Anyone wear Crash Pads, or something of that nature?

I was planning on stepping up my rail game this year, and thought a little protection might be nice.

Comfortable/restricting/opinions?

wear them. they save your ass and hips.

figured as much, just trying to decide between the full leg ones or just the ass/hip ones.

i wear just the ass/hip ones. they are pretty light in terms of protection compared to some i've seen out there, but i swear by them. i've have a few close calls landing on my tail bone on rails/jumps and would be willing to bet my tailbone would have been broken without them. if anything keeps your ass warmer when you sit down and strap in.

I'm looking for torso and spine body armor, but as of yet haven't worn any crash pads. Probably could have saved myself from a few days laying around waiting for the injuries to heal.

I haven't laid out for anything other than wrist guards and a helmet, but I've definitely had some hard hits to my tail bone too that end your day prematurely and might be avoidable with crash pads.

Another good thing to do is just hit rails when it is warm. Sun will soften up the snow and your landing will be a lot less painful. I mostly rode after school in high school and learning to ride rails at night was painful since everything iced up so much.

CRASH PADS SAVED ME SO MANY TIMES!
seriously they are the best thing ive bought no more huge bruises. they dont restrict function at all they make ur butt look a tad big but its completely worth it. id get just the shorts becuase i find very rarly i hit anything below my knees

Good stuff, sounds like I'll be picking some up then.

270 on, bs, 270 off down rail here I come...I'll keep dreaming.

The most common serious snowboard injury is a broken wrist.
Wear armor. You'll never regret it on hardpack.


I wear:
Standard helmet with earpad speakers.
Roller blade knee pads, UNDER the snow pants, over the base layers.
Roller blade wrist guards..... just the plastic palm plate.....
cut it out of the velcro assembly then wear a standard thin glove liner then big mittens.
Wear the plastic palm plate in between the glove liner and the mitten.
You can slide it in and out quick enough when you strap in.
I found using wrist guards with gloves never fit and could never strap in when wearing complete
wrist guards.
You can buy gloves and mittens with builtin plastic armor but I just couldn't see spending
$35 on mittens I didn't like just to get the armor.
$20 buys a set of roller blade armor.... knee pads, wrists guards, even elbow pads.

Wear mittens instead of gloves.
You don't break fingers when you fall in mittens...your fingers stay together.

I don't wear elbow pads or a hockey hip check guard but I recommend you do if you
expect to slam elbows or tailbone on hardpack.

Just FYI rollerblade wrist guards are atrocious and will break your wrist in a worse way if you fall on them the right way.

Really?
Wow. No shit.... break a wrist on snow or concrete?

Did that happen to you?

just putting that plate in there is doing NOTHING for you. the reason those wrist gaurds worked was because they were built into the straps that went around your wrist. and yes, those wrist guards are a death wish for your wrist (if they were still in the straps).

Level Gloves has a pretty good diagram on how certain wrist guards just push the injury higher up your arm:

http://www.levelusa.net/values/biomex.phtml

If I started dropping substantial things I'd get a back plate and some butt pads. Only for like 50 foot plus drops though. I've never worn crash pads on the hips and ass but I've always wanted to score a pair. I spent a lot of time in the summer downhill mountain biking, which makes even hardpack snow seem like a down pillow. For biking I wear the whole kit. Full arm, chest, shin, knee, back armor, and a full face helmet. Skiing I just wear the lid.

I digress, for hitting rails and stuff definitely snag some of the hip and butt crash pads. They aren't all that expensive for what they are either...

yea i am thinking about getting some or the shorts, shin padding would be nice too cuz i messed ym shins up trying to learn to get onto a rail urban set up.
any company suggestions, nick?

they're all pretty much the same. i think mine are pro-tec. just try some on and find the pair that isn't uncomfortable to move around in. they are such a sound investment too. i think mine were like 40bucks new and they are going into their 6-7 season now i think.

Perhaps roller blade wrist guards won't stop you from breaking your wrist but
any protection is better than no protection and telling anyone to never wear them isn't good advice.

Forgetting the rail grinding and ski jumping , most new kids who catch a toe side edge and slam
down on the ice would benefit from wearing roller blade wrist guards, knee pads, and a helmet.
Catching a heel side edge makes a backward fall and a tailbone, elbows , head slam.
So yea, wear all the armor you can even if its just rollerblade padding.
If you bounce back up every time you fall you won't just sit on the hardpack watching everyone
else fly by.Too many kids fall, feel pain and don't want to fall again, so they don't just jump up and try again. Its just too easy to stay down.
Skiers on the other hand will fall.... collect the yardsale... stand up and by the nature of being up...
try and go some more down the hill.
The more you armor up the more you get up and go again.
Its what makes you fearless. You don't just keep getting hurt by hard slams again and again.

My advice about inserting the plates into mittens may not work for everyone but it sure has saved
my wrists a few times.

what ever floats your boat chief.

i dont wear them, so it probably serves me right that i have a piece of my tailbone floating around from an icey jump at bear creek.

dont get crash pads unless your going really big....nothing in PA requires crash pads...if your careful and know what your doing you should be fine...taking a spill here and there is apart of the sport and wearing padding gives you a sense of invincibility....not wearing pads shows confidence in your ability, this is just my opinion...if your scared of getting hurt or if you have any thought that you may get hurt you probably shouldn't be attempting it. be safe, have fun, and knows your limits.....

Fall on your forearms. It took me a little while to get the concept down, but if you make falling onto your forearms second nature rather than falling onto your wrists, you don't need any kind of wristguards.

if your trying to progress you kinda haveto try things even when you are scared out of your mind. crashpads help me ba able to fall 10 times before i get it and keep getting up feeling good which makes learning tricks alot faster

thats stupid. you can be confident as hell and still wear them to learn new stuff. a lot of the best skiers and riders around wear them and they are more than confident in themselves. crash pads aren't just for "going big", they can also be used for learning new things, and if you think that nothing in PA requires crash pads, then you haven't left your front door. this is the ice coast.

wearing crash pads is like a safety. the same reason we wear seatbelts in cars, put on a helmet when we hit the road or trails on a bike or the slopes on skis, or slip on a rubber before fucking a chick. its a safety.

wow talk about ignorance. most of the times i've been glad to have my pads on where doing things that i did a million times before. you never know when your going to catch an edge at the lip of a jump, or hit a dry spot on a rail. accidents happen, and i like to be able to pop back up after taking a fall on something small/within my skill set, instead of laying there in pain. that same theory went into my decision to start wearing a helmet many seasons ago, when all my buddies were telling me i was a fag for it. i fell a few times hitting patches of ice that i failed to see and ended up with a concussion. just from casually riding a blue square! since i've had my helmet and crash pads i have not suffered a single injury that made me end my day early, and that includes when i wrapped myself around a tree last season at WP.

it still comes down to opinion though i suppose, but i've got to be honest if you aren't falling you aren't pushing yourself. that was the theory i was taught growing up playing ice hockey, and i think it applies here too.

When were you hitting trees that I wasn't looking?

One of the days Shadows was with us. I came around a turn and there he was stopped. I tried to stop but when I did my edge caught a sapling just under the snow and i went flying into the tree well. I wrapped around the tree at my hip/abdomen and knocked the wind out of myself. Shadows got moving again though before the wreck, but was nice enough to tell me it sounded bad . I'm sure you'll witness me hit something this year since I'm really hoping to push harder now that I have health insurance.

I use the R.E.D. wrist gaurds that are basically a mesh underglove with thin metal ribbons in them. They prevent you from over extending your wrist but they are not rigid like a roller blading wrist gaurd.

Even though concrete is harder than snow, you have more force when you fall snowboarding. When you fall rollerblading, generally you are falling from a standing position. Even the smallest rail will add 2 feet to that, but a jump will add 10 as you are coming down. What could be absorbed by your arm before will now break it, so if you are looking to use wrist guards in the park, use the ones that will absorb some energy instead of just transfer it up your arm.

For beginners, sometimes I will let them use the rollerblading ones because the speeds are low enough that it is much like the loads in rollerblading.

nips wore them for 3 years, I know for a fact that they work very well and lessen the bruising especially when gettting owned by a box or rail

I wear the dakine wrist guard gloves. Im sort of scared they may just move my wrist injuries up my arm thought.

also, not only do they help on rails but coming into a landing still cork the help alot. i used to get bruises from that not rails and havent gotten one since i got my crashpads.

i guess it comes down to if you can handle pain well or not...if you cant handle it too well you should probably get some crash pads...if you can man up and bite your lip for the rest of the day from the bruise you might get from landing awkwardly, you dont need them......also if you like to ski drunk i suggest them haha...or if your a girl you mite want them

I'm thinking you should probably shut it.

haha dude thats 2 absolutely retarded posts you've made in this thread, keep up the good work!

i second that. is this for real right now?

just rollerblade wristguards or any wrist guard in general? I wear wrist guards but have heard both good and bad things about them



what if you're falling backwards? like catching an edge on a frontside boardslide (not fun)

Ever been to the Emergency Room for a crash?
I got chopped up by an out of control skier doing cart wheels and a yardsale
and I wound up ripping up a shoulder.
You can't plan any fall. You don't "fall on your forearms".
You crash or get run over.
Then depending on how bad you wear a sling or a cast for a few weeks
or a month and that can ruin your whole winter.

Wear all the armor you can.

I was in the ER and there was snowboarder laying on a bed next to me with
a concussion. He was totally blind from brain damage.
He was not wearing a helmet when he crashed.

He had a dozen body piercings in his face and the nurse told him that they have to
remove all his metal jewelry , posts, spikes, gauges before they could take him to
XRAY. They said it was sort of personal so they had his mother do it.


Don't wear your metal when you snowboard.
If you end up in the ER do you really want your mother ripping out your tongue spike?

If you are landing so hard that you break your arm while wearing basic rollerblade wristguards
then you probably would break your arm wearing any advanced protection or no protection at all.
Pocono hardpack is solid ice groomed daily to have a grippable surface.
There rarely is "soft snow" here and that means to make a skiable surface we get groomed ice.
Ice is just as hard as concrete so if you skateboard and would think nothing of grinding rails
on steep hills without wearing armor then snowboarding without armor is for you.
For everyone else that bleeds, there's armor.


Wear all the armor you can.

this keeps getting better and better...

That's it. It's settled. I'll be rocking this:

ignorance is bliss until you get run over by someone or hit a tree.

it amazes me that so may people are against wearing protective gear skiing and snowboarding, but don't say dick about football players or hockey players wearing 10 times more.

its a personal choice. I have been skiing for 10 years and have never been hurt once. I stay in good shape and stretch before i go out every time. And no i dont just carve around the mountain...i mainly stay in sidewinder park all day and I am comfortable with every feature that has been in there. I have entered skiercross for the past 4 years with no injury problems. never wearing crash pads once in my life. I just believe there is no need for them here in pa...If you are aware of your body and know how to fall of course you may get a bruise here and there but thats part of the sport of freestyle skiing. Why minimize your accomplishments by taking all the risk away? I ski for the thrill and going in there with a body suit of pads is ridiculous....in my opinion you have to be a pretty big pussy to wear pads at blue mt.....i know all you guys who wear these pads are gonna hate on this haha but its just my opinion sorry

if you read this thread you'd realize that most of us aren't telling people to go out in head to toe pads. i wear a simple pair of shorts that has some soft foam padding over my tail bone, and around the joints in my hips. i rock a helmet as well, but if you can't see the importance of helmets i'm not going to sit here and argue over it (natural selection will eventually win that battle for me). the only mention of more hardcore padding was made by someone who charges hard DAILY at a colorado mountain. this is a guy who is constantly pushing himself day in and day out, and knows damn well that some added protection will keep him doing so.

i work out regularly, stretch, all that BS you mentioned. that isn't going to help you though when an out of control skier takes you out from behind, or you make a blind turn and run smack into someone standing there.

i guess i'm a pussy though since i wore my crash pads when i rode at blue. i salute you for being a bigger man then me.

i am not arguing wearing a helmet whatsoever....helmets have been proven to save lives...where pads have not....but thanks for the salute haha

So your lil butt pad is gonna protect you from a out of control skier? or from when you run into somone else.....

It helped me greatly when I came around that blind turn at WP and shadows was stopped there in the middle of the turn. I took the tree in the abdomen/hip. I'm no doctor, but I'm pretty damn sure my hip would have been pretty jacked up without them.

You also claim to be able to "tough it out" and fight through the bruises. Again, I guess you are more of a man then me, because I've fallen on landings straight on my tailbone and had a hard time walking let alone riding. So let me know what kind of Wheaties you eat, cause I need me some.

im guessign you dont ride park or your not trying.

It is proven that bruises and minor fractures actually grow back tougher than before. Some of the toughest guys in sports I know are that way because they have taken so many shots that they are now walking bricks.

I'm not gonna advise not wearing pads, because it is a personal choice. I will however say that I choose to take lumps and let them heal in order to build tougher muscle.

By all means if your concerned about injury just wear the pads that you are worried about, or if you have an existing injury or bruise then cover it with a pad so it won't get worse.

For those saying you can't control a fall, I have to disagree to a certain extent. Yes accidents happen and sometimes you can't see them coming. On the other hand I have seen many people break wrists because of the poor practice of reaching out to "catch" your impact. There are ways to control crashes and reduce injury, like I previously stated if you pull your limbs in toward your body before an impact you get them close to your core and the whole of your body takes the impact rather than breaking a wrist.

Of course I did just start wearing a brain bucket last year though, so I'm stating a biased opinion toward no pads.

I don't understand the "in PA" part. I use a helmet all the time everywhere, and wrist guards when I feel there is more risk than normal (park or really icy days). When you go north or west, the snow is softer, the place is less crowded, it seems like you need them less. I think riding this area is the most dangerous riding I do, I have 0 faith in the people "skiing" around us, where as when you go to other places its you and the hill and a lot less can go wrong.

Guys don't forget to always wear clean underwear when you ride because you could fall and get brain damage and could you imagine what it would be like when the nurse has to take off your skidmarked undies??????????????????????