So although I didn't "need" any new pads I thought I'd check out these fancy pants KP industries knee pads. The 2 piece hinged system looked like a good way to get full knee motion range without resistance. Not too long ago I took them to put them through a quick beating on my SFAUC visit. Beforehand, First impressions out of the box were a little so-so since the way they are stored, one pad pushed in on another in a mesh bag, causes 1 pad to be bent in a bit and one pad to be bent out.
You can see these effects clearly on pic 4. The bent in pad caused unwanted pressure points on the extremities of my knee area. Moving on, The elastic straps were secure and easy to use. Just drop through the hole and push back to lock in, and adjust as needed. The straps extra slack will flop around so its recommended to make an elastic holder or wrap them as seen in pic 3. The pads are also functionally symmetrical so you can reverse the sides where the connections end up. One can just switch the left and right pad to go from both connections to inner/outter leg, but if one wanted to, you could setup the pads to both connect on the right or left. Once I got them adjusted to semi comfy, I proceeded to do some knee flops on misc outdoor surfaces from grass, mulch, dirt, to pavement. The grass was a little wet so I had an amusing slip and slide effect going on, but hard stuff like sidewalk wasn't too friendly too the plastic. Damage wasn't anything substantial, but scratched them up propper. The important thing learned was that I could knee flop some very hard surfaces, but the KP pads kept my knees damage free. Another observation was since there was no padding on the top half of the pad, a slight pressure point occurred at the very top. As you can see from my silly pic 7, when the knee is fully bent, some of the knee is exposed, but I did not find this a problem since it was not a collision point in most cases. Later on the SFAUC trip I gave them a good breaking in wearing them full days for about 5 days. The bent in pad settled down a bit and I appreciated the thin straps. Unlike many other kneepads out there, at the end of the day the back of my knee wasn't all torn up from the strap causing abrasion. I didn't use the pad retention system of my pants, but they still held up great running and didn't do the classic knee pad straight down to the ankles shift. The SF dudes were amused by the look of the pads and called me robocop time to time, but also partly from the fact they started to squeak. Was odd for them to suddenly go from silent to squeaky on the last day, but I made a vid so you can hear how bad it was, but also show how easy it was to fix with some WD-40. They have been squeak free so far and I'll give the pad my vote for best exterior hard kneepad out there due to ease of motion and comfort once broken in. If I get motivated I'll glue on some closed cell foam to the top half and perhaps change out the black elastic for OD or coyote. <Squeaky Vid>
