Body armor

[Tom Dunlap]

For a number of years I've been wearing knee pads for climbing. My current favs are tweaked kneecaps from Rollerblade. I cut off the hard plastic caps and left the padding. The cover is a harder plastic mesh. they articulate nicely and don't move around.

I know some climbers who use socker shin gaurds. Personally, I haven't found that my shins get used that much.

While I was catching up on some telemark chatter I came across a thread about body armor. This guy put together some interesting links:

http://www.telemarktalk.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=13036

When I go out rollerblading I always chuckle since I put on more protection than I do at work.

How many climbers use padding of some kind?

 

[blue]

TOM,
personally i have never used any body armour at work but have loads of the stuff for off-roading on motorbikes(motocross and enduro riding).if you want protection for lower leg and knee's a good set of knee/shin gard's look to the off road scene.the one's i have attach around your calve muscle's with velcro straps,the knee part articulates really nicley and never slips away from the knee.i can see these being useful for climbing if you don't have wear jeans for climbing(in the UK you have to wear all round chainsaw protective trousers which do offer a certain amount of padding around bony joints when climbing)i have climbed in jeans before and boy were my knees sore.before this i never realised how much you rely on other points of contact other than your feet.other bits of kit i have are full torso and arm body armour suit.this is hard body armour with dual density foam on the forarm,elbow,shoulder,back protector,chest protector and kidney belt.you don't know you have it on as it's so comftable.i suppose it may be of some use in some situations within tree work but not many.but it may be good for someone new to the industrie or for training.