Ideal Body Armor?

The 5th Kodak Playful has arrived and so some vids soon.  Over-under on how long before we lose #5?  3 inch x 1.25 inch--slippery little things that take nice vids.

These arrived with the Cam Corder:

Notice the nice coverage of vulnerable areas at a cheap price of $49.00.  Triple 8 T8 Bum Savers featuring EVA foam pads.

Since I'd purchased the below $99.00 POC shorts

why the Triple 8s?

 POC also  has nice coverage of the point of hip area-- padding featuring a Visco Elastic Polymer dough

offering state of the art extreme impact absorption/shock absorption. POC's material works against impact, and so why bother with anything else?

Interesting history to my thought process. Take a look at those POC pads.  Look kind of thin, eh?  And, they are thin.  Do they scatter impact--definitely However, there's more, as it turns out by trial and error--to injury prevention then mere shock absorption.

What, you say?  Picture a 160 lbs man wearing POC padding falling off a 17'2" hand animal onto hard ground onto the point of his hip.  Visco Elastic Polymer dough mostly scatters/absorbs the impact. However, besides impact there's one more injury causing factor,  and that is the rider's own body weight.  The thin POC pads do little to nothing to CUSHION the bones at point of hip from rider's own considerable weight which has been accelerated through space by the length of the fall.

Enter the cushiony foam/sponge/springy material of the T8 shorts.  This material provides some cushion between the body and the point of impact.

Ideal body armor?  Yet to find it commercially..  Likely a hard POC outer shell with significant foam or spongy padding underneath.  Mr. Nob will wear the POCs over the Triple 8s to get the effect. More weight on the horse unfortunately.

Relevance for riding on sand at the race track?  Guessing just the POCs would work with sand providing enough of a cushion.

Training-- one more spring day here in KC yesterday and today---yikes.  The last week we've continued the regular riderless work.  New vids likely will show fit horses.

Tack work was a little less progress than we'd hoped, although last week was significant progress with both horses. #148 under control!

Tack work was slowed down by reluctance to do too much after the strenuous riderless workouts. Will need to start dialing those back to leave some horse for tack work.