We all know the positives about joining new sports teams; getting fit, teamwork skills, new friends, feeling good about yourself. But what about the not-so-positive things. The negatives. The most common of these negatives being the risk of injuries that are caused when in play. The banged-up shoulder. The broken nose or arm. The (very rare) truly serious injury... Or even fatality!? To prevent these injuries from occurring, you need to make sure that you're wearing the right kind of safety wear. For example, footballers would wear shin-guards (to protect their shins from getting a large knock), boots (to protect all bones and muscles in the foot) and goalies should wear gloves (to protect their hands when the ball is being bombarded at them!). Or a body armour (to protect the full body in general), boots (again, to protect the feet), shin-guards (shins) and mouth-guards (protecting the mouth from getting hit and maybe missing teeth); possibly even forearm-guards. If protection is not provided, then the risk of injury is much greater and is more likely to happen.
Over time, sports equipment has evolved to be a lot more comfier and fashionable; after being invented in 1874, the shin guard has become a lot more modern, as they used to literally be cricket pads! Also, goalie gloves have even been around 1945! At first, I would imagine that they were just pieces of material - now, you can get them in all different colours. Obviously, when man decided to go to war was the invention of body armour, so as time progressed, people have seen the benefits of body armour in sport. No one really knows when mouthguards were first used, but we do know that they were made out of wood and were not 'fitted' (as seen in the picture below). There were literally just all the same size and would cause so much pain from the splinters that you would often get. Mouthguards are used to guard the teeth and the gums in sports such as rugby, boxing and hockey. Forearm guards are used in many different sports such as rugby etc. |
