Week 5 and 6: Composition of Helmets

Hello everyone! Welcome back to my blog. As promised last week, I dove more into detail on the composition of helmets. These past two weeks I have been looking more into which brands of sports helmets deliver the best results. The NFL uses the Riddell SpeedFlex helmets; these helmets are said to contain the most advanced technology to prevent the risk of concussions. The most important factor in reducing the risk of head injury is the fit of the helmet a player is wearing. If a helmet is oversized then that person is just as likely to acquire a concussion as a person who is not wearing any headgear. Fit is the most important thing.

      This Image is from South Pacific Sports Supply

One of the main features of this helmet is that it contains five sensors. All these sensors are used to measure the hits delivered to the athletes using this version of the helmet. This helmet does a satisfactory job of reducing the risk of concussions in athletes. One of the prime features this helmet contains is 2-3 times the padding a normal helmet contains. Extra padding means more hinderance which means that there is less room for the head to move under the helmet. The more our head moves during a hit the more serious the concussion is. I mentioned before that fit is everything. This helmet contains an extra chin strap to make sure an athelete’s entire head is secure and stable.

But, I was more keen on the sensors addition to these new helmets. There are five sensors and these make up a digital program called Insite. These sensors measure which part of the brain was most impacted by the hit. One major kinematics these systems leave out are linear and rotational acceleration. These two tyes of motions is what generally causes concussions, and also determines the longetivity and the severity of the injury caused to the brain/ skull. Another major part these sensors leave out is the severity of the hit to the head. the system will not exactly inform the trainers on the sidelines whether the player should be missing out for the rest of the game.

Each Riddell Helmet costs 950 dollars; this helmet is marked up by 400 hundred dollars because it has sensors implanted inside the helmet. Once again like I mentioned the sensors don’t actually detect concussions, they only tell where the player has been hit. In other words spending an extra 400 hundred dollars is not worth it. If we want to reduce the risk of concussions fully then we have to learn new tackling techniques which I will discuss in the next post. The next post will also contain updates on my final product! Stay tuned!