“Adam: Today we’re here with a friend of the show and club house gas gear guru; Craig Brooks. Buddy, thanks for joining us.
Craig: Thanks Adam.
Adam: Alright, so we’re talking about football helmets. Now, when it gets into any kind of sports equipment, football gear can get kind of complicated, especially for parents who’ve never played but maybe even for dad’s who played football all their lives that don’t really understand how to make sure their kids safe and fitted properly. Most youth league football players have their gear provided for them by the department they play for so, when your kid comes home with a helmet, how do you make sure they’re in the right helmet?
Craig: Well, the biggest thing on helmets of any type of football gear whatsoever is tight. You want everything to fit as tight as it can possibly fit. Um, you know any kind of play in the helmet whatsoever is what’s going to cause concussions. If you’ve got shake in the helmet and you make contact with another player, the helmet is what’s actually hurting your son as opposed to protecting him.
Adam: So when a kid takes his helmet off and you see like, red dots on his head where it was squeezing, that’s a good thing?
Craig: That’s probably a good thing. You know, if he’s coming back with headaches from it just being ya know, so so tight than you know, it can definitely be too tight, but you know, if there are some marks in the hair or something like that, it’s not a bad thing at all.
Adam: Alright, well, why don’t you show us what it is you can do to check. When a kid comes home and puts his helmet on, how can you, as a parent, help check it.
Craig: Well, the first thing I would do is actually make sure the helmet fits properly without jaw-pads. The jaw-pads or often times called ear-pads, are gonna keep the helmet from rocking side to side. I would probably take the jaw-pads out of the helmet, put the helmet on the child and than I’d look for any shake forwards and backwards. Basically what you would wanna do is as soon as your child puts the helmet on, is I would probably, I would look, to make sure that the helmet wrinkles up in his forehead as he does his head up. I would hold the facemask like this. As his head comes up I would make sure that you see some sort of wrinkles as, as like the helmets almost sticking to his head. And then, as he comes up, slowly release. The same going the other direction. I would probably put the helmet on his head. As his face comes downward, you probably wanna see his eyebrows kinda pull up and then release. Now, if he puts it on and he goes up and all it does is wrinkle and never release or the other way around, it never, it can never go down and release out of the helmet, than it’s too tight in the forehead. Most helmets are going to have some kind of sizing mechanisms, take Schutt for instance. This is the helmet we carry. Obviously there’s a ton of brands of helmets to buy out there. But we’re very satisfied with this brand. They have a front sizer. This helmet, where you have a small, medium, and a large and an extra large helmet, you actually have three sizes of front sizers. So this can be changed. The helmet comes standard with a 7/8′s, so basically like a medium, so you can make it tight, bigger, or skinnier depending on the fit of the helmet.
Adam: Alright, what about the fit of the air portion there. The air tube lookin’ thing.
Craig: The air bladder in this particular helmet is called the youth advantage. This helmet you would want to have absolutely zero air in the helmet whatsoever. Fit the helmet to the child. Once it fits his head properly, then you would put air into the helmet only to fill the negative space. You would basically, if this helmet, if this helmets fit right, you could basically knife through or razorblade through this bladder and he would still be safe. The air bladder, again, is just a precautionary more safety and you know, again it’s just filling the empty space, the negative space inside of the helmet.
Adam: Alright, so once you got that fit front to back, then how do you do it side to side?
Craig: Front. Once the front to backs right, then you wanna put the jaw-pads in the helmet. Most jaw pads are universal jaw pads, by that I mean theirs no left and rights. They should snap into the helmet pretty easily, normally three snaps like so and so once you get these on, this is actually what’s going to make the helmet difficult to take on and off for a young child. The bad news is the older people; the adults, the college kids, the high school kids, they’ve hit puberty, their jaws have formed, they’ve got these big fat jaws, so they could put really really skinny jaw pads in their helmet and it still fits good. The bad news is; little guys are skinny in the face, so their heads are actually bigger than their jaws are. So, the jaw pads tend to be very, very thick. Putting it on, you’re going to see tears lots of times, you’re gonna see, I mean, it’s really gonna be a struggle putting on and taking off the helmet. But, once you got the helmet on with the jaw pads, basically wanna look (and I don’t even know if this is gonna fit me). Alright, you basically wanna look, you wanna hold the face mask in the front, let them turn their helmets side to side. If he turns his head to the right, back to the left and you don’t get any space between the jaw and the jaw pad, than it fits fine.
Craig: Now do you wanna hold the face mask while they’re turning their head?
Adam: Hold the face mask and let ‘em turn their head. Kinda turn into that pad and as space shows, you probably wanna go thicker in a jaw pad. Again, most helmets come with one inch jaw pads, ten to at least say the ten and under child usually needs a thicker jaw pad than that. I tend to put the inch and a quarter size pad and that’s gonna make it fit a lot better.
Craig: Alright, talk to me about the differences in chin straps. You have two different types of chin straps here.
Adam: Alright, most helmets are gonna standard with a cloth or leather chin strap. This is a leather chin strap. Offers basically the minimal protection. It’s gonna hold the helmet from going up and down, back and forth anything like that. But again, you’re fairly exposed to any damage, any hand or elbow or anything like… Then there is the hard cup style chin straps, which basically the same fit and functionality as far as holding the helmet onto the child’s head, but what it does offer is just a little bit of padding. And it keeps any fist that comes in here or any elbow or even knee for that matter that comes flying up. Keeps his chin protected.
Adam: Alright, is there a difference in using the high snap or the low snap?
Craig: Their is a difference in that. A lot of times, especially (for) the older guys, it becomes a matter of personal preference. A lot of quarterbacks, a lot of guys that are constantly messing with their chin strap, often times it’s easier for them to take it off on the two lower snaps. However, for the young guys, I do recommend to use the high snap chin strap. Both of these happen to be high. The proper way to fit this is…the chin strap actually goes on the inside of the face mask. Lots of times you’ll see people coming out through the eye-hole here and snapping it. It should go through the inside, and the upper snap will stay snapped. Once it’s properly adjusted the upper snap will stay snapped all the time and the lower back snap will be the only one the child takes off. So, he’ll take this on and off and let the chin strap hang in front of his face when he takes the helmet on and or off. Basically, the reason why I like this for the younger guys is again going back to the puberty conversation. The child’s chin hasn’t really formed yet so often times their chin doesn’t even stick out past the bottom of the helmet. The high chin strap tends to go up into the helmet better than the low chin strap goes, often times the low chin strap pulls tight at the very edge of the helmet and doesn’t get up in there and so often times he has space in between his chin and the chin strap.
Adam: Cause it has to go over the lip…
Craig: Right. Because it has to go over this lip where this is coming in here and around the backside.
Adam: That makes a lot of sense. I never thought about that. You stump me on football, you’ve done something Mr. Brooks.
Alright, well, that’s a lot of great information, any questions…leave ‘em for Craig and we’ll do everything that we can do to get them answered. Thank so much.
Craig: Thank you, sir.
Adam: That’s gonna do it for us today. We look forward to seeing you right back here next time for another great addition of ClubHouseGAS