Should college vaulters be required to wear helmets?

[Divalent]

...So part of the reason a helmet might have helped him is that he wasn't going very high. But the vast majority of college males are going MUCH higher, to the point that a helmet would be less likely to help them in a catastrophic injury. ...

This makes no sense, and yet people keep saying it, including PV "safety experts", as if the logic is self apparent. Whatever the impact energy and force, in ALL cases the head will experience less if the vaulter is wearing a helmet, which means the extent of any injury will be less. Helmets do two things to reduce injury: they absorb impact energy, and they distribute the remaining energy over a large skull surface, proportionately reducing the force.

Yes, A helmet may not make a difference if a vaulter was freefalling headfirst into the corner of the box from 17 feet up, but that is not the only way a vaulter can strike their head against a hard surface. And if there is one thing reading the list of serious/fatal injuries post in the safety forum can teach us, is that it doesn't take a lot of height to produce a fatality or a very serious injury.

Motorcyclists, NASCAR drivers, skiers, and hockey players all travel faster than a vaulter, but we don't hear people claiming it is pointless because a helmet would not prevent a fatality in the case of a head on collision with a tree, pole, or penalty box door.

[tsorenson]

Mixed feelings about this subject.

I have never worn a helmet while vaulting, but would not be opposed to wearing one if it was reasonably affordable, lightweight, and did not obstruct my view. (Added benefit for masters vaulters...it covers your bald spot! ) When I was younger I would have not wanted to be forced to wear one.
I never used to wear a helmet while mountain biking or rock climbing, until I had a few close calls and (luckily) got old enough to recognize my mortality. Now I always wear one!

I don't like the idea of more rules, but this one might save somebody's life once in a while, so it may have merit.
We don't need to add any more padding around the pit, as that would just encourage more schools to drop the event. Coaching education is always a good idea, but wouldn't you hope that anyone coaching at the collegiate level has a basic understanding of PV safety?

Something that nobody has mentioned yet: often times these catastrophic injuries take place in practice, or during drills (rope vaulting, gymnastics, etc). So any effective rule would have to include mandatory helmet use during all of these activities, as well. Maybe we should all just always wear helmets, all the time...
(actually not a bad idea for my three kids)

Tom

[rainbowgirl28]

We don't need to add any more padding around the pit, as that would just encourage more schools to drop the event.

Not at the college level...

Coaching education is always a good idea, but wouldn't you hope that anyone coaching at the collegiate level has a basic understanding of PV safety?

You would hope, but too often this is not the case. Many states now require more coaching education for HS PV coaches than is required at the college level.

[superpipe]

- increased deflection of the neck in normal safe landings(i am adding this BUT there is no reseach to support this claim as a concern and again if there was I feel strongly that it would have been a part of the many other sports listed above as well but they still wear helmets)

None of the sports you listed land on their back/neck when performed correctly.

I agree BUT this argument lacks proof. It is to date an opinion and easily discredited. Although the number of vaulters wearing helmets is small there is no documented case of this and there has been no research to prove or disprove it. If this is the reason we are going to hang our hats on not to mandate, then someone needs to present a statistically significant case study.

Were larger pits necessary? The case was presented with the necessary research and we now have larger pits. This too was met with a lot of resistance. In fact many schools still do not pole vault since the day that rule passed.

IF one of the governing bodies chose to seriously discuss this today.......my guess is that we would be wearing helmets real soon.

Research to support the claim? Statistical studies? Lacks proof? The problem is most studies and research are reactive, meaning we want to see all the bad things happen first. I personally agree with the neck deflection issue for not wearing a helmet. A soft forgiving mat is, by default, more dangerous in terms of neck deflection than and hard surface for sure. The way we conduct studies we wouldn't find out how truely bad the neck deflection issue is until we did require helmets. There definitely could be a scientific study done on neck deflection and wearing a helmet with dummies or whatever else the scientific community can come up with, but who's gonna pay for it? I'm personally against helmets for this neck deflection issue. You can't compare our sport to any other extreme sport and the use of helmets except maybe gymnastics. A metal hole in the ground (plant box) and a big soft forgiving mat don't exist in any other sport aside from gymnastics without the plant box.

Just my opinion.

[PVJunkie]

Every extreme sport has similarities when it comes to hard surfaces and head injuries. They fall from some height (often times much greater than any vaulter) and wish to protect their head.

Neck deflection increases with a helmet but at what increase does it become hazardous? Snow and wood (half pipe settings), concrete, rocks, ttrees etc etc. are all far more rigid surfaces and would increase the degree of deflection far more than soft foam PV pit. If you miss or bounce out of the pit you are now on some hard surface. There are hundreds of thousands of helmet wearers out there experiencing accidents in every imaginable way to gather data from some even in our event.

Toby and Brain have worn helmets for their entire career. Have either of them ever experienced any negative effects in their neck? Small sample but given the length of time each of them have/had been vaulting a valid question.

I have never seen an article/study expressing these concerns in extreme sports (or any other helmet application) to support it. This topic grew out of an opinion given several years ago but to date still remains an opinion. The stongest case, but the furthest from our sport, would come from ABATE cases won in states to prevent the legal requirements of wearing a helmet on a motorcycle.

[superpipe]

I guess it could be thought of in a zillion different scenarios. Why haven't helmets ever been required or optionally worn in gymnastics? Just for the record, I do wear a helmet snowboarding and I think it definitely makes sense for riding and skiing because of the high incidents of impacts even from simple falls. Helmets do makes sense for the impact issue. I don't think anyone would disagree. Only thing left is neck deflection type of issues involved with the sport.

[VaultPurple]

I don't think neck deflection would be any worse than what you get in water sports like wakeboarding. I think this is interesting and kind of relevant because not all wakeboarders wear a helmet, and probably for the same reason pole vaulters don't. They either don't think they need it, or they are worried it will get in the way of something. And the only time you need it is if you hit yourself in the head with your own board, which some people feel they are talented enough to avoid (or crash properly).

This is kind of parallel to pole vault because the people that say they don't need it, probably think they will always be able to at least land on their feet or avoid hitting their head during a fall.

[Divalent]

@PVJunkie
The issue with hyperflexion is that as a vaulter lands on the pit, their torso (due to its mass) penetrates farther than the head (which is less massive), thereby rotating the head forward (i.e., the chin approaches the chest). So I think it actually is the case that this will occur more when a vaulter hits the pit than when athletes in other sports hit more resilient surfaces. (perhaps we should consider replacing the mats with flat wooden surfaces?)

But I have only seen one case report for this injury related to PVing, and it involved an athlete who had a transient loss of sensation (for several hours, IIRC; although a full recovery shortly thereafter). No other information about how the athlete hit the pit was given. The athlete was not wearing a helmet, but the authors of the report speculated that, had the athlete been wearing a helmet, the part of the helmet at the back of the head might have caused additional flexion. (But other than their speculation that this would be the case, no evidence to support it).

This is the sole basis for the concern about hyperflexion, and the danger seems to grow with every retelling. Since that report came out, their has not been one serious injury of this type reported, although there have been a number of deaths and serious head injuries in the sport where a helmet might have been beneficial. I’m agnostic about whether helmets are a good idea (but lean towards it: I'm not swayed by the contra case), but opponents have been emphatic that these imagined hypothetical helmet-induced hyperflexion injuries are a far more serious concern than a few real deaths and real serious injuries that unhelmeted athletes have suffered over the last 8 years. Two this year (one fatal), and it is noteworthy that these were not 17 ft vaulters (and there is little doubt helmets would have made a difference in both cases).

A number of states have (or, in the case of Wisc, had) mandatory helmet rules and, although the fraction of vaulters who wear them country-wide is low, the combined number of vaults over the years with helmets has to be substantial. Although minor injuries would not be reported, I’m sure that if a catastrophic hyperflexion injury occurred, we would have heard of it.

BTW, suppose they designed a helmet with the back end cut off, so that no additional hyperflexion would occur, but it would protection against head strikes over the rest of the head area. How many folks that are against helmets now would be in favor of them?

[rainbowgirl28]

Annika Becker's pole vault career was ended with a neck hyperflexion injury. Not helmet related, but an injury that likely would have been made worse with a helmet.

Neck hyperflexion injuries are rare in the PV. So are deaths.

I am all for things that make the sport safer. But we're facing the possibility that we will increase the risk for athletes landing safely in the middle of the pit.

I think as long as we still have so much progress to make with improving coaching education and facilities, that making helmets mandatory is ill-advised. It should be up to each coach and athlete whether or not it is a good idea for that athlete to wear a helmet. Some athletes probably should! Some athletes probably should not! One-size-fits-all rules have the potential to cause a lot of problems.

[PVJunkie]

But we're facing the possibility that we will increase the risk for athletes landing safely in the middle of the pit.

This is the exact statement I keep hearing as THE agurment but no one, to date, can back it up. If the goal is to keep helmets from being mandated the vault community needs a stronger case than "opinion", "possibility", "might". Mandating helmets has been discussed at several different levels since 2003 and progress has been made to strengthen the argument for it, but the argument against has gone no where.

Why is it ill advised? This is the question that must be answered in a way that has meaning and impact.

[VTechVaulter]

sorry but I have been wearing a helmet for 13 years now... never once have i had even the slightest sensation of neck hyper-extension, and i've had some very high shoulder/low neck landings in the past. A 3/4 inch extra protrusion makes almost no difference once absorbed by the mats as PVJunkie has pointed out. This is just an excuse for people who have no logical arguments against helmets. Show me a single documented case of a helmeted vaulter sustaining next injury. Where as on the contrary, we have lists and lists of non-helmeted vaulters sustaining head injury.

Dont get me wrong, i don't feel anyone should be forced to wear one. But don't hide behind that issue.


and as far as obstruction/weight/ etc. Hunter Hall who has never worn one before in his life, grabbed mine at practice one day goofing around. He took about 5 jumps in it just for laughs, didn't affect him at all. He was just as ungraceful as ever

[Divalent]

Annika Becker's pole vault career was ended with a neck hyperflexion injury. Not helmet related, but an injury that likely would have been made worse with a helmet.

Are you referring to the injury described in this article? http://www.iaaf.org/news/Kind=2/newsId=28812.html Because if so, this was not a “safe landing in a pit”. The article describes it this way: “During a training jump her pole broke. Head first she crashed down on the Pole Vault mat. ‘Luckily...I landed on the mat first before sliding into the pole box’, Annika Becker recalls. And she had been very lucky indeed. A tendon in her neck had been partly torn.”

Nonetheless, even if it was the type of injury that helmets are suppose to cause or aggravate, it’s really not fair to evaluate the utility of a safety device by anecdote. Just about every safety device will, in some situations, result in a worse outcome than no device at all. (Think of the guy who’s seatbelt prevented him from being ejected from his car onto the concrete highway at 60 MPH (which he had a slight chance of surviving) moments before his car crashed through a bridge guard rail and down into the bay 300 ft below to his certain death.)

IMO, the only reasonable way to evaluate a safety device is to ask what are the number and severity of injuries without the device (“A”) compared to the number and severity with the device (“B”). Merely pointing out that “B” does not equal zero is not a valid argument against utility, you have to show that B is greater than (or equal to) A.

We have reasonably good data on A (about an incident a year). At this point that we also have some data (albeit, not quite as good) on B: several states have had HS helmet rules in place for several years now, and although the proportion is low, the cumulative number of vaults with a helmet over the years has probably reached the point where we have close to a number that is equivalent to a single season country wide. So far, not a single reported serious or fatal injury in a helmeted vaulter from a “safe landing on the mat”.