete falling isn't one that anyone in my group would advocate to students, it is somewhat indicative of this mindset. I am sure you wouldn't approve of some of our Kenshu; or, say, the Senshusei program in Japan, training evolutions for your personal training...it can certainly be rough on the body at times...but I think everybody is entitled to their own path of training: Ueshiba Sensei's original dojo was nicknamed "Hell Dojo" after all! But at the same time, as you alluded to, you only get one body. All the best!
PS Oh yeah, Maggie. What did you mean by landing with wide legs? I'm having trouble visualizing what that is exactly...don't want to miss out on a training tip I can steal!
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I'm not saying that landing on cement is stupid, so much as purposely wanting to land on cement. I just know too many people who regret ever training like that now that they are in their 50's and 60's.
Wide-legged ukemi, sometimes called soft ukemi. It was developed so for Aikidoka that train several classes a day, because standard ukemi frankly wrecks your body. So if you have to take a lot of classes, soft ukemi is a good thing to learn to extend your Aikido career.
It is an ukemi style that involves wide-legged technique. For back rolls, you fall more to the side with your arm guiding you, and less through the spine like traditional back falls. you don't rotate over your shoulder, you roll across the shoulders and land wide-legged, in a seated position, which is easy to rotate and pop up from. Forward ukemi is sort of the opposite way. Go over the shoulder, rotate across the back/shoulder, not down the back. And land in a wide legged/seat position on the ground. The position takes a little longer than traditional ukemi to pop up from, so it isn't great for randori. but it is easy to pop up from in a typical class.
There are book out there on it. Donovan Waite has written a few. lol