June 24, 2014
Helmet Fitting Help
The first and foremost way to get a Nutcase helmet to help better protect your brain is by wearing it. While this seems ludicrously obvious, there’s a force in the Universe that is even more insidious and evil than the Star Wars ‘dark side’ – and it’s called inertia.
Inertia, a classic principle of physics, is the tendency of objects to keep moving in a straight line at a constant velocity. It’s also the tendency of humans to “do nothing” or “remain unchanged” and it describes perfectly why even those of us who have cool helmets might sometimes be guilty of not wearing them.
Once you do overcome dreaded inertia and get that helmet on your head, here are five quick tips for achieving optimal helmet fit.
1) Give it the finger. Check any stream of bicycle traffic on a sunny Sunday and you are sure to see quite a few heads wearing a helmet as if it were a French beret – i.e. pushed so far back on the head that the person’s whole forehead is nakedly exposed. Resist! Make sure to tilt your helmet far enough forward so that there is just room for one finger to fit between the top of your eyebrows and the lower edge of the helmet.
Even an experienced cyclist can make a mistake
2) Click it. Nutcase helmets have a lovely, no-pinch magnetic buckle. The magnetic buckle is so easy to use you can learn to buckle up and unbuckle with just one hand. Make sure the buckle is actually engaged, however – avoiding that teenage unbuckled tendency.
3) Take it for a spin. The improved Gen3 Nutcase spin dial and the back of the helmet is a wonderful way to give your helmet the perfect, just-snug-enough fit. After you put your helmet on, buckle up, and then twist the spin dial clockwise until you feel that perfect snugness. Twist the spin dial ccounter lockwise to loosen.
4) Strap happy. When the helmet feels snugly fitted on your noggin, don’t forget to double-check your helmet straps. The one finger rule works here, too – you should just be able to fit a finger between the bottom of your chin and the top of the padded chinstrap.
5) Lock and leave. If for any reason you leave your helmet with your bicycle when stopping, don’t forget to lock it by drawing your lock through both the v’s created by the reflective staps and the plastic ‘slide glides’. That way, upon your return you’ll be able to practice safe helmet all over again.
For more on perfect helmet fit, refer to ‘The Squirrel’ insert in your Nutcase box, or see our sales guru Chris Streight’s classic helmet fit video here. Happy helmet head.