How UVA’s use of Guardian Caps helped clear them for The NFL
Charlottesville is home to the University of Virginia’s football team, but what you may not know is that it is also home to Biocore, LLC, a team of world-class biomechanical engineers appointed to run testing for the NFL.
Naturally, when the NFL focused efforts on reducing impact during practice, the NFL testing engineers noticed UVA’s football team utilizing Guardian Caps and decided to dig a little deeper.
After positive feedback from UVA’s sports medicine staff (as well as from programs including Clemson, Penn State, Texas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Washington, etc.), Guardian Caps were then chosen to be tested at NFL linemen injury sustaining impact speeds from the 2017-2019 seasons.
What they found didn’t shock many… they found that Guardian Caps made “statistically significant improvements” over bare helmets alone by an average of 9%. Not too bad for NFL speeds!
What makes a Guardian Cap even more effective for youth, high school and college programs is what it can do at lower speeds. A separate study from Wayne State University showed Guardian Caps reducing 20-33% of the impact. That’s a huge difference when talking about youth players learning how to tackle or a high school lineman taking 1,500+ head impacts throughout the season.
