THIS IS WHY I LIKE RBSD/COMBATIVES/ETC...

REGARDLESS OF THE JKD/WING-CHUN IN THE FRAME, OR OTHER INFLUENCES...
WHAT OTHER SENSIBILITIES LEND TO BEING ABLE TO JUST BE BIG KIDS--WHILST
LEARNING A BIT ABOUT HOW TO PREPARE FOR A FIGHT.

MADE ME WANT TO GO OUT AND KNOCK A GUY ABOUT IN A MOTORBYKE HELMUT--
KIDDING, BUT IT DID LOOK FUN.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x19SBLC-qBI

Nice!

Hey, that's what our JKD instructor would use sometimes when demo'ing the straight blast. The hubby and I bought a used motorcycle helmet just so we could work it at home. Hmmm.....been a while since we broke it out.

i've been looking for one in the thrifts for the same reason. DMB gave me the idea, he was thinking used
hockey equipment, but it started me thinking about motorbyke helmuts.

I was re thinking the hockey helmet idea recently and thinking football helmets might work better... maybe.

Really I guess we just have to make sure we can be as aggressive as we can in drills while hopefully keeping our training partners relatively safe from serious injury. The thing that worries me about hockey helmets is that with the full face shields, they can still get driven back into the jar if you hit hard enough. Mouthguards are a good idea to avoid broken teeth, but I find myself worrying about causing a head injury.

I suppose nothing is perfect but thinking of how a linebackers shoulder pads are designed to keep the head from snapping back makes me wonder if it'd be applicable in any way. Granted I think a football helmet is a bit harder than a hockey helmet and MMA gloves might not save your hands....

lol, that's my thought for the day... wish I wasn't so busy and had more time to post

cheers all

why is the helmet visor not just breaking off? can a standard helment take this much abuse and still keep the visor on?

I was wondering that.

My helmet cost £20 off ebay. It would be fine if not for my massive nose. Still after another with plastic visor for better vision.

Gonna hurt to punch a bike helmet though, remember that Tony Leung used to use one in demonstrations for steel wire mantis.
No idea how it handled the abuse.

Are hockey/football helmets too hard to hit, likely to hurt the hand or do they mirror the hardness of the head better?

They're using a full face motorcycle helmet which can take pretty much abuse due to being braded at the bottom of the visor. If I remember correctly Paul Vunak is the one who popularized the use of a full face helmet for training here in the States.

I'm lucky in that I have two F.I.S.T. helmuts for this kind of abuse and last year scored a Blauer Highgear helmet and neck piece off of ebay for $65.00 shipping included.


Keep safe and train hard/smart, Mark H

What Markh said. My JKD instructor had to duct-tape the visor back onto one of his helmets, though. It flew off when he and a friend were sparring hard. You can still get jolted pretty hard through the helmet. My instructor and a friend of his did a free women's self-defense class once, and used motorcycle helmets as part of their protective gear. One of the drills was a simple slap, ideal target being the ear. There were eight women, and everyone got to slap each helmeted instructor once. Both instructors had to sit down at the end of the drill because they felt dizzy.

markh wrote:

They're using a full face motorcycle helmet which can take pretty much abuse due to being braded at the bottom of the visor. If I remember correctly Paul Vunak is the one who popularized the use of a full face helmet for training here in the States.

I'm lucky in that I have two F.I.S.T. helmuts for this kind of abuse and last year scored a Blauer Highgear helmet and neck piece off of ebay for $65.00 shipping included.


Keep safe and train hard/smart, Mark H

score mate! fack... how are they?

Quote :

What Markh said. My JKD instructor had to duct-tape the visor back onto one of his helmets, though. It flew off when he and a friend were sparring hard. You can still get jolted pretty hard through the helmet. My instructor and a friend of his did a free women's self-defense class once, and used motorcycle helmets as part of their protective gear. One of the drills was a simple slap, ideal target being the ear. There were eight women, and everyone got to slap each helmeted instructor once. Both instructors had to sit down at the end of the drill because they felt dizzy.

Ive got a nice joe hubbard helmet and you still have to be careful, I mean its taking the "sharpness" of the shots out, so you wont break bones or get cut, but your brain and neck are still absorbing impact and this is not something to be trifled with

this from the man who had his skull fractured during a dvd shoot so badly cerbro cranial fluid ran out of his nose and his concussion was so bad he forgot his own name... and where he lived

helmets help but they arent magic, there is a reason why we train to tonk people in the head and its because its so bloody vulnerable

I want to play with a motorcycle helmet but have no one to play with, can someone give it a go for me?

Rich,

The Highgear helmut is pretty nice and accomplishes what Blauer designed it for which is impact reduction and to prevent tissue trauma such as cuts, bruises, abrassions, and the like. No helmut that covers just the head can do away with the jarring impact of a sharp blow, but they can reduce or mitigate some of the kinetic energy imparted by the blow.
The Highgear helmut was designed for tactical training and the neck piece serves to protect the adams apple/ trechea ares from inadvertant impact, but the did design in "ear holes" to allow sound. These "ear holes" allow for better hearing in tactical scenerios, but you do still have to be careful when doing ear slaps because some of the pressure can come through the holes.
The F.I.S.T. helmets do a better job of mitigating the force of direct blows and coupled with a collar/neck protector can help diminish the "jarring" from blows. I have been toying with the idea of getting Motocross upper body/chest protector or the paded type of police riot gear for the upper body withthe integrated collar.

Keep safe and train hard/smart, Mark H

Richard Grannon wrote:

why is the helmet visor not just breaking off? can a standard helment take this much abuse and still keep the visor on?

If you punched into the visor with a bare hand or elbowed it, I'm sure you could crack it although it may take a few shots first, they are fairly flexible. It's made to distribute force, and in hockey with gloves and shoulder pads, it's somewhat rare to be hit in the face shield with anything with a hard point unless it's with a stick.

If you've seen some of Tony Blauer's early early attempt at high gear, he was basically using hockey gear

There has been quite a bit of publicity about brain damage in sports recently, particularly in American Football.
Here is a piece about helmets - not that training for SP is exactly the same, but they do say that you don't need many concussion incidents to cause damage in later life, and even though wearing a helmet helps protect you from certain things, you head still gets rattled around inside it when you get hit.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704402404574527881984299454.html

Is It Time to Retire the Football Helmet?

New Research Says Small Hits Do Major Damage—and There's Not Much Headgear Can Do About It
By REED ALBERGOTTI and SHIRLEY S. WANG

This football season, the debate about head injuries has reached a critical mass. Startling research has been unveiled. Maudlin headlines have been written. Congress called a hearing on the subject last month.

As obvious as the problem may seem (wait, you mean football is dangerous?), continuing revelations about the troubling mental declines of some retired players—and the ongoing parade of concussions during games—have created a sense of inevitability. Pretty soon, something will have to be done.

But before the debate goes any further, there's a fundamental question that needs to be investigated. Why do football players wear helmets in the first place? And more important, could the helmets be part of the problem?

"Some people have advocated for years to take the helmet off, take the face mask off. That'll change the game dramatically," says Fred Mueller, a University of North Carolina professor who studies head injuries. "Maybe that's better than brain damage."

The first hard-shell helmets, which became popular in the 1940s, weren't designed to prevent concussions but to prevent players in that rough-and-tumble era from suffering catastrophic injuries like fractured skulls.

But while these helmets reduced the chances of death on the field, they also created a sense of invulnerability that encouraged players to collide more forcefully and more often. "Almost every single play, you're going to get hit in the head," says Miami Dolphins offensive tackle Jake Long.

What nobody knew at the time is that these small collisions may be just as damaging. The growing body of research on former football players suggests that brain damage isn't necessarily the result of any one trauma, but the accumulation of thousands of seemingly innocuous blows to the head.

The problem is that there's nothing any helmet could do to stop the brain from taking lots of small hits. To become certified for sale, a football helmet has to earn a "severity index" score of 1200, according to testing done by the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment, or Nocsae. Dr. Robert Cantu, a Nocsae board member and chief of neurosurgery at Emerson Hospital in Concord, Mass., says that to prevent concussions, helmets would have to have a severity index of 300—about four times better than the standard. "The only way to make that happen, Dr. Cantu says, "is to make the helmet much bigger and the padding much bigger."

The problem with that approach, he says—other than making players look like Marvin the Martian—is that heavier helmets would be more likely to cause neck injuries.

One of the strongest arguments for banning helmets comes from the Australian Football League. While it's a similarly rough game, the AFL never added any of the body armor Americans wear. When comparing AFL research studies and official NFL injury reports, AFL players appear to get hurt more often on the whole with things like shoulder injuries and tweaked knees. But when it comes to head injuries, the helmeted NFL players are about 25% more likely to sustain one.

Andrew McIntosh, a researcher at Australia's University of New South Wales who analyzed videotape, says there may be a greater prevalence of head injuries in the American game because the players hit each other with forces up to 100% greater. "If they didn't have helmets on, they wouldn't do that," he says. "They know they'd injure themselves."

Dhani Jones, a linebacker for the Cincinnati Bengals who has played rugby, too, says head injuries in that sport do happen, but they're mostly freak accidents. "In football, you're taught to hit with your face," he says. "You're always contacting with your 'hat,' which is your head."

Taking away helmets might have other benefits for the sport. It would bring down the cost of equipment, which can be crippling for some schools. A slower game might also be more palatable to some parents. And with their heads uncovered, football players might be more attractive to endorsers.

By all accounts, banning helmets isn't on anyone's agenda. Greg Aiello, a spokesman for the NFL, says the league isn't contemplating the idea. Its focus is on improving helmet technology and on rules "that help take the head out of the game." Not wearing helmets, he says, "is not going to eliminate the risk of concussion in a sport that involves contact." Dr. Thom Mayer, a medical adviser to the NFL players' union, says there isn't enough research showing that playing without helmets would reduce brain injury. "It's an interesting theoretical question, but I don't think anybody would consider playing NFL football without a helmet," he says.

Larry Maddux, the head of research and development for helmet-maker Schutt, says even without helmets, players would inadvertently get hit in the head—and regular knocks and bumps could turn into concussions. Thad Ide, the vice president of research and development at Riddell, the NFL's official helmet sponsor, says getting rid of helmets would be a bad move. "There would always be incidental contact," he says.

So what should be done?

Julian Bailes, a neurosurgeon who has conducted brain research for the players' union, says the NFL should change the rules so linemen aren't allowed to go into three-point stances before plays—a rule that would prevent them from springing head-first into other players. He says he would also stop all head contact in football practices. Dr. Cantu says brain injuries could be reduced by enforcing rules already on the books in the NFL—especially helmet-to-helmet hits, which are not always called by officials. "There have to eventually be some hard sanctions for referees," he says.

To many, the solution is to come up with a better helmet. The NFL is currently conducting independent testing of helmets with a focus on "more accurate and comparative information about concussive forces," says neurologist Ira Casson, a co-chair of the NFL's Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Committee.

In the past, attempts to create a better helmet haven't met with much success. Robert Cade, who is better known as an inventor of Gatorade, created a shock-absorbing helmet that was used by a number of NFL players in the 1970s. In the late 1980s, Bert Straus, an industrial designer, came up with the ProCap, a soft outer shell that fits over helmets to help absorb blows. It was also used by some NFL players but also never caught on.

Nonetheless, the strongest argument for the helmet may turn out to be an economic one. The NFL is shaped around the notion that players can run into each other at high speeds without consequence. It's the same sort of idea that has made Nascar the nation's most popular form of motorsport. And beyond all this, there's the very real question of whether the prospect of serious mental impairment later in life will ever discourage people from playing the game—let alone watching.

"Without the helmet, they wouldn't hit their head in stupid plays," says P. David Halstead, technical director for the Nocsae, the group that sets helmet-safety standards. But without helmets, the game "wouldn't be football," he says.

Write to Reed Albergotti at Reed. Albergotti@wsj.com and Shirley S. Wang at Shirley.Wang@wsj.com

Thank you for the material, Maija.

Don't I remember reading a few years ago that there was a significant amount of serious paralysing neck trauma caused each season by using the helmeted head as a battering ram?

MarkH you reccommend what you bought. Anyone used any lower down the price range?

This is what I am using.

Thats not me, incidentally.