Football Helmets

Helmets are safer because today they are featured with vinyl pads inside the helmet that could be filled with air to further absorb impact. The Rams were the first ever team to design their helmets. Shoulder pads were made from plastic material, but now they are more bulky and protective. Players use to hit each other below the waist so L.P. Smock invented the first padded pant. Walter Camp noticed the injuries that were happening so he needed to change and make new rules that would make the game safer.

Safety and equipment have come a long way in football in order to prevent brain injuries. A very important piece of equipment used to prevent brain trauma is the helmet. The helmet has evolved a lot over the years, even more in the past decade. The Helmets main purpose use to be just to stop skull fractures, then they added the facemask to prevent facial injuries. Concussions are more of a recent concern (Hand 1). Overconfidence in the helmets' protective power prompts many NFL athletes to deliver and accept hits that would have killed players of previous generations. Now the helmet is being revolutionized. Helmets aren't only being created to stop skull and face fractures but they are being created to help prevent brain damage such as concussions now. Helmets have gone through testing to see how to design a better preventative helmet. These newer helmets are being designed to reduce the amount of force that is being applied to the head by a hit that is received (Vandantam 2). Virginia Tech football has been monitoring helmet collisions since 2003, courtesy of Dr. Gunnar Brolinson. Dr. Gunnar Brolinson has outfitted the teams helmets with six sensors and a small antenna that records and transmits data to a computer on the sideline. This information collected is crucial because it will help find better ways to design a helmet that will prevent concussions(Goldman 1). Equipment isn't the only important part of football that can help prevent concussions.

In 2015 28% of injuries occurred to the head or face, including concussions. High school injuries are so high because most people are just learning and don’t understand the right way to tackle so they lead with their head. High school athletes account for an estimated 2 million injuries and 500,000 doctor visits and 30,000 hospitalizations each year (Mills 2016).What Highschool started to use was the ZERO1 helmet. It has four core layers. The layers are (outside-In) Lode shell, Core layer, Arch shell, and form linear. The hard shell is the most important because it allows the helmet to not collapse when the player hits the ground (“The Safest Helmet in Football Is Set to Make Its NFL Debut"). The helmet stays straight, and the padding gives the player cushion when tackled.

The issue of multiple concussions is finally becoming recognized by major sports. The awareness has led to a variety of interventions to help protect athletes. There have been two recent interventions concerning football helmets. First off, Riddell, a company that produces football helmets, has released a new helmet that is supposed to best prevent concussions. This helmet is known as the Revolution Speed. Using advanced technology, the Speed helmets were designed around the head 's center of gravity and include an uneven outer shell to help absorb a hit. The inside of the

My topic choice for the final essay will be Football Safety Equipment. I decided to write about this topic because I am an athlete and I have played football since I was six years old. When I transfer to a four year college, I plan to play on the collegiate level. As I grew, my father would purchase extra protection in addition to purchasing my own specialized helmet for football. My father did this because he believed Parks and Recreation did not properly maintain their equipment. Also, over the last couple of years there has been quite a few players from little league to the professional league who have suffered concussions. As a result, some medical professionals believe these concussions are linked to CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy).

After suffering from head injuries during his football career, he believed that there had to be a better way to make a football helmet. It was believed he spent years doing research and development on helmets and launched his first when he felt like it was up to his standards of protection. All of their football helmets feature Adaptive Head Protection– a system of technologies designed to protect against both linear and rotational forces. Xenith is the only manufacturer to exclusively produce 5-Star helmets under the widely accepted Virginia Tech star system. Other companies have 5-Star helmets, but they also produce 4-Star, 3-Star and 2-Star products. They believe in a philosophy is that if a helmet does not excel under the most stringent testing available, it should not be on the field. That belief system inspires innovation and led to the Xenith EPIC being crowned as the top ranked helmet in the 2015 NFL Health & Safety

Traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) have always been a problem in sports and especially in contact sports like football. Since the beginning of football there has been different styles of head protection, from no helmets at all in very early stages to the modern day helmets we have today. In order to know how the evolution of the football helmet has made head injuries less common than they originally were, we have to know what is a concussion and how someone gets one.

Football is game of speed, strength, and strategy. The best way to be a better player is working on becoming bigger and stronger while maintaining the speed, but when the players mass, strength, and speed all get better the forces the can produce a greater force with their hits. According to Timothy Gay, Physics professor at the University of Nebraska and author of The Physics of Football, a Defensive Back at the average one-hundred and ninety pounds that runs a 4.56 forty-yard dash can produce sixteen-hundred pounds of tackling force, which easily can break any bone of the human body. Due to the extreme forces the players are exposed to, it is necessary for each player to wear pads that help reduce and spread out the forces, and helmets

Today’s world, the top rated helmet to use is a Riddle. Priced at about $400, it features a hard polycarbonate shell to bounce off an impact and an energy absorbing foam lining to absorb the aftershock (Wilson). Dr. Timothy of Gay, University of Nebraska physics professor, writer, and industry helmet said, “I think that it’s true that football helmets are 85% as good as they’re ever going to get.” The optimal football helmet won’t be much better than the helmet you can buy right now because there are just physics restraints on the kind of padding you can use. To make a helmet that is concussion proof you would need about fifteen inches of foam on the helmet.

Concussions while playing football are becoming more common as the ages progress. Coaches teach their players proper form tackling and not to drop your head while hitting a defender. However, many players use the top of their heads in a spear like form to tackle their opponent, causing a large blow directly to the tacklers head. Helmets cannot protect against all of the impact force from the blow, although it takes away most. The remaining force of the blow is concentrated right toward the individual’s head, which can cause a slight concussion. But as the game goes on, the individual continues to drop their head and take repetitive blows, leaving the player concussed. Sometimes it only takes one hit to become concussed depending on the impact of the

Josh Weinfuss expressed that to precede to come back to practice or play, not exclusively should the team doctor clear the player, yet the Independent Neurological Consultant with mastery in concussions should likewise assess and clear the player to come back to practice and play. They likewise have a specialist who has some expertise in cerebrum wounds that strolls around the sidelines amid NFL amusements who disregards if a player ought to backpedal into the diversion or not. The NFL website composed that, "what's more, the NFL and the NFL Players Association cooperate to ensure players by delineating infractions and disciplines for uncalled for player lead, perilous plays or erroneous utilization of security gear. The alliance likewise orders the correct support and testing of playing fields to lessen the danger of damage." Riddell a long-lasting protective cap supplier for the NFL has delivered another cap called the Speedflex which could decrease cerebrum harm fundamentally was presented in 2014. Will Carrol composed that what's so exceptional about this head protector and how it contrasts from different caps is the set pattern in the front. It's known as a cantilever, it enables the head protector to have greater adaptability while keeping up a general firmness. The thick cushioning behind the zone that is moves a considerable measure doesn't enable it to move much, however sufficiently only in a territory where players can take huge hits. The effect from either side likewise permit more flex in the protective cap to scatter the hits inside before the drive gets to the head. The issue is likewise that the chinstrap that is utilized to ensure the protective cap is bolted on the player's head hasn't been changed for more than 70

In the 2015 season there were 271 total concussions; a fifty-eight percent rise from the 2014 season (Seifert, esnp.go.com). Of the 271 concussions, ninety-two of them were caused by helmet-to-helmet contact (Seifert). Dr. Michael C. Miller, former editor of the "Harvard Mental Health Letter" believes the NFL has taken steps in the right direction but more needs to be done in order to protect future players and preserve the heart of the game. Helmets with better padding and impact monitors cut the risk of sustaining a concussion in half. A group of researchers collected data from 1,800 athletes from eight different college football teams using two versions of a helmet made by Riddell, the "VSR4" and the new "Revolution". Using sensors in the helmet, they recorded hits experienced by players and found a fifty-four percent reduction of concussion risk in the players with the Revolution helmet. (Newsmax Health). Dan Polnerow, a journalist at Northeastern State University, wrote that Riddell’s new helmet “utilizes high density vinyl nitrile foam, a facemask designed to absorb some of the energy of the impact, and a larger shell to fit more padding” (Polnerow). No helmet can completely protect an athlete from a concussion however providing better protection can substantially reduce the risk

Football can be a very dangerous sport. And although those who play the game believe that they are being protected by the helmets that they wear, the truth is that this may not be the case. In a recent study released by the American Academy of Neurology it has been found that “protection against concussion and complications of brain injury is especially important for young players, including elementary and middle school, high school and college athletes, whose still-developing brains are more susceptible to the lasting effects of trauma”(Science Daily, 2014). The study also found that standard football helmets worn by the majority of players on the field today, only reduce the risk of traumatic brain injury by 20 percent compared to not wearing a helmet at all (Science Daily, 2014).

There has been extraordinary improvements of helmets from the old leather to the modernized-plastic football helmets along with the face mask and energy- absorbent padding. In addition, the concern over preventing concussions, have led to helmet changes, impact testing methods and reconstruction of injuries during play helping to provide insight on concussions(4). Helmets have been successful in decreasing the risk of traumatic brain injuries, but there is much concern over concussion; therefore, scholars argue the importance of technology development to address concussion(5). As the author(s), David Viano and David Halstead discusses, there is room needed for understanding the types of collisions associated in youths and the impact condition addressing collisions. There are many variables to consider addressing concussion and where they occur.

American football has been around for over one hundred years, and along with the sport has been the need to provide proper safety for the players. An assortment of padding has been instituted in the game that protects against most blunt trauma including blows to the shoulders, mid section, and legs. In an attempt to prevent fracture of the skull, helmets were designed. However, studies have shown that helmets do little to nothing to prevent concussive damage to the brain. A polycarbonate shell is used as the outer housing for regulation football helmets, but along with this material, the materials used on the inside of the helmet are just as, if not more, important. The purpose of this report is to analyze the materials used in current football helmet design and the improvements being made in the field of materials science in order to combat the severe number of concussions suffered by NFL players.