Here’s an article I wrote with my good friend and long time editor Zap Espinoza. I wrote articles for Zap for over 15 years while he was editor of Road Bike Action magazine. Zapata Espinoza (better known as "Zap") has spent his entire life aboard two-wheels. Zap is globally-recognized as a leading expert in the world of cycling and motocross. Today he runs his own media company called Zap Bike Media.
Other than the sport-wide move to full face helmets in the early 80s, and I suppose knee braces to a degree, I can't think of a single aftermarket accessory designed to help prevent injury that's been widely adopted in the sport for anything other than a period of "fashionable popularity" (see the Leatt brace).
And as much fun as all the above has been looking at the history of the kidney belt, you might actually be wondering, what the hell do the belts do anyway?! Aside from their addition to a rider's overall fashion ensemble, as well as any subtle form of impact protection to the mid-section, I began to wonder - what exactly did kidney belts do?
To get a better understanding of a belt's medicinal/scientific advantages, I queried Dr. Johnathan Edwards who has worked closely with two-wheeled racers in events as diverse as Paris-Dakar and the AMA Supercross series to the Tour de France.
Hey Doc, what is a kidney belt and do they actually do anything?
Truthfully, there is no such thing as a kidney belt. The proper name is an abdominal support belt. Abdominal belts have been shown to help individuals generate higher intra-abdominal pressure levels during load-handling activities. Anecdotal evidence exists that people “feel safer” wearing abdominal belts when exerting large forces. This is especially true for weightlifters and powerlifters, who use belts apparently for no apparent benefit other than to increase their IAP during lifting.
These belts usually strap from the back to the abdomen using a Velcro material. They increase the pressure in your abdomen, where all the vital organs exist, and they help increase the activation of your back muscles, which help stabilize the back structures and, at the same time, don't disrupt the normal breathing pattern. They stretch around the lowest part of the back and the waist region, usually fastening at the front.
To say that a kidney belt protects the kidneys is valid, but not for the reasons you might think. Abdominal support belts do so much more, and reviewing how our vital organs exist within our abdomen helps us understand why.
Your kidneys are in the middle of your back, right below the rib cage, with one on each side of your spine. They are bean-shaped and are about the size of your fist. The kidneys are embedded in a mass of fatty tissue. They are tiny organs by weight but receive 20% of the blood pumped by the heart. The kidneys are not fixed to any strong structures per se, but everything in your abdomen is situated very close and packed tight. This means at rest, they move with breathing, but when intraabdominal pressure increases, they move much less.
When riding motocross tracks or trail rides, your body goes through a lot of bouncing and jostling. Going over jumps, taking sharp turns, and hitting ruts, rocks, or roots will shake the insides, but when you increase your intra-abdominal pressure, everything comes together like a unit to protect your vital organs. This requires energy and is one reason we become fatigued riding motorcycles.
Whether wearing the abdominal belt or the rise in the intra-abdominal pressure (IAP) can increase the lumbar spine stability to protect it from acute low back injury remains unanswered.
A European Journal of Spine study showed that increased spine stability may protect against injury following unexpected or sudden loading. Therefore, the increased intra-abdominal pressure and muscle coactivation observed in low back pain patients and the prescription of abdominal belts may compensate for the initial injury to the spine and restore or increase its stability. Lumbar supports, and orthotics are commonly prescribed for preventing and treating low back pain.
When properly fastened, a kidney or abdominal belt helps reduce the movement to your insides by increasing intraabdominal pressure, thus reducing the pain you’ll feel at the end of a long day on your bike. Also, if you are unfortunate enough to have a crash, your kidney belt can help protect against injuries to that area of your body, such as handlebars to the gut or contact with another rider or bike.
"Secondly, it helps to aid in the reduction of lower back pain. When out for a long ride, your back will undoubtedly begin to ache. The stress put on a dirt bike rider’s body is unmatched. The constant training, practicing, and racing puts a lot of stress on all muscles of your body. When in the seated attack position, such as in cornering, the lower lumbar region is the core support area for your upper body. A kidney belt helps to stabilize your upper body again by increasing intra-abdominal pressure, activating the back muscles to protect the spine.
Motocross riders suffering from lower back pain compensate for their injuries with additional or different muscle recruitment patterns, presumably to increase spine stability. In healthy individuals, trunk muscles and ligaments provide mechanical stability to the spine. Injuries and chronic mechanical defects reduce spine stability. Trunk muscles maintain stability by altering their normal activation pattern.
The increased intra-abdominal pressure commonly observed when the spine is loaded during physical activities is hypothesized to increase lumbar spine stability. For example, patients with nonspecific low back pain exhibit higher IAP during lifting than normal controls. The IAP also increases in response to sudden trunk loading in healthy individuals.
The results indicated that both wearing an abdominal belt and increased intra-abdominal pressure can each, independently or in combination, increase trunk stiffness and, therefore, increase lumbar spine stability under sudden loading/unloading conditions. However, the activation patterns of trunk muscles suggest that the mechanisms of spine stabilization are different for those two factors.
Both wearing an abdominal belt and raising IAP can increase lumbar spine stability, independently or in combination. An increase in spine stability due to high IAP is likely gained from the concomitant increase in muscle coactivation needed to generate this IAP. In contrast, the stabilizing effect of the belt alone is a passive mechanism.
The Full article can be found here: https://zapbikemedia.com/columns-1/f/moto-history-roger-decoster-the-birth-of-the-gold-belt
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