@Ping EP. 3 | Coincidence That Musquin Won Without a Neck Brace? 18

People may think Ryno is talking non-sense about braces but having studied exercise science he has actually hit the nail on the head! Limiting movement and range of motion which can produce more injuries than it protects! as with and external protective device you may experience injuries at another vulnerable joint/ligament up or down the kinetic chain. There are known former racers in the sport who wore neck braces who’s injuries were significantly exasperated because of how the fell when they crashed! The neck brace actually acted as a lever causing the individual to experience an atlas fracture! Ryno has actually done his homework, people bag on the man but he actually got a lot of his info from Dr’s and scientists who observed a significant number of injuries attributed to devices that are meant to protect! He has also experienced through trial and error a great majority of the things he’s talked about! For those skeptical try riding with and without a neck brace and see if you can feel the difference in riding position and range of motion! Ridged neck braces make sense if you are trying to immobilize in an MVA, not the greatest piece of equipment for preventing all MX injuries especially if you hit your head face first with a helmet that doesn’t have a break away type visor!

I miss the text version of Ask Ping

I find it funny that the debate of neck braces are still going on. Does wearing a neck brace force you to change your riding style? Yes. Absolutely no doubt about it. But plenty of winning has been done in supercross and outdoor with neck braces. It's only a matter of if a rider can alter their riding style to adjust to the slightly smaller range of motion or not. Look up photos of Villapoto. 4 straight titles while wearing a neck brace. Musquin's style is a very different riding style of very central on the bike using his long limbs to suck the bike up underneath himself. So I could see how a neck brace doesn't allow him to fully suck the bike up. Villapoto had a very different style of riding by leaning his body all over the side of the bike and was able to adapt to riding with a brace. If you can't make the change of riding style yourself like Ping admitted to, then by all means don't run one. But there is a way to still be fast that includes wearing a neck brace.

Thanks DP.

Marvin has won plenty of races and titles with a neck brace.

Just sayin'.

I have a question for ping. Will there be a written version of Ask Ping?

For the time being we are trying video.

Correlation does not imply causation. Science 101. Ryno is not a scientist or an engineer. Marvin, who has a long neck, may or may not be impeded by a neck brace.

Maybe. Or maybe Ryno has a point. Maybe two things are true at once. Science 102.

The difference is that, again, Ryan isn't an engineer or a physics expert, etc. whereas a company like Leatt employs lots of them and tests their product extensively. Does that mean they're correct in their safety claims? No, it isn't a guarantee that they're right, but they at least have some mathematical basis for their claims in the first place. I also don't think conflating a neck brace w/ a knee brace is relative they are two different braces and body parts, obviously.

Because companies would
Never sell something for profit that doesn’t work, right? You’re obviously not an economics major. I’m not poo-poo’ing anybody’s products, just saying that the doctors whose word you take as gospel have never ridden at a pro level and there are certain things that can only be felt, not worked out in a chart or theoretical graph.
Use whatever brace you want, or don’t, I don’t really care. But if you can support one opinion, I can certainly support a different one.

Hilarious. Actually, I have a BA in Economics! If you read my comment, I didn't say the companies' products were perfect or that they're "correct in their safety claims? No." What I did say, which is generally true, is that they employ engineers and physics experts who then do loads of testing because, a, they want their product to work so people will buy more of them and b, so they don't get sued, particularly as a safety product. The fact that someone is a pro just means, generally, that the loads are potentially higher.

I'll further add that as sports science goes, we're still learning, in all sports. Training even as recent as the 80's, in most sports, was pretty primitive. The same goes for protective gear.

Obviously Ping doesn't have a major in... anything. He's proven time and again that he only has a superficial understanding of anything that isn't riding a dirt bike or firefighting. His lack of depth with non-moto topics makes it easy for him to accept conspiracies and make irrational statements like 'there are certain things that can only be felt, not worked out in a chart or theoretical graph' when referencing safety equipment.

Ping is lowering the average IQ of this place by several points. Can we bring back Michael Lindsay?

Zooki- I'm going to defend Ping here. Yes, he didn't go to college, but college is turning out a lot of idiots right now. Ping's comments miss the mark in a few areas but I appreciate his perspective and nuanced response and I don't think his experience can be completely discounted.

As I said previously, sports science, while much further along then it was 30 years ago, is still fairly primative. The larger issue, from my perspective as it relates to MX, is the lack of real science about safety equipment and the seemingly lackadaisical attitude about the injuries that are incurred ad nauseam. Should more safety equipment be mandated? Yes, it should. The there be actual science behind the equipment? Will this keep riders from getting injured? No, but maybe it will lessen the severity of the injuries and prevent some. That would be a step in the right direction as, obviously, it's going to be impossible get anywhere close to making this a "safe" sport.

Zooki- Youre a special one. what I was referring to is how neck braces almost made me crash... twice. By keeping my head forward instead of allowing me to get my butt back and look upwards with my head (where the eyes/head goes, the body follows) I was almost thrown over the bars on kicker jumps/bumps. There is no scientific graph that accounts for that. And I’m not wearing a product that is going to cause me to crash, even if there is a chance that it could possibly limit injury in certain situations.
It’s folks like you who take every “scientist” at their word who dumb down our society. 60 years ago, those medical experts told pregnant women that smoking was good for them. They said asbestos was fine and pesticides wouldn’t hurt you. They were 100% wrong and they likely knew it... but there was money to be made so they didn’t care.
You place so much emphasis on college education, not realizing you were just taught how to think, losing the ability to think critically, which should be the point of higher education. I got my “degree” traveling the world, running my own business, managing a race team, working as a journalist and now working as a professional paramedic and firefighter. Keep throwing shade... only makes you look soft.

Scare tactic is a great way to make money. With new kids coming into the sport every year it was easy to convince parents they needed to protect their kids with neck braces. They don’t know any better because they are new and think they are doing the right thing. I’ve been racing since 1981 and don’t recall very many broken necks. If you could create a before and after chart that showed injuries since neck braces came to the market I think a lot of people would be surprised.

I don't agree that you can take a limp dummy with zero muscle tone and produce results that mimic an actual human, particularly when each crash is different and infinitely dynamic. You can measure impact force, think crash test dummies in autos, but there is some massive grey area when presuming how a rider will move when crashing on a dirt bike.
Totally agree that our sport is in its infancy in terms of training/safety/etc. Here's the reason I don't wear one, and I've tried almost every brand. Two different times, on two different days, a neck brace almost made me crash in a situation where I normally wouldn't have. In both situations I hit an abrupt bump or jump face and needed to get way back on the bike, pushing my butt back, extending my arms fully and keeping my head up to continue to see. In both cases, the brace prevented my head from coming back, which limited my ability to distribute weight rearward [where the head goes and looks, the body follows], and I almost got thrown over the bars. Each instance was relatively minor, meaning it wasn't a severe enough kick for me to think I needed to worry about it. But with the limitation of the neck brace it turned into a terrifying incident. After it happened once, I thought it was just a fluke... once it happened again, I never wore one again.
Knee braces are a different animal, but the same concept applies: Your body can't move the way it should and those limitations have consequences on your riding and your safety. Different argument for another time.

Appreciate the discussion. Cheers.

My speculation is that for people with shorter necks, you, me, etc.; neck braces don't work. I don't have a lot of mobility in my neck anyway and a brace wouldn't work for me. If I had a stork-like neck like Marvin's I'd probably be wearing one. As for knee braces, I've been lucky and only had one meniscus tear and that happened during skiing. My brother on the other hand has had 5 major knee operations from MX and never rides without a brace now. To each their own, but when you think about Bailey, Fonseca, Magoo, etc. it's hard not to advocate for more safety gear, assuming it works of course.