K2 Biomex© Wrist Guards review

by Jerry Cooke

October 2003

Wrist guards are an inline skater’s first line of defence against injury. Absorbing the impact shock and lifting the fingers of the ground to prevent injury and jarring. There are many different style of wrist guard available, ranging from full hand padded gloves with splints to thin material with reinforced backs.

The Package

As is common with K2 products, the Biomex pads came only a small amount of information in no less than 9 languages. This information, though designed to be accessible to people from all over Europe, only covered the most basic aspects of the product. While this allowed me to safely wash the product and informed me well of the many situations in which the pads would not be covered by the warranty, it did not cover any important information such as the correct placement of the back splint.

The Fitting

The pads themselves look well designed and protective, which could well be the case. My pads (which incidentally were Extra Large, my previous guards being a slightly tight fitting Large) felt both uncomfortable and in some cases painful, the rigid plastic being covered, not by padding, but instead by CoolMax© lining (img1) which I felt did nothing to cushion the hand. This fitting could be well be explained away by the fact that the pads were perhaps slightly too large for me, but I also felt that the back splint (img2) was badly designed in that in the event of impact to the front of the pads, could cause pain due to the lack of padding and rigidity of the splint.

The Fix

To make the pads more wearable, I was forced to cannibalise my old pads by cutting tow sections, one for the middle hand/thumb and another for the wrist area (img3). Of course, not everyone may have old pairs of suitable pads lying around (the ones I used were some generic Inliners wrist pads), so a strange but effective method of creating your own is to cut up an old pair of socks until you have some appropriate looking sections, which while still probably not as much padding as conventional pads (unless you use big, thermal socks ), serves to protect the hand from chaffing and itching.

img3 – Homemade Lining

The Test

Due to good-fortune, I have only needed to put the effectiveness of the pads to the test once since I purchased them. For the minor faults of the pads, the one thing that they excel tat is the one thing that they are designed to do. Protect Your Wrists. The pads do everything that the hype says about them. The moulded deflection pad (img4) does everything its supposed to, both diverting the brunt of the impact (which is a good thing, considering the lack of padding) and lifts the fingers and knuckle bases of the ground (img5), stopping the fingers from loosing and skin. Of course, at the time I wasn’t very interested in the fact that my hands weren’t hurt since I was concentrating on the amount of blood issuing from my elbow and knee due to my overlooking of certain items of padding, namely knee or elbow pads.

img4 – Deflection Pad img5 – Finger Raise

The Conclusion

Overall, these pads (if fitted correctly) are well designed for stopping your hands taking any punishment and at the end of the day, that’s what pads are there for. Although the pads are now fairly comfortable and worn it (with the aid of aforementioned cannibalised padding), I feel that one of the major bad points of these pads for me was the lining, which really spoilt the product for me. I would recommend these pads, but only after you’ve tried the different sizes and discovered if they feel right for you.

Jerry Cooke

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