Home > LEARNING CENTER > Snowboard Protective Gear Learning Center > How to Choose: Snowboard Elbow and Knee Pads

How to Choose: Snowboard Elbow and Knee Pads

How to Choose: Snowboard Elbow and Knee Pads, Important Pieces of Your Snowboard Crash Protection Plan

1. How much snowboarding body protection do you need?

How aggressively you snowboard will determine how much knee and elbow protection you need from snowboard pads. More aggressive riding requires more snowboard crash protection:

Knee/Elbow Cap Material. The caps can be either hard plastic or a more flexible/softer material. Hard plastic caps offer the most snowboard crash protection. But more flexible materials offer less weight and a lower profile. The softer knee pads fit better underneath your pants, but they won't provide as much impact protection as the hard plastic caps.
Pad Thickness. Snowboard elbow and knee pads have soft foam padding behind the hard plastic caps. Thicker padding offers more snowboarding body protection, but at the expense of additional bulk and weight. Pad thickness will range from Ľ inch to 1 inch thick. Unless you’re really doing crazy stuff, we'd recommend sticking with smaller profile pads for more comfort and less bulk.
Cap/Pad Size and Shape. Snowboard knee and elbow pads are tailored for different uses and preferences, so both the caps and the padding behind the caps extend to different widths and lengths, providing more or less coverage above, below, and to the sides of your knee or elbow. More padding adds additional snowboard crash protection in these areas, but has additional weight and bulk.

2. Do you care about having to remove your boots or gloves?

A convenience feature is the ability to easily put on or remove the snowboard knee and elbow pads. There are two basic designs for this type of snowboarding body protection:

Slip-On/Slip-Off. These snowboarding pads have a solid material on the back of the pads, typically a neoprene sleeve, and require you to take off your boots or gloves to put the pads on or take them off. Not a big deal if you plan to wear them all day.
Easy-On/Easy-Off. The backing material on these snowboarding pads has a velcro opening, allowing you to put the pads on or take them off without having to remove your boots/gloves. This is a nice convenience feature, but typically appears on more expensive models. Most snowboarding pads will also have additional velcro straps on the top and bottom of the pad to secure it in place and prevent slippage.

Do you want snowboarding pads in a color other than all black?

Most snowboard elbow and knee pads are all black, including the cap, pads, and backing material. However, some models have white caps and others have army green fabric. See the individual product pages for detailed photos of snowboard crash protection pads.

Do you want integrated shin or forearm snowboard crash protection?

We offer several Knee/Shin and Elbow/Forearm snowboarding pads that seamlessly integrate a knee or elbow pad with a shin or forearm guard, all in a single piece of gear. If you're looking for additional snowboarding body protection, these are worth checking out.

Do you want replaceable caps?

Some skate knee pads have caps that velcro on/off, allowing you to purchase recaps for a few bucks and return your beat-up knee pads to "like new" condition. Other models offer additional recaps that you can attach to the existing knee cap, a different method of recapping the snowboarding pads.

Price?

You can expect to pay between $20 and $115 for snowboard knee pads, depending on features and level of snowboarding body protection. For snowboarding pads for your elbow, expect to pay between $15 and $85.