Hopefully you have read the article we wrote explaining the anatomy of the human knee and, like us, you want to be able to walk and ride long in to your golden years. The knee is one of the most vulnerable, easy to injure joints on your body. Every time you get on the bike it is just asking to get smacked. Your knee sticks out from your saddle making it a perfect target for trees. If you don’t ride trails you don’t have to worry about trees but if you ride, chances are you put your foot out in turns leaving it open to twists. We don’t want to sound like Chicken Little here but these scenarios don’t mention crashes. At EDM we feel it is a good idea to consider wearing knee braces. You should know that knee braces will not protect you from all unforeseeable injuries, but neither will a helmet. And if you’re not wearing a helmet every time you climb on a bike, you should have that head of yours examined.

While working on this story we have spoken to a wide variety of riders, some young and some old, those who wear knee braces and those who don’t. Through this we found knee injuries (forgive the analogy) to be similar to lung cancer, some smokers get it and some don’t. The thing is it only takes a second to bugger-up your knee and it can cause a lifetime of pain and suffering. One of the riders we spoke with has messed his knee up so badly he has to wear a brace just to be able to stand. He has no connecting tendons to give it stability and hold it together… It’s pretty ugly.

We contacted the major industry players in the knee brace arena and asked each of them to provide a set of braces to evaluate for this article. These are, in no particular order, CTi, Asterisk and EVS. On the following pages we will walk you through each set and in doing so, hopefully persuade you to get into your local shop and purchase some cheap insurance for your knees.

Continued