Calf Muscle and Tendon Guard

Abstract

A calf muscle and tendon guard for wearing on a user's leg to cover and protect the user's calf muscles and achilles tendon against begin severed from contact with a blade of an ice skate includes a body which substantially surrounds the leg and ankle of a user and a flexible guard comprised of a cut resistant material substantially covering only the area of the calf muscle and the achilles tendon, said flexible guard substantially flexing with said body and conforming to the anatomy of the leg and ankle when worn.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0001]The present invention relates generally to protective athletic apparel, and more particularly, a protective pad for use in athletic activities protecting an ice hockey player's gastrocnemius and soleus muscles (calf muscles), as well as the calcanei (achilles tendon).BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0002]Contact sports, including football; baseball; soccer; and ice hockey; for example, often lead to physical impacts resulting in injury. Many of these contact sports, therefore, require the athletes to utilize protective equipment such as helmets, mouth guards, shoulder pads, rib guards, hip pads, thigh pads, knee pads, and shin-guards.[0003]Ice hockey players, in particular, rely on hockey gloves, shoulder pads, shin guards, elbow pads, helmets, pants and pant shells, padded shirts, neck guards, mouth guards, and wrist guards to protect them. Despite all of these forms of protective equipment, there is a lack of protective equipment that sufficiently protects a...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0017]The preferred embodiments of the present invention further provide a protective guard suitable for use in the sport of hockey to prevent an ice skating blade from severing the wearer's calf muscle and achilles tendon.

[0019]The preferred embodiments of the present invention further provided an article of protective gear that can be easily manufactured at lost cost.

Problems solved by technology

Contact sports, including football; baseball; soccer; and ice hockey; for example, often lead to physical impacts resulting in injury.

Despite all of these forms of protective equipment, there is a lack of protective equipment that sufficiently protects an ice hockey player's gastrocnemius muscles, soleus muscles, and calcanei.

Such injuries could keep ice hockey players from playing for months to years, if not permanently.

Other than the ice hockey athletes' own skates and socks, which may include hockey socks and / or hockey skate socks which are completely ineffectual in providing protection, there is currently no means to protect the athletes' legs from such injuries.

These articles provide virtually no protection between the back of a player's leg and the blade of another player's skates.

However, these guards, typically used in sports such as soccer and football, do not provide ice hockey players with adequate protection from the sharpness of ice skate blades, and the use of guards such as these would only serve to restrict an ice hockey player's movements on the ice, as they are not custom-fit to each individual athlete and rather stiff.

While these socks may provide a more convenient means of holding the protective portions over the Achilles tendon, again, most of these socks are cumbersome, bulky, and would merely restrict an ice hockey player's movements.

In addition, these socks only provide protection for the Achilles tendons; are not flexible; and do not offer any protection for the calcanei, which are also vulnerable to skate lacerations.

Previous protective equipment for the gastrocnemius muscles and soleus muscles up to this point, therefore, have generally been constructed of thick cotton or even leather over cotton, which are clearly ineffective in providing adequate protection.

However, it has not been suggested to provide a protective pad or sock for use in the sport of ice hockey to protect the player's gastrocnemius muscles, soleus muscles, and the calcanei.

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