Safety in Sport, The Hard yards way - Part 1

Traditionally, protective wear in hard-ball sports such as cricket, field hockey and lacrosse has largely been an afterthought for sportswear brands who were keen to capitalise on the high-margin items such as cricket bats and helmets. Usually you’ll find a thick spongy piece of foam affixed to the arm with a pair of bulky velcro straps that (attempt to) keep it in place; not a very slick solution!

With advancements in materials science and clever 3D-fabric manufacturing techniques, things have begun to slim down. Subsequently, we find now that there are a couple of good simple solutions available to athletes on the market at present. However all (with the exception of our own design!) do not have an interchangeable construction and miss the mark with the smaller details that make a big difference to overall enjoyment when wearing.

The second issue arises from the regulation and standardisation of testing and indeed the precise way that the protective materials are tested is an issue in and of itself.

Regulation & Standards - This has been historically not-so-well regulated however in recent times, new legislation has come in to play and now sports PPE is beginning to see a base standardisation for quality and testing which is certainly progress.

Testing - As part of basic regulation, testing is often employed however, to standardise the testing of something means more often than not to test the object under very tightly controlled conditions using nicely rounded numbers in an environment that is very much removed from where the PPE is to be used.

In the case of protective wear this almost exclusively means that it is a ‘drop-test’ of some sort, ie, where a metal ball or plate of a pre-specified size and mass is dropped from a specified height onto the material being tested which rests upon an anvil of a specified shape and size. Now, you might feel that this is the best or only (or indeed a good!) way to test sports PPE, and to be fair it does make it easier to compare one type of protective material with another, but only under these particular circumstances.

Unfortunately, the circumstances of standardised testing are so far removed from the realities of the conditions that you, the athlete will face (such as a +90mph cricket ball) that any conclusions drawn are essentially meaningless in the real-world context of what you (the athlete!) will actually experience on the field. Furthermore, it would be inappropriate to draw any particularly meaningful clinical conclusions from a medical perspective from such data.

To illustrate, the British Standard for testing a protective arm guard is BS EN 6183-3:2000-3.2.2 and to the right is an extract diagram of the testing set-up; how inspiring!

In this test, the protective material is applied to the metal plate above and dropped onto the metal anvil below to achieve an impact force of 10J (joules).

Now the output from such a test would be a number that tells you how much of the original impact force (10J) is measured on the other side of the test material. To meet the level 3 standard (which is the highest for cricket PPE excluding gloves and helmets) it would need to demonstrate a force measurement of 4kN or less and we are pleased to see that our material does favourably and better than common alternatives (below).

Force measured against 10J impact test

This is all very pleasant, and looks very positive on the surface but let me ask you:

• Do you know what a 10J impact feels like?

• Could you tell me the difference between 35kN and 3kN? What about 8kN and 3kN; is this the difference between breaking your arm and not, or simply the difference between no pain and a mildly painful bruise to the wrist?

No, I’ve no idea either.

As a medical doctor I deal with scientific data on a daily basis however often I am asked to interpret clinical data presented and understand if the conclusions drawn are actually relevant to my patients or just look significant from the raw numbers.

This is where the Hard Yards philosophy of doing more for our athletes comes in.

We know that our protective guards hold up in standardised tests (although I hope I have changed your view of when it is appropriate to use these!).

We know anecdotally from our pro and amateur-testers that when a high-speed bouncer wallops you in the forearm, you barely feel it. But this is not good enough quality of evidence from our point of view.

We want to be completely confident that our kit will do the job it is designed to do. Not only transmit less than 4kN on a drop-test, but make a clinically relevant difference by preventing fractures, reducing game-altering pain and keeping you focussed on the job at hand.

That is why we are currently partnering with Newcastle University over the next 3 months to test our protection in as real-world conditions as we can recreate both in the lab and in the nets at high speeds. Speeds beyond what you would expect to face at the crease, on the hockey astroturf, or on the lacrosse field.

We also know that because of the molecular properties of our non-Newtonian-based material, the impact absorbing capabilities increase as the force of the impact increases. However we don’t know what the force-curve looks like, or what the true upper limits are. So, we’re going to push our protection to its breaking point so that when you wear our kit you know it does what we say it can and you can concentrate on doing what you do best!

I’ll be writing Part B of this article when we have the report available from the Newcastle University project team later this year. And, if it doesn’t stand up to the testing, we’ll be back to the drawing board the next day.

That’s the Hard Yards way!