What's the plural of "picking up"?

I'm writing in the context of ice skating.

This is the sentence I wish to construct:

There will be many falls, but serious injuries are rare, and picking ups are easy.

"picking up" is the antonym of "fall".

What's the plural form of "picking up"? It's a gerund. What are the pluralization rules for gerunds? And if there's a better word for it, please suggest them.

Solution 1:

There seem to be relatively many 'settings up' around the net. Below, I'm including a shot from A treatise on the mistreatment of cholera morbus by W.S.Prior (digitalized by Google), 1832, p.25, which has 'gettings up'. I give a longer passage, not because of its relevance to the question, but because of its relevance in general.

An ngram search hints that 'gettings up' might be on the decline, while usage of 'getting ups' does not even permit a decline.

I'd avoid it if I could but, if pressed, I'd use 'pickings up' rather than 'picking ups'.

This way of forming the plural of gerunds of phrasal verbs might also be viewed as a testimony of how tight (or actually, in this case, loose) the link is/was between the verb and the particle.

Solution 2:

You don't need a plural gerund here. A singular form is more idiomatic:

There will be many falls, but serious injuries are rare, and picking oneself up is easy.

Notice the reflexive pronoun is required because pick up is a transitive verb.

However, some sense of resuming a standing position seems better, since that is what a person does after they have fallen down.

The following are recommended:

getting back up

returning to one's feet

standing up again

standing back up

picking oneself back up

Since these all involve three or four-word phrases, staying away from a plural form is especially advised. Using gerunds may not be as common in English when there is an actual noun: thus falls and not fallings, and once you get into plural forms of gerunds you are getting further away from idiomatic English.