POC Joint Ankle Guards
While it may not be the first piece of armour when you're thinking of suiting up, the POC Joint Ankle pads could mean the difference between irreversible damage to your ankles and walking away from a crash. Low-profile design means they won't irritate you while riding, though the padding around your Achilles tendon and ankle bones provides an extra barrier between your bones and rocks on the trail. Specialising in high-end mountain bike and ski protective gear, POC Sports is a swedish brand that has burst onto the downhill mountain bike scene with a range of body armour and full face helmets that are here to rival, and exceed, the best. With a fresh approach that balances a scientific background with real world rider feedback, the POC body armour range has a focus on rider safety like no other brand. So if you're looking for high-end bike wear that fits as good as it looks, POC protection is a new alternative to the usual motorbike-styled products on the market, packed with the kind of technology that will keep you out of hospital and on the bike.

Essential Gear
Ankle protection may not be the most glamorous of protective gear, but it's an often over-looked product that has the ability to reduce your chance of damaging what is essentially a highly exposed, vulnerable area of your body. The Joint Ankle pad from POC is a highly comfortable ankle guard with extra padding for your achilles tendon. Flexible foam padding that wraps all the way round your ankle is used to provide superior protection from sharp pedal spikes and other trail objects, while the firm internal discs prevent over extension and twisting when things go tits up. Unfortunately, ankle reconstructions don't come cheap, fortunately, these ankle pads do.

From POC Sports:

"All our products have been tested by top world gravity sport athletes and then further refined to perfection. Our athlete friends love to go flat out but without suffering cuts, bruises and headaches, or in the worst cases, risking back or brain damage as a result of crashes that sadly happens to even the best athletes. The end result is a line of lightweight, high performance gear that offers the ultimate protection against injury thanks to superior impact absorption and penetration resistance. When developing a product at POC, we do it in the spirit of doing the best. We never compromise in choosing materials or construction, to make a product cheaper or to increase margins, if that means compromising safety, quality or performance".

"It's our mission to do everything we can to develop protective gear that can save lives and reduce the severity of injuries"
 

The POC Joint Ankle guard features:

• Wrap around design
• Flexible foam padding
• Internal discs to reduce over-extension
• Elastic foot strap to keep padding in place
• Comes as a pair
• Universal size