Do you wear padding?

[FallDownGoBoom]

What are your experiences with elbow and knee pads? ... For that matter, spine and hip pads. Oh, what the heck. Let's go crazy: Ankle and toe padding, too.

I just picked up silicone-gel pads and sleeves for elbows and knees. They cost a bleeding fortune -- $140 with shipping -- but I couldn't take it anymore. My bruises had bruises. And I started to feel as though these aggravating little injuries were holding me back on jumps. (This from the person who started skating a year ago and said she had ZERO interest in jumping and spinning. Yeah. Well.)

The pads will get the big tryout tomorrow. In the meantime, some questions.

Do you wear pads for every skate, or just when jumping?
Are you satisfied with their appearance?
Do they provide the protection you wanted?
Do yours stay in place?
Can you test with them?

[mikawendy]

I just picked up silicone-gel pads and sleeves for elbows and knees. They cost a bleeding fortune -- $140 with shipping -- but I couldn't take it anymore. My bruises had bruises. And I started to feel as though these aggravating little injuries were holding me back on jumps. (This from the person who started skating a year ago and said she had ZERO interest in jumping and spinning. Yeah. Well.)

Tee, hee, another one bitten by AOSS :lol:


Do you wear pads for every skate, or just when jumping?
Are you satisfied with their appearance?
Do they provide the protection you wanted?
Do yours stay in place?
Can you test with them?

I wear pads all the time except for shows, tests, and competitions. I wear SkatingSafe knee gel pads. They usually last me a few years at least. I guess they look okay. Not as bulky as the volleyball type knee pads. They do provide the protection I want. They're large enough that they also protect the sides of my knees. To keep them in place, I have to wear them beneath two pairs of tights or one pair of tights and a pair of pants. I suppose I could test in them, I just choose not to.

[FallDownGoBoom]

Mine are from SkatingSafe, too! Yayyy!

[sue123]

I suppose you could say the only type of padding I wear, besides my own, are Bunga pads around my ankles. I tried wearing those volleyball type knee pads a couple times, but I didn't like them. I actually felt more timid wearing pads, I was oddly enough more afraid to fall. Go figure that one out. Soon as the pads come off, I throw myself into everything. Maybe for me, the pads are a reminder that I'm trying to prevent something (bruises) and having a concious reminder that skating hurts maybe makes me hold back some. I honestly don't know, I can't figure it out myself either.

But if it works for you, great. Just make sure you do practice without them occasionally as well because this way, if you ever go test or compete, you'll be able to skate without them and won't rely on them as an aide, the way some people can't skate without gloves.

[dbny]

I wear the cheap bicycle knee pads from your local sporting goods store. I've been using the same ones for about 6 years. They are hardly noticeable under my black pants and I made covers for them to wear with tights when I tested. I always wear them. I don't jump, but I'm 60 and already have enough damage to my knees. I don't need more, and I would like to keep my original equipment as long as possible. I advise all of my adult students to wear knee pads.

[jazzpants]

I have SkatingSafe pads too (hips, tailbone, knees and gloves!!!) Yes, they cost a fortune but they are well worth it!!!

However, the only ones I'm ALLOWED (by my coaches) to wear now are the ones that go in the gloves. I am allowed to wear knee pads if I'm practicing knee slides though. Right after that, the knee pads go right to the ankles again!!! :roll: :twisted:

[phoenix]

I've never worn pads, except the time I was working on sit spins & purposely falling over & over---stuffed a mouse pad down my pants! :lol: :oops: (had the ice to myself that day so didn't worry how it looked)

If anything I'd wear hip pads, that's where I tend to hit hard & where I've had a significant injury. But so far I haven't done it (though if the novice moves fast brackets ever become part of my reality, I'll think long & hard about it!). One concession I do make is to sometimes wear a pair of fleece pants I have--they actually soften a blow more than you'd think.

[Emberchyld]

Skating safe knee and elbow pads as well. I bought the sleeves that go with them, and they stay in place pretty well. I like them a lot, especially since I'm a clumsy mess, I've seen knee replacement surgeries, and I want to minimize the chances of having to get one from way too many blows to the knees destroying them! They're inobtrusive enough that I've worn them for jazz dance performances (in the muggle world) and ballet rehersals when the choreography calls for me to be on my knees a lot.

Although, lately, my worst falls have been onto my rear, so I think I'm going to have to pad up there soon (like I need anything more back there! :lol: Why is it that I don't fall on the.. ahem... "wobbly bits"?!?!?!?!? My falls always seem to find the one "thin spot" on my rear every time!)

[Rusty Blades]

I cut a butt/hip pad from the foam they sell for sleeping on when you are camping (3/16" high density foam) 'cause I have bony hips and no bum (thanks Mom!) and going down backwards is the only thing that I fear on the ice. Going down on my pad is like falling on a pillow. It doesn't show under stretch pants (as long as they aren't too tight) and $10 worth of foam made 3 pads.

[sceptique]

I bought couple of elastic sleeves with gel padding (originally intended to cushion ball of the foot) from Boots (drug store chain) at about £3-4 a pair, sewn them together and they made a set of the most efficient and virtually invisible knee pads that I do wear to every practice.

I played around with the idea of mass-manufacturing something similar, but it's just too much on my plate at the moment. Had to shelf it till better times.

[Sonic]

(This thread has reminded me...must get some knee pads I can wear under tights)

FallDownGoBoom: for what it's worth I think it is worth wearing padding, especially as we oldies (well older-ies!) don't bounce as well as kids lol!

In answer to your question 'for every skate, or just when jumping?', I personally have found my nastiest falls not to have come jumping, but from other things - mostly accidental - such as losing an edge, catching a toe pick, the 'clash of death' on back crossovers, falling over backwards off a y-spiral....

When I fall from a jump [knocking firmly on wood here], I usually feel myself going off balance, and have time to prepare in order to avoid falling awkardly -or at least relax so I don't jarr myself too much.

So after all that waffle: yes to the padding for practise.

S xxx

[chantelly]

In answer to your question 'for every skate, or just when jumping?', I personally have found my nastiest falls not to have come jumping, but from other things - mostly accidental - such as losing an edge, catching a toe pick, the 'clash of death' on back crossovers, falling over backwards off a y-spiral....

S xxx

Ooh I fell over monday! I was doing a FO spiral and somhow just flew forwards and caught my toe pick. It seemed to happen in slow motion and it felt like it took hours till I hit the floor! Horrible stuff! My knees are now purple and orange! I don't wear padding at all but then touch wood doing dance I don't fall all that often! Watch this space, i'll have more bruises tomorrow now I have said that! xx

[Scarlett]

The only padding I wear are bunga gel sleeves around my ankles. I originally considered wearing pads on my hips for jumps but I would have to wear one on each hip since I never know what hip is going to hit the ice and consequently gave up on that idea. (How about that for a run-on sentence?)

[Sessy]

I wear wrist protection and bum protection, but not always, only when I'm expecting to fall.

[CaraSkates]

I wear gel sleeves (Bunga pads) around my ankles everytime I skate. I didn't wear them for the first 2.5 years of skating but I have very narrow and tiny ankles that are always sliding up. (I'm already in a B/A boot and now that I've had the boots just over a year I had my skate guy punch them IN at the heels) So wearing the gel sleeves helps a lot with this and with the tiny amount of rubbing I had on the heel.

EDIT - I hate when you can see these so I always wear OTB or footless tights when testing/competing.

I'm currently working on the axel and 2sal (close to landing both!)and while I haven't taken too many nasty falls on the axel, that 2sal does a real number on my knees. I've already had knee issues (before I started skating) even though I'm only 17 so I'm looking into knee pads for that and the other doubles. Skating Safe? Or I might try cutting up a mousepad first.
My coach requires someform of padding once you get to the double axel.

[Laura H]

I wear the Bunga ankle sleeves too . . . both for comfort and to keep my ankles stable in the skate (I have skinny ankles!!). I just started wearing the Bungas a couple of months ago (while breaking in new skates) and I love them. I've been skating for 2 years now and never have worn any other sort of pads, mostly I just go down on my rear or hips (enough natural padding there already!). If I went down on my knees a lot I would definitely consider knee pads though. I have considered wearing some sort of wrist protection (particularly when I was trying to learn how to spin and kept falling out of them) because my job requires a lot of keyboard work and it would be NOT GOOD if I broke something!! But then I started centering my spins so I just never got around to it.

DS (he's 8) is taking quite a beating on his knees these days (he's working on flip, loop, sit spin) and I do think we're going to have to get him something before he kills himself. :giveup: He might need those knees sometime!! No point tearing them up when he is young. :lol:

[flo]

I wear them for working on doubles. I get the garden kneeling pads and cut them up. After a few falls they're form fitted.

[Team Arthritis]

I love my knee pads. My knees are bad enough that I just can't risk tripping on those darned lines they paint under the ice any more:cry:
Lyle

[Petlover]

Except when I am competing, I always wear the skating safe gel knee pads and roller blade hard plastic wrist guards. At 50+, these safeguards are very important to me, and my coach agrees.

[bootcovers]

I am a poster child for skating protection gear. I wear Crash-Pads snowboarding crash pants (padded on the knees, thighs, sit bones and hip bones), my old rollerblading wrist guards, hard elbow pads, and a multi-impact snowboarding helmet.

I've been called a "wuss" by friends for my extreme protective gear, but I cannot afford to maim myself! I've already had one fall off the back of my blades and the entire rink heard the sound of my helmeted head hitting the ice. If I had hit with that force without a helmet, a concussion would have been likely. As it was, I was a little shaken, but unharmed.

Wearing all my protective gear lets me skate without worrying about injurying myself. If I had no helmet, for instance, I would be holding back, never pushing out of my easy comfort zone. And given my skating level is at ISI pre-Alpha, that would leave very little to do on the ice.

Experienced skaters and coaches have assured me I will eventually shed the protective gear, but I seriously doubt that. I'm still in the reactive/additive stage (the elbow pads went on this week because last week I bruised an elbow).

The beauty of being middle-aged is you aren't worried about looking "cool". You can wear whatever you need to give you the confidence to skate and take risks.

[Derek]

I've already had one fall off the back of my blades and the entire rink heard the sound of my helmeted head hitting the ice. If I had hit with that force without a helmet, a concussion would have been likely.

I am a shade surprised that wearing protective headware isnt promoted more than it is, considering the hazards. At least when practising outside of one's comfort zone, and for beginning skaters. Cyclists, skateboarders, snowboarders, horse riders all wear protective headgear. It is mandatory at my daughter's stables ... Even a soft skinned hat will soften the impact from an awkward fall. I consider myself one of the fortunate ones, having learned how to fall from considerable martial arts training, and my head automatically cants itself away from the ice. However, I have clipped the ice a couple of times, and agree it is not something to be repeated.

Hope I have not spoken out of place here ...

I wear kneepads, as my legs won't take the continually bashing which I subject them to. Mine are simple 'poundshop' tradesmans pads, which I become unaware of under my track bottoms. I will explore Sceptique's idea of the gel sleeves ... My elbows have to endure the ice though, and are currently covered in ugly bursae, much to my daughter's horror. I like the idea of a coccyx pad, having hit that once - I think I actually wept ...:D

[Isk8NYC]

I used to wear knee pads when working on new jumps, usually after the first good whack that actually did the damage.

Because our rink is unheated, I've taken to wearing ski pants while teaching. I then began wearing them for practicing at that rink. Now, I wear them for warmth (it really helps my knees warmup quicker) but also for protection. When I fall, I just slide and don't get hurt.

I have a helmet that I use when teaching beginners. Makes them less self-conscious and gets them on the ice faster and happier. (Fewer arguments between kids and parents about wearing the helmet.)

I should really be more concerned about falling but I really am not afraid of taking a spill. I flopped on the ice last Sat and my shoulder still hurts, but there was no padding short of a football getup that would have prevented that injury.

[Award]

I've been called a "wuss" by friends for my extreme protective gear, but I cannot afford to maim myself!

I've seen a couple of figure skatings cracking their head on the ice and have never seen them back at the rink ever since. They were intermediate skaters that could spin and do some jumps, and they were regulars too. It is sad to see that. Sometimes even if somebody knows how to fall, a fall can happen unexpectedly and knowing how to fall does not always help, especially with intermediate skaters. If those skaters had been wearing some kind of head protection, they probably would have gotten a bit of a headache, but at least wouldn't have quit skating. And there's just one rink in our city.

[dbny]

I've been called a "wuss" by friends for my extreme protective gear, but I cannot afford to maim myself!

The beauty of being middle-aged is you aren't worried about looking "cool". You can wear whatever you need to give you the confidence to skate and take risks.

I would never call you a wuss! Risk taking is an extremely variable thing. Think about all of your peers who would not take the risk of skating at all. Maybe it's because I am past middle age, but if I can't at least attempt to look graceful on the ice, then I wouldn't skate at all. That's one reason I don't wear wrist guards. The other is that the orthopod who treated my broken wrist told me that there is no medical consensus about the value of wrist guards for ice skating. He personally feels that in a fall hard enough to break a wrist, the guards would transmit the force upwards and cause a worse break near the elbow. His opinion suits me, so I go with it. I would feel like Frankenstein wearing wrist guards on the ice, although I know they are not really very noticeable.

I am a shade surprised that wearing protective headware isnt promoted more than it is, considering the hazards. At least when practising outside of one's comfort zone, and for beginning skaters. Cyclists, skateboarders, snowboarders, horse riders all wear protective headgear. It is mandatory at my daughter's stables ... Even a soft skinned hat will soften the impact from an awkward fall.
Hope I have not spoken out of place here ...


You make a lot of sense regarding helmets. One school where I've worked requires all first time skaters to wear helmets, and I know most require kids 6 and under to wear them. IMO, you have not spoken out of place at all. We did once have a rather combative member who was intent on telling us all how totally stupid we were for not wearing helmets. That's not at all how you have come off.

Sometimes even if somebody knows how to fall, a fall can happen unexpectedly and knowing how to fall does not always help, especially with intermediate skaters.

I once saw a high level coach fall while standing still, crack her head on the ice, and get carried off on a stretcher. It just takes a moment and it can happen to anyone any time. This is what music is for: to keep your mind off it :lol:.

[beachbabe]

i dont wear pads because to me they are very distracting and do more harm than help. Plus im sure if i did i would still somehow injure myself in another way.

I do use a special bruit oitment tho that makes them dissapear pretty fast so i dont have a problem with this.

[Emberchyld]

The other is that the orthopod who treated my broken wrist told me that there is no medical consensus about the value of wrist guards for ice skating. He personally feels that in a fall hard enough to break a wrist, the guards would transmit the force upwards and cause a worse break near the elbow. His opinion suits me, so I go with it. I would feel like Frankenstein wearing wrist guards on the ice, although I know they are not really very noticeable.

Most of the time I don't wear wrist guards, but lately I've been wearing one on my lift wrist because I was getting a repetitive motion injury from the minor impacts of falling on it and then using it to get up (my left side is considerably weaker than my right for other reasons, making me fall almost always on that side!). It might not protect me from a broken wrist, but it does keep me from doing micro-damage. I also braced it for about a week from "normal" life motions.

I skate with an adult whose wrists are so damaged from some non-skating repetitive motion that she can no longer support her weight from the flat of her palms, and instead has to get up by putting straight pressure on the knuckles of her balled up fists. So, with her experience in mind, every time I feel a twinge in my wrist, out comes the brace for skating!

[dbny]

It might not protect me from a broken wrist, but it does keep me from doing micro-damage. I also braced it for about a week from "normal" life motions.

That makes sense to me. I have something wrong with my wrists that pops up every once in a while and causes me to wear a brace for a few days at a time. I have no clue what causes it, but it's a sharp pain that seems to go across the wrist with certain motions, causes weakness, and even the inability to grasp with the wrist at a certain angle. After a few days of the brace to immobilize it, it goes away. It's not carpal tunnel, because I had that for a while when my fracture was recovering, and it's not mouse use because it happens to both wrists.

[Sessy]

I use hard wrist guards, less lately than I used to, after falling on my left wrist twice and being unable to even lift a coat with that arm for several months. The problem was that I'd fall on a bent wrist, and stretched out elbow, so the force from the impact had nowhere to go except into the wrist, elbow and shoulder joints, damaging all three. So I just had the wrist guards because they have a spring at the wrist impact point, taking out the force of the fall.

I think they're IDEAL.

[FallDownGoBoom]

Today was the inaugural run-through with my SkatingSafe pads. They're terrific! I recommend them. Big bonus: My knees warmed up earlier and stayed that way for a tough 90-minute workout. The pads stayed in place and I totally forgot about them.

I'm also happy to report that I was far more aggressive on the jumps and did some of my best ones yet. I attribute that to lack of fear about bruising. And ...

Excuse me. My cat is chomping on the phone cord. Monster Boy!

OK. I'm back. As I was saying ... In a way I wanted to fall, to test the gel's effectiveness. Ah. Maybe next time.

What a great product!

[garusha]

I wear gel pads, and I think they are very good. They don't provide 100% protection, but they can keep you from a really bad injury. Last week I fell from a bunny hop, just went forward, it was nasty. I landed on my right knee, and it hurt. But there was nothing worse than a bruise so I skated the following day as though nothing had happened.

[FallDownGoBoom]

One more thing I noticed about the knee pads. Today -- a day after a long, tough skate -- my knees weren't stiff or sore in the least. I'm attributing that to the pads' keeping the joints warm for the whole session. I really don't think it's my imagination. I'm a complete gel convert.

[Team Arthritis]

One thing I noticed from knee pads is that if I wore them for 2 or more hours, they made my knee hurt worse because of the pressure pushing in on the kneecap. To get around this I put on a CHO pad/ patellar brace underneath to hold the kneepad off my patella.
http://www.supports4less.com/chopat/kneebraces/patella-kneecap-stabilizer.htm
Lyle