Air-Conditioned Football Pads Developed By UF Scientists Could Help Players Stay Cool

January 26, 2004

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Heat – it’s one opponent that can humble the toughest football player, especially during summer practices and early season games.

But researchers at the University of Florida’s College of Medicine have found a way to turn the sidelines into a temporary oasis for sweltering gridiron gladiators, by designing shoulder pads that deliver one of the Sunshine State’s favorite luxuries – air-conditioning.

In preliminary research, Jacksonville University players tried the pads and said the rush of chilly air around the chest, back and shoulders was refreshing, said Dr. Nikolaus Gravenstein, a UF professor and chairman of anesthesiology and the system’s co-developer. College and professional teams around the nation have expressed interest in the system.

Further studies with players will help UF researchers better understand how much the system reduces heat stress and dehydration and improves the quality of play, he said. Similar products are in development for baseball umpires and NASCAR drivers, along with a heated version for cold climate football players.

“I can’t tell you exactly how much heat the system eliminates, but I think every bit helps,” said Gravenstein, a member of UF’s McKnight Brain Institute. “This is a supplement to drinking adequate fluids and getting proper athletic conditioning.”

Each year, about 400 Americans die from heat-related illnesses such as heat stroke, which occurs when the body’s cooling system fails and body temperature rises to extreme levels that can damage the brain and other organs, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Although football players are typically fit and strong, they play in conditions where field temperatures sometimes reach 120 degrees, especially during summer practices and early season games, Gravenstein said.

“It’s very difficult to cool (football players) externally,” he said. “Blowing on them with cold air or fans from the outside is made largely ineffective because of the insulation that is their uniform, because a uniform is foam, it’s almost like being inside a Styrofoam cooler. It seemed reasonable (to ask) ‘well, why not just blow cold air under the uniform?’”

The system includes a portable air compressor and a cooler/dryer unit that can be adjusted to cool air to as low as 60 degrees. The air is filtered, then pumped to a manifold constructed from pipes equipped with small air hoses that can be connected to the pads, said Fred Williams, president of Williams Sports Group in Jacksonville, Fla., and a longtime custom pad builder who holds an exclusive license from UF to market the technology.

The specially designed shoulder pads have a port built into the back so that when players come off the field a trainer or teammate can plug in a hose to circulate cold air through ventilation channels running up and down the interior of the pads, Williams said.

“The air blows through there at something in the neighborhood of eight cubic feet per minute and exchanges the air under the pads several hundred times a minute, so there is a noticeable breeze evident to the player,” Gravenstein said.

This spring, UF researchers plan to continue field tests with the JU football team to determine how much the system helps reduce core body temperature, using pill-sized sensors players swallow before practice, said MaryBeth Horodyski, a UF associate professor of orthopaedics and rehabilitation who is helping evaluate the system.

Additional core body temperature studies will have players work out in an environmental chamber, a large room where variables such as temperature and humidity can be precisely controlled, she said.

Gravenstein conceived of the system in early 2002, and developed it in his spare time, initially working with UF premedical student Dasia Esener. Williams later offered his advice, as did UF’s Sem Lampotang, an associate professor of anesthesiology, and Dr. Michael Gilmore, a resident in orthopaedics and rehabilitation.

When used as a supplement to other preventive strategies, the system could provide an advantage, said heat-stress expert Douglas Casa, the director of athletic training education at the University of Connecticut in Storrs and a 1993 UF alumnus who studied with Horodyski. Casa will provide an environmental chamber for Horodyski’s research but does not expect to be otherwise involved in the UF project, he said.