In many fields of sports, the body of an athlete has to be protected against injuries by suitable devices. For example, when playing ice hockey or football, the athletes wear helmets and thickly padded garments for protection against contact with other players or their sports equipment. Another example is shin guards for soccer players, which protect against injuries to the shin by the shoe and, in particular, the hard studs of an opposing player. Also, a shin guard prevents injuries to the shins by particularly fierce ball shots.
Shin guards of the prior art typically have one or more hard plastic plates and an attached cushioning material. Although such a construction generally provides sufficient protection, known shin guards have certain disadvantages. For example, the plates limit the freedom of movement of a player. Furthermore, complex mounting structures are necessary to assure that the shin guard does not change its position during use, which further hinders the player. As a result, many players play without the protection of a shin guard and prefer to take the risk of injuries. Similar problems arise with other protective elements for athletes, such as elbow and knee protectors for inline skaters or snowboarders, which are rejected by many athletes for reasons of comfort, since they also constrict the athlete's movement.
Compared to the design of protective sports devices, the construction of bulletproof vests is a completely different technical field. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,364,679, the entire disclosure of which is hereby incorporated herein by reference, discloses a body armor made from several layers of (hemi-) spheres, wherein the surfaces of opposing spheres contact each other at certain points. As a result, the impact force of a bullet hitting the vest is distributed onto a plurality of spheres and the bullet is effectively stopped. The adoption of this design for protective sports elements for athletes would lead to a device having a great thickness and a significant weight. It would, therefore, not improve the wearing comfort of the device.
There is, therefore, a need to provide a protective element, for example a shin guard, that overcomes the above mentioned disadvantages of the prior art, leads to a higher wearing comfort, and does not hinder the performance of the athlete. Additionally, there is a need to provide a protective element that can be used in a variety of sports equipment and to prevent injuries to various areas of the body, such as ankles, forearms, knees, the head, etc.