How to Avoid Injuries When Cycling

Video Transcript

KEVIN LIVINGSTON: Hi, I'm Kevin Livingston here at Mellow Johnny's Bike Shop. I want to go over a few items to help you for dressing--what to wear in cycling for some additional safety. In general, in cycling if it's hot out and you're wearing tighter clothing, you don't have a lot of protection, you're pretty exposed for--on the road--if you were to have an accident or a crash. We have a couple of items here. Number one is mandatory in my book for safety, you've got to have a helmet. You've got to make sure it fits properly. Get someone at the local shop, a pro that works there that could help you get the proper helmet for you that fits properly, mandatory. Now, maybe not mandatory, but I would say highly recommended, next would be glasses. Glasses are going to help protect you from debris flying up off the road or from bugs. If you're travelling at a high speed and something were to hit you in the eye and you had to blink or close your eye, this is very dangerous. So get yourself a pair of glasses. You could get shaded or you could get clear. A lot of sunglass companies make interchangeable lenses, so you can have a clear lense for a rainy day or not so in a cloudy day and then darker lenses for a sunnier day. And on sunny days, sunglasses are going to help reduce fatigue by wearing sunglasses. That's another great benefit of glasses. Finally would be gloves. So in addition to your helmets, sunglasses, your cycling kit, would be gloves. Gloves is very important because your hands can become sweaty while gripping the bar and you could slip--your hands could slip, but also if you were to fall and you put your hands down, these would save you from getting a lot of road rash on your hands. Here I have a long-finger pair of gloves which could be used, maybe for mountain biking or colder weather and then a short-finger pair of gloves for cycling in the summertime.