Why do Lacrosse Arm Pads Suck?
If you expected to see a picture of a certain company’s arm pads in this article in order to see me continuously dunk on how terrible they are...surprise! It’s all of them. Every modern arm pad is garbage. There has been ZERO innovation in Arm Pads, guards, caps - whatever you want to call them - in well over a decade.
How do I know this? Well, aside from my constant and unending quest to find the perfect Salsa, I have one other mission in life: to find the greatest lacrosse arm protection ever made. The difference is that I think that I have discovered the best pads and am now only resigned to walking the earth in search of the best blend of tomatoes, peppers, and onions.
I am reticent to share the greatest arm pad design because technically you can still buy them - of all places - on Amazon. Commerce is the only inevitability in this life other than corporeal death. Maybe I’ll drop it at the end. But first - let’s talk about what makes a great arm pad.
Protection
Your pads can look as futuristic and awesome as they want. But if those pads don’t actually prevent your arm from snapping like a strand of spaghetti that falls into the clutches of a strong infant, then they’re worthless. This is the No. 1 thing to everyone. If it’s not then you’re an idiot or a 40-year-old tryhard that is overdue for your child support payments.
Flexibility
Real quick experiment - go grab your current arm guards and put them on. Flex your arm into a bicep curl. Is there any resistance? Yes? The pad is trash. Burn it. I mean, don’t, but it’s 2021 - why is there resistance to a normal arm movement? Laziness. Complacency. AutoCAD designers/engineers with no lacrosse experience.
Coverage
I’m not just talking about the length of the pad. I’m talking about the hinge points. Are there weak points in your three-piece suit of armor? Can a shaft fit through the cracks? Of course it can, because a good check on any of today’s arm pads can get right into your arm meat with zero resistance. Hope you did extra hammer curls last week.
Weight/Materials
This is where every arm pad on the planet right now fails. You can play the same game you do with the heads and shafts if you want, but the truth is obvious to anyone paying attention. Let me de-code some terms for you:
“New materials!” Means that they’re are trying out a slightly different nylon (head) or metallurgical (shaft) compound. Don’t get me started on carbon shafts and weaves.
“New design!” Is usually slapped onto a legacy/best-selling product and means that they have tweaked a few things from the more successful/previous model.
Oh, hey what’s this curtain still doing here? Let’s pull this back a little more, shall we?
Do you know why companies don’t put any effort into designing or redesigning their arm pads each cycle?
Sidebar: No, it’s not the pandemic’s fault. You can blame a lot of things on that, but this problem goes much farther back than the new normal of infectious disease preparedness and education.
Lacrosse companies don’t put effort into “fixing” their arm pads because the margins on arm protection are the worst out of anything they make in terms of materials, labor, and manufacturing. They could make the best arm pad in the world. They have that capability. They could fix every single complaint voiced above. But even if they did that, they wouldn’t sell enough units to make a profit. So they don’t do it.
The only reason they had to change their shoulder pads for this coming season is that they were forced to. The irony of this being that because they were forced to address a protective issue - commotio cordis to be specific - and now their sales are going to go through the roof because EVERY active male lacrosse player on earth needs to buy new shoulder pads.
What would happen if they were forced to do the same thing for arm pads? What is NOCSAE’s position on broken arms? Do they find it humerus? (Get it? Because arm...bones...shut up, Kyle.)
Why do I even care about this? Next time you see me in person, ask to see my right elbow. Then I’ll explain why there is a giant hole in the middle of my olecranon/tip of my elbow. How I smash my “funny bone” at least once or twice a month and lose feeling in my ring and pinky finger like they’re the final remnants of my oft-shattered heart.
No one hates wearing giant arm pads more than I do. I love to feel fast (even when I’m not) and nimble (even though I fall like I have vertigo) playing lacrosse. I can’t do that anymore. I have to wear friggin gauntlets. That’s okay. I made the choice over and over to pick the sleek and supple pad over the beefy brutish guard. Why be a barbarian when you can be a mage?
The future of arm protection is in true innovation. But innovation is just a buzzword in lacrosse; a lie agreed upon. I’ll stick with my Brine Bracers of Defense and the +2 bonus to arm protection they thankfully provide.
If I had my way, every arm pad would have half as much engineering and thought put into it as these monstrosities that I wear every game. I just bought another pair because I’m scared that they’re going to go extinct.
Here is what they look like:
Not exactly the prettiest, but they get the job done.
Assassinating modern arm protection in lacrosse is not the most important thing in the world right now. But…with all the madness in the world right now, it made me feel 1/100th of a percent better. Thanks for reading and subscribing. Everything is going to get better. Just give it some time.