Media

Protection

Level of risk

The term ‘appropriate protective equipment’ is usually associated with particular activities. For some activities you protect yourself, and some activities you don’t. It doesn’t seem to matter what risk level you’re exposing yourself to within that activity, since the protection expectations are prescribed by people who have no knowledge of what particular risk level you personally are going to choose to do.

For example, we’re all expected to wear cycle helmets, whether or not we are riding a BMX on a vert ramp, competing in an international cycle race, commuting across a congested city centre, cycling down a main road, or perhaps taking a lazy little trip through the country tracks on a short cut to the next village.

There is also little concession given for when you’re not at the risk of others. My driving instructor always used to hammer in ‘it’s not you that’s the main danger - it’s the others on the road - you need to expect them to behave dangerously’, and he was absolutely right. Arguably my most physically damaging skating accident was because someone who was drafting me clipped my skates. When you’re taking part in an activity away from the possibility of suffering as a result of the errors of others, you’re much better equipped to judge the risk of what you’re doing, based on your own level.

The level of risk that you take is a product of the probability of a consequence, and the seriousness of that consequence. The consequence of a sky-dive going wrong is most probably death. The probability of that happening is absolutely tiny because of the equipment & procedures. So, I recently found myself jumping out of a plane for the first time, and no one had mentioned helmets.

In skating, when you’re on inlines, diving into a ramp, you’re likely to hit your head when you fall. In speed skating, if you hit your head when you fall, due to your speed, you’ll probably hit it quite hard. In slalom, if you fall forwards, you’re massively unlikely to hit your head. If you fall backwards, your hands, elbows, bum are all most likely to stop your head hitting. If your head does hit, it is unlikely to hit hard enough to cause any real damage. Bleed? Sure. Pain? Definitely. That feeling of vulnerability and the need to cry? Almost always. But the chances of anything worse are very small indeed.

How much risk are you happy with

Choosing the appropriate level of protection is down to balancing the level of risk of the activity against the inconvenience of protecting yourself against that risk. If we could press a button to ensure that our head would be protected in the event of a car accident, we’d probably press it each time we got in a car. In-fact we kind of do by having cars with airbags in them. Would we put on a helmet though? No, we probably wouldn’t, because even in the pre-airbag days, we simply didn’t want to. Clearly there was a risk of death from head injury, or we wouldn’t have developed airbags, but not enough probability of that consequence to warrant the inconvenience and discomfort of wearing a helmet.

If you have children at home who depend on you, the consequence of your death is far greater than if you didn’t, and so many people find themselves starting to wear helmets when they enter parenthood. It’s all a balance. My levels of protection vary with my mood and habit, but for a general idea:

speed skating alone: nothing.
Speed skating with others: helmet.
Skating on a vert ramp: helmet & big kneepads.
Skating on other, less fast ramps: helmet & slim kneepads, possibly with elbow & wrist pads too.
Slalom normally: nothing
Slalom when practicing 1 wheeled tricks: hand-sliders.
If there was anything in the world that I could wear to protect my neck against whiplash, I believe I would wear it anytime I was on a ramp, or practicing 1 wheeled slalom tricks, however inconvenient and annoying it was.

Awareness of the consequences of your choices

When it all goes wrong, it can be serious. Many skaters have not quite considered the consequences of what could go wrong, and ended up with feelings of regret, and have only begun to wear appropriate protective equipment after a nasty fall. Don’t let this happen to you. The most common injuries that protective gear can help prevent go something along the lines of:

Hitting your head - it feels horrible and frightening, and that’s when there’s no real permanent damage. I’ve never known someone suffering permanent damage when slaloming, but since you can kill yourself by slipping on a spillage (whilst in shoes), I’m sure it must only be a matter of time.
Knocking your elbows - it can permanently screw them up like mine - I have a hole in one of them that’s made it impossible to lean on it for over 10 years now.
Knees - I remember someone falling onto an IKEA slalom cone and breaking his kneecap into 4 pieces.
Wrists - the most common injury when skating apparently - think how it would affect your work if you broke one. I think the ‘heel’ of my hands are permanently messed up from all the impacts.
Cosmetic - scars, dead teeth etc… I have a brilliant one just below my lower lip when my front tooth went through it during a nasty face-plant in a midi-ramp many years ago - that couldn’t have been prevented using the usual protective equipment, but you need to decide if you’re willing to have ugly white patches on your knees & elbows before you go out without knee & elbow pads.

So, see how you feel about those consequences, and measure them up against how likely it is to happen to you. Make sure that any decision not to wear protective gear is an informed one, and won’t result in your feeling like a wronged victim if probability doesn’t go your way. Make sure that you know the choice you are making, and that it will have been worth feeling the wind in your hair, or being able to comfortably bend your elbows or even just being able to answer your cellphone easily.

Types of protection available

The usual equipment used by skaters are wrist protectors, elbow pads, knee pads and helmets.

Wrist protectors - the most scuffed bit of equipment that skaters have. Freestylers will use their hands almost every time they fall. The most common ones available are wrist guards, but I recommend having a look at hand-sliders. They just provide padding and a hard plastic shell to the palm of the hand, and don’t prevent the wrist joint from flexing at all. They protect the wrist not by transferring the force to the forearm, but by reducing the friction between the palm of the hand and the floor, encouraging the hand to slide on impact with the floor. This removes the jolt to the wrist.

Kneepads - highly recommended since the options available nowadays for non-annoying knee protection are much better than they used to be. I recommend a slim pad (you’re not going to be taking much force, since freestyle is low speed, low height) with or without a hard shell. You might still bruise your knee, so use a larger pad if you want to feel nothing but a bruised ego when you fall. I do recommend wearing pads underneath your pants/trousers instead of over the top of them. Have one pair of pants that you’re willing to sacrifice. In slalom you’re unlikely to seriously injure a pair of jeans, and it stops the pants from bunching up underneath your pads, either restricting your knee-bend, or giving yourself lovely knickerbockers. It also looks seriously bad. I can comfortably fit my kneepads under even my tightest jeans.

Elbow pads - same as for kneepads - though I’d recommend ones that you need to pull up over your hands, as they will be more comfortable than ones that you can just strap straight on. Again, I recommend wearing them underneath any clothing, but with elbow pads it’s almost purely for cosmetic reasons, since there’s little need to be using your elbows much.

Helmets - I don’t want to enter the debate about the effectiveness of helmets - there’s plenty of research out there supporting both sides of that debate, so I’ll just feed the information about the types of helmets available. There’re 3 main types in my mind:

Cycle helmet - personally I think cycle helmets should be used for speed skating and cycling, and not for aggressive or freestyle skating. The reasons are based on the type of fall that you’re likely to sustain, and the ability of each type of helmet to protect against that fall.
Skate helmets with polystyrene inner - these are moulded polystyrene on the inside, with a thin layer of very low density foam to aid comfort. I hate these. Maybe my head is the wrong shape, but they seem to sit on-top annoyingly, and bounce up & down annoyingly if the chinstrap is slightly loose, and if its tight, then the helmet feels hard against your head. As far as I’m aware, they’re the only ones available in the UK.
Skate helmets with high density foam inner - next to the shell, they have a very high density foam layer, about 1cm thick, and then inside that, a slightly lower density foam. I love these. They fit the head snugly, and even if they strap is undone you can hang your head upside down, shaking it violently, and the helmet wont budge. A very un-annoying, comfy helmet, but unfortunately not legal to sell in the UK, so I buy mine in the USA. Check out Triple8 - they do really nice looking ones too.