Not sure if it was the same one but I've read you also want to avoid water (since it doesn't compress). Go for dirt/grass if possible.

That doesn't make sense: dirt/grass also don't compress. Small branches might be good, but water is certainly more compresible than dirt.

It's really not. Earth's generally full of holes big and small. Water isn't.

I agree that it seems unintuitive, but compressibility of water is up to four orders of magnitude lower than a very plastic clay, and even worse than gravel[1]. Generally the speeds at which we impact water are slow enough that this effect is not noticable (i.e. we have time to sufficiently displace, not compress, the water without suffering a catastrophic deceleration).

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressibility#Earth_science

This sounds like something that would have been perfect for MythBusters.

Dirt/grass _absolutely_ compress. Easy way to see - take a large hammer outside and hit the dirt real hard. It'll leave a dent. You want to leave that dent, because that's force transferred into the dirt, not you.

But also, it makes sense when you think about it a bit, too. Dirt is a mostly heterogeneous mixture of _stuff_ that tends to clump, which leaves great pockets of air in between that can get compressed out. Water, on the other hand, is a homogeneous liquid with _no_ air in between. There's practically nothing to compress!