Is it Time to Replace Your Ski Helmet?

Ski and snowboard season is winding down, but before you put your gear away for the summer, why not take a few minutes to see if you need to replace your ski helmet? Most of us wear our ski helmets or snowboard helmets season after season, and don’t think much about replacing the helmet unless we have an accident or we see a new one that we really really like. Your helmet might appear undamaged on the outside, but age, wear, and other factors can affect a helmet’s protective capacity.

Did you know that most helmet manufacturers recommend replacing your ski helmet every three to five years? That might seem awfully frequent, but there is some sound reasoning behind this stance. XSportsProtective has created a new Learning Center article titled, appropriately enough, “When to Replace Your Ski Helmet.” We did a lot of research and spoke to some of the manufacturers whose ski helmets we carry. You may not agree with the manufacturers’ recommendations, but we want each one of our ski helmet customers to be able to make an informed decision about when to replace a ski helmet.  We’ve included a segment on how to inspect your helmet, so you can take a better look at the condition of your current ski helmet.

If you do decide this is the right time to replace your ski helmet, we hope you’ll take a quick look at XSportsProtective’s line of ski helmets. We carry a full line of the biggest names in ski helmets, like Giro ski helmets, Smith helmets, POC helmets, RED ski helmets, Bern helmets, ProTec helmets, and more. Whether this is the right time for you to replace your ski helmet or not, please remember to ride safely.

Nice article posted by The Mayo Clinic regarding ski helmet and snowboard helmet use, and a corresponding decrease in head injuries. Check out the original article here, and then shop our great selection of snowboard helmets and ski helmets.

Reduce your chance of a serious head injury – get yourself a new snowboard helmet, delivered fast and free!

Falling on your back can be frightening. We aren’t turtles or armadillos with a nice bony shell for protection. Depending on how and how hard you fall, the consequences of falling on your back can range from a couple bumps or bruises to full-on spinal cord injury. Lucky, the good people at POC have created the POC Spine Ergo BUG back and spine  protector.

POC Spine Ergo BUG Back and Spine Protector

The POC BUG back protector uses the same ergonomic hard shell design as the groundbreaking POC Spine Ergo. The BUG is cushioned with ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA), an expanded rubber padding known for both its softness and shock absorption, to provide excellent ski, snowboard, and cycling spine protection. The BUG series is designed for freeride skiing back protection,  all-mountain ski back protection, snowboarding back protection, or mountain biking back protection. If you’re a racer, you might want to check out the race-oriented POC Ergo Spine Protector.

If you want to get a better look at the POC Spine Ergo BUG Back and Spine Protector, check out the latest video from the XSports team below.

While we often refer to anywhere between our waist and our pelvis as our “hips,”  technically your hip is the joint where your thigh bone meets your pelvis bone. Hips and shoulders are called ball-and-socket joints because the ball-like top of your thigh bone moves within a cup-like space in your pelvis.  When your hips are healthy, they are very stable, and it takes great force to hurt them. However, playing sports, running, overuse, or falling can all potentially lead to hip injuries.

One way to protect yourself is to wear the proper protective gear. If you’re going to be hitting the slopes, you might want to look into investing in a pair of ski padded shorts. We’ve put up a new video on the POC Hip VPD ski padded shorts so you can get a full 360-view.

VPD stands for Visco-elastic Polymer Dough. VPD is soft and comfortable yet, upon impact, stiffens to absorb an extreme amount of the energy created by the impact. Since it is this energy from impact that ultimately causes bodily injury, the more energy your protective device absorb, the less likely you are to suffer injury. Most protective padding is static. The POC VPD Tailbone Protector is progressive, meaning the harder the impact, the greater the proportion of energy from the impact POC’s VPD Tailbone Protector will absorb.

You can also check out our full line of ski padded shorts (and snowboard padded shorts). Chances are, you’ll find the right pair of hip protection for your needs.

Happy New Year from XSports Protective!  With the turn of the calendar, many us of make resolutions for the upcoming year: We’ll lose weight (always a popular one). We’ll finally learn Spanish/read the collected works of Charles Dickens/clean out the attic/go through all those old photos. We’ll learn to ski. We’ll learn to snowboard. We’ll get back on our skates or skateboard. If your New Year’s resolution involves an action sport, make sure you do it safely. Any sport in which you might take a tumble is a sport for which you need protective gear. Remember: Falling hurts.

Ski Protective Gear
Is this the year you’ve resolved to finally get back on your skis (or to learn to ski)? Just about everybody knows you need a pair of ski goggles to protect your eyes from the sun’s glare and from bits of flying snow and ice, but a ski helmet is equally important. A blow to the head can cause serious injury or even death. Advances in materials technology mean that helmets have gotten lighter while offering better protection. And you can find ski helmets that are specifically designed for how or where you ski. For instance, you can find Giro ski helmets that are designed for park use, powdery conditions, or ski racing. Depending on what type of skier you are, other ski protective gear includes ski padded shorts or pants, ski body armor, or ski elbow and/or knee pads.

Snowboarding Protective Gear
Whether you’re pulling your first Ollie or going for a McTwist, sooner or later you’re going to fall. A snowboard helmet is a necessity. Given that it’s a winter sport, snowboard gloves are a necessity too. If you’re going to have to wear gloves anyway, they might as well protect you. Level makes great protective snowboard gloves with a unique wrist guard called BioMex that’s been shown to reduce the likelihood of snowboard wrist injuries by 7.5 times. Depending on where you snowboard, in what conditions you snowboard, and what kind of tricks you’re attempting,you might want to invest in snowboard body armor, snowboard padded shorts and pants, snowboard goggles, and snowboard elbow/knee pads. Our snowboard protective gear Learning Center can give you a little more information on how to select the right protective equipment for you.

Inline Skating and Roller Blading Protective Gear
Did you get a new pair of skates this holiday? Did you get a skate helmet too? Remember that even the most experienced skater falls once in a while. Why risk serious injury to your head? While many skate helmets still have the classic styling from the late 1970s, advances in materials technology have made them lighter, more comfortable, and more protective. And they come in some fantastic colors. The other must-have piece of skate protective gear is a pair of skate wrist guards. When we fall, we instinctively put out our hands to catch ourselves. Skate knee pads and skate elbow pads are helpful too, but trust us on the wrist guards.

Learning a new sport can be fun if you take the proper precautions. No matter what your New Year’s resolution is, please do it safely.

It’s finally starting to snow here in Northeast Ohio, home of XSports Protective and the skiers and snowboarders on staff are getting antsy about hitting the slopes. One of the brands flying off the shelves right now is the McDavid HexPad Freeride line of protective gear for skiing and snowboarding.We carry the McDavid HexPad Freeride protective shirt for men, the HexPad Freeride protective shirt for women, the HexPad Freeride protective shirt  for youth, the HexPad Freeride padded pants for men, the HexPad Freeride padded pants for women, and the HexPad Freeride padded pants for youth. These protective shirts are great as ski body armor or snowboard body armor, while the padded pants not only help cushion your fall but help keep you warm as well.

What Is a HexPad Anyway?

McDavid’s patented HexPad technology has been used by a majority of Division 1 football teams for several years. In 2010, the company began offering HexPad technology in ski protective wear and snowboard protective wear. As the name implies, HexPad material is made up of a grid-like pattern of hexagonally shaped pads that are permanently bonded to the fabric of compression garments. Each individual hexagon pad is less than an inch across and can move individually or along with the other pads. This configuration allows the McDavid Freeride protective shirt to conform to the shape of your body, no matter if you’re standing straight up, in a crouch, or rolling on the ground laughing after taking a tumble. The tiny HexPads squish and expand upon impact, working as a unit to absorb the force of impact. While it may not be as dramatic as the Grinch stealing (and then saving) Christmas down in Whoville, the McDavid HexPad Freeride ski padded pants and ski body armor can save you from a lot of pain and injury, and that’s pretty nice.

Vigilante Air body armor up close and personal

If you’d like to get a full 360-degree look at the new Vigilante Air ski body armor/snowboard body armor, check out these videos from the XSports team. You’ll notice that the men’s and women’s jackets have the same technical functions and level of protection. The only difference is that the women’s jacket is cut to fit a female form and we used different colored thread on the stitching. That’s it. Both jackets are double-stitched for extra durability and utilize the same innovative zone padding concept. You can read more about what makes the Vigilante men’s protective jacket and the Vigilante women’s protective jacket different from other snowboard body armor or ski body armor. You can also get a better view of the men’s Vigilante Air body armor here:

Or take a look at the women’s Vigilante Air body armor here:

Thanks for watching!

People who say “You can’t put a price on safety” probably never had to buy separate ski helmets, snowboarding helmets, mountaining bike helmets, or skate helmets. Helmets can seem expensive, but a helmet is also the most important piece of protective gear you’re going to buy. Let’s face it: your brain is your most valuable organ (you can do fine without an appendix or even a gall bladder, but an unscathed brain is kind of a necessity). If you love multiple sports but your budget doesn’t allow for multiple helmets, you might want to check out some of these multi-sport helmets.

There can’t be that many multi-sport helmets out there, can there?

You’d be surprised. Helmets need to meet certain safety standards for different sports. Advances in protective materials  mean that manufacturers have the technology to design helmets that can provide effective protection in both warm weather and cold weather. A multi-sport helmet can protect your head provided it meets the safety standards for a given sport. For instance, if you buy a snow/skate/bike helmet and then decide to try motorcycle racing, you’re going to need a new helmet. No matter what the sport, if you take a hit hard enough to make you say, “Wow,” take a few minutes to examine your helmet for cracks or other signs of damage. Better the outer shell of your helmet should crack than, say, your skull. The helmets listed below meet the various safety standards for the different listed sports (it’s by no means a complete list).

ProTec Multi-Sport Classic Snow Helmet for Multi-Sport has the look and style of a classic skate helmet, but its also meets safety standards as a bike helmet and snowboard/ski helmet.

RED Trace Multi-sport Helmet is certified as a ski helmet, snowboard helmet, skateboarding helmet, and cycling helmet.

POC Receptor Plus Multi-Sport helmet can be used as a ski helmet, snowboard helmet, skateboard helmet, mountain bike helmet, or water skiing helmet (it comes with both snow and water liners).

If you prefer full-face protection, try the Troy Lee D3 Fullface Carbon Fiber Helmet , which is certified as a  mountain biking helmet, BMX helmet, or snowboarding helmet.

Snowboard knee pads: Protect yourself

Snowboard season is here. When you’re getting ready to hit the park or the pipe, don’t forget snowboard knee protection.  We just received the new SixSixOne EVO knee guards, which are the top-of-the-line knee guards in the SixSixOne snwowboard protective gear lineup (not to mention their top-of-the-line mountain bike knee guards). You can read more about the 661 EVO knee pads on the XSports Protective website.

The key to the EVO knee guard is d3o, an engineered material designed to be pliable under normal conditions but that hardens upon impact.  The d3o padding’s ability to transform itself from soft to rigid is what allows the padding to absorb the energy from the impact, ultimately protecting you from the impact. d3o pads provide all the comfort of a soft-shell with all the protection of a hard-shell, making them ideal snowboard knee guards or mountain biking knee guards.

Snowboard knee pads? Really?

If you’ve ever injured your knee, you know how much it hurts, how long it can take to heal, and how gun-shy the injury can make you feel the next time you go out. You can injure your knee through a collision (with a tree, another snowboarder, or the ground) or by a too-sharp, quick twist of the knee in an awkward direction (such as when you’re trying to avoid hitting a tree or another snowboarder).  Good knee protection can dramatically decrease the risk of a serious knee injury by protecting you from impact and by stabilizing your knee to protect the ligaments.  Here’s to spending snowboard season on your snowboard and not recovering from an injury.

Vigilante snowboard body armor

The Vigilante Air snowboard body armor has arrived in our warehouse. The Vigilante Air  is ultra lightweight, ultra low-profile, and comfortable (almost invisible) under your current jacket or hoodie. This new approach to snowboard body protection is available as Vigilante men’s snowboard body armor and Vigilante women’s snowboard body armor.  They use the same materials and have the same design, durability, and protective capabilities.  But because you want your snowboard body protection to fit snugly, the women’s jacket is cut to fit the female form. Wear the Vigilante Air as snowboard body armor, ski body armor, or action sport body protection for any activity where you’re likely to take a spill–we’ve got your back, in a very literal sense.

Vigilante Air Body Armor and Padded Shorts: How Are They Different?

Vigilante body armor, tech padded shorts, and light padded shorts use a concept we call zone padding. The pads are shaped, cut, and placed to protect your major muscle groups, with the most vulnerable areas given extra protection. So if you fall–and chances are you will–you’re protected. The unique shape and placement of the pads give you a full range of motion and freedom of movement without pads that bend and contort.  You haven’t seen snowboard body armor like this before.  Quite frankly, that’s the idea.

All Vigilante products are made right here in the U.S. You can read more about our unique collaboration with Crash Pads here.