Carla Steve's blog: "Sports Safety"

Sports are a great way to improve fitness and emotional wellbeing, but their very nature puts participants at risk of personal injuries. This has resulted in the creation of huge amounts of sports safety equipment. While some of this equipment might not look especially stylish, it could one day save your life or prevent you from suffering from serious health problems.

1- Helmets

Helmets are a vital safety tool in a huge number of different sports, including hockey, American football, baseball, softball, and those that involve racing on vehicles, such as motor racing, skiing, inline skating, snowboarding, biking and skating.

You should only ever wear a helmet that was designed with your specific sport in mind - it is no good wearing a skating helmet for a hockey match. Your helmet should be approved by the relevant authorities and should be the right size for your head. It should fit snugly and should not tilt forwards or backwards.

2 - Eye protection

Eye protection is also necessary for many sports. Impact eye injuries and blunt trauma injuries can affect the eye and lead to blindness, such as when shrapnel hits the eye in firing sports or when sticks, balls, bats or rackets make contact with the eye. Safety goggles can prevent serious personal injuries in these cases. In full-contact combat sports, protection should be worn to prevent gouging or fingernail injuries.

Sports sunglasses are useful while skiing, snowboarding or taking part in other mountain-based sports. These protect you from radiation eye injuries - the reflected sunlight from water or snow can be dazzling and can make it difficult to see. This also causes your eyes to absorb greater amounts of UV light than usual, and UV light has been linked to a huge range of eye problems.

Eye protection is generally made from polycarbonate. Glasses wearers may need to apply for prescription polycarbonate goggles. You should ensure goggles fit comfortably and securely.

3 - Mouth guards

Mouth guards are essential in boxing and other combat sports but are also recommended for other activities, including volleyball, football, American football, gymnastics, basketball and hockey. Flying fists and elbows or stray balls could strike you in the mouth and cause you to suffer oral injuries, such as broken teeth, a broken jaw or a cut to the tongue. It is actually possible to bleed out and die from a serious tongue injury.

People who wear braces are at an even higher risk of suffering mouth injuries than the general public and mouth guards are therefore especially important for these people.

The best mouth guards are fitted by professionals and based on a mould of the wearer's teeth, but off-the-shelf mouth guards still proved a good level of protection.

4 - Safety pads

Safety pads are essential in a lot of different sports, with different kinds of activities requiring different equipment. We can all picture the iconic safety padding of an American footballer and contrast this with the equipment worn by a cricketer. Padding should protect all the areas of the body that are at risk, such as knees, shoulders, wrists, elbows and necks.

Wrist, elbow and knee pads are also a very good way to protect the body when cycling, skateboarding or inline skating. These prevent you from suffering a break or sprain when you fall over. Amateurs to inline skating and skateboarding will almost inevitably fall over, while more experienced people will try riskier manoeuvres that put them at significantly higher risk.

Mitts and gloves are also useful in combat sports such as boxing. Hitting with a bare fist can cause damage to the fingers, especially among amateurs. People often experience damage to the joint between the little finger and ring finger's knuckles.

5 - Sports shoes

Cleats, which have studs, can be vital for football, golf, rugby and other field sports, providing enough grip and traction for wearers to sprint along the pitch or kick a ball powerfully without falling over. Running shoes are useful for people  who are taking to the streets running, while cycling shoes can improve efficiency.

Shoes also help you to avoid repetitive strain injury. Advertisements may lead you to believe that a certain pair of shoes is superior to all others, or has a new piece of technology in it that will improve comfort and performance, but you should be very sceptical towards these claims. Some experts think that expensive running shoes could ironically put the wearers at an increased risk of personal injury.

Author Bio:-

Carla Steve loves travelling on her Suzuki motorcycle, but she is always acutely aware of the risks she faces while on the roads. As a result, she spends a lot of time blogging about accidents on road and back injuries due to accidents. She also likes listening to heavy metal and looking cool in fluorescent high-visibility clothes.