Diamond MMA’s Game Changing Groin Protection System
Craig Diamond believes that his company, Diamond MMA, has designed the best athletic cup ever. And he’s got the balls to put his own testicles on the line to prove it.
In a brilliant, and painful-to-watch, video marketing campaign he’s shown getting hit with a bat, kneed, kicked and punched right in his protected package.
(Alarmingly, it’s not the first time a cup designer has put his equipment to the test. Mark Littell, the former MLB pitcher behind the NuttyBuddy cup, appeared on Fox Sports Science where a pitching machine launched a baseball at his NuttyBuddy-covered cojones. Cup, ball and balls all survived, undamaged.)
The marketing ploy may seem extreme but so is MMA– the sport that inspired the cup/jockstrap/compression shorts system that took Diamond and his partners more than a year to develop.
Diamond first got into the sports gear business because of his personal love of MMA. Initially he was thinking of creating a clothing line.
He reached out to long time friend and serial entrepreneur Brian Witlin who was an entrepreneur in residence at IDEO at the time.
With Witlin that day was Alex Coriano, a lead designer and a former wrestler with the Puerto Rican national team.
Coriano remembers Witlin saying something like, Hey, I have a friend who wants to do something meaningful for fighters.
My passion is in athletics, Coriano says, although he’s designed everything from food packaging to toys and medical equipment.
So, Coriano and Diamond sketched, sewed, and hit some gyms with t-shirts.
But both men heard the same story from fighter after fighter: we need a cup. A good one. One that won’t crack, pinch, poke, slide or in any way move during the flurry of arms and legs, the 360 degree game that is MMA.
Everyone wants a shift proof cup, so we shifted gears. Coriano says.
Diamond, who trains in MMA, verifies the obvious, Floating cups don’t protect the family jewels.
They began to research. Cups, athletic protection, jock straps—and they found there’d not been much innovation since the first straps and cups really hit the U.S. at the beginning of the 20th century.
(To point out the obvious, a cup without a jock strap might as well be an olive bowl. Hence that research.)
The small collection of jock straps at The National Museum of American History backs this up. Diane Wendt, associate curator of the Division of Medicine and Science found a patent issued, in 1863, to Smith G. Rawson, of Saratoga Springs, New York for an improved testicle supporter.
The device was widely adopted by the U.S. Army and advertised as such for 40 years. Wendt says. There are ads for the Saratoga Suspensory in pharmaceutical journals throughout the 1880s, and by 1901 there were several models. But, the basic design, a soft-cloth bag attached to vertical straps sewn to a waistband, remained the same.
The marketing materials prove that (despite the fact that the Smithsonian houses their jock strap collection in the division of medicine) the suspensory marketing evolved, even if the design didn’t.
Says Wendt, The paper insert in the 1901 suspensory makes it clear that the garment is being marketed to men broadly and has already moved beyond medical use: It is a fact that where one man wore a Suspensory ten years ago, hundreds do so now. WHY?
Merely because they have learned how beneficial and wise the practice is.
Also, according to the insert, In outdoor exercises and athletic sports it should be held indispensable, and it is.
But, how necessary is it to protect your boys while engaged in outdoor activities and athletic sports?
Very, according to two sports medicine experts and one urologist we spoke to.
Overall, the debilitating injury rate is low, but the consequences are high. While you only need one testicle to produce enough testosterone to stay in the mating game, if you lose one you’re clearly down to one, points out Dr. Brian L. Steixner of the Jersey Urology Group.
(He also says that, in his experience, most urologists go to heroic lengths to save any testicular tissue possible.)
But let’s back up from total-testicle loss and start with pain.
Getting hit in the nuts hurts like nothing else. It takes even the best out of the game for minutes, if not longer.
Jay Ferrari, owner of Capital MMA-Team Takoma has a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, from an actual Gracie. He describes a nut shot as A sickening burst of nausea and pressure that transcends mere discomfort to the traumatized gonads; it’s a radiant, out of body pain you can’t gut out like others. Breathing, vision, balance — everything fails. You just about drown in it.
Ferrari nailed it when he said it was all about pressure.
Andy Galpin, Ph.D., an Assistant Professor at the Center for Sport Performance, Department of Kinesiology, California State University, helps pro athletes from NFL players to MMA fighters (like Pat Cummins and Dennis Bermudez) improve their training regimes using scientific measures and methods.
Pressure, he reminds us, is force over area.
Think about pressing your hand down, really hard, on your thigh. It doesn’t hurt much.
But, if you press your thumb down instead, with the same force, it hurts a lot more.
That’s why, according to Galpin, a small little blow…a toe on the right part of the testicle…can be way worse than a kick.
Depending, of course, on the strength of the kick. Galpin, who trains in Muay Thai and MMA had a cup break when he took a kick to the groin. Another broke while he was grappling.
He’s solved that problem by switching to a Muay Thai steel cup, which is exactly what it sounds like: a cup made of steel. The hitch? You tie it on yourself and the straps are g-string style, so most men won’t wear them.
Also, the ropes sometimes come loose so you’re back at the slip-and-slide problem of exposed privates.
Which brings us to actual injuries. Things that are more than pain, and may indicate major damage, like bruising.
A hematoma, bleeding inside the scrotum, we want to avoid that. Says Mark T. Wichman, M.D., who specializes in orthopaedic sports medicine and is team doctor for the Milwaukee Admirals, a professional hockey team.
There is no way professional hockey players, with pucks traveling at speeds of up to 80 mph, will hit the ice without a decent cup. Like faceguards, he says, players would feel naked on the ice if they didn’t have one. (Wichman’s quick survey of the locker room revealed several different brands, including Reebok and Bike.)
It’s when playing a sport like tennis, or volleyball, with larger, slower, projectiles that athletes ought to consider protection. Because everything is fine until it’s not fine.
How do you know how not fine? Wichman says if the pain is not reducing within a few minutes or if there’s swelling in or around the groin, you need to get to an ER or urgent care.
Because blood collecting in your scrotum is an emergency.
Josh Berkovic knows from far too personal experience about just such visits to the ER. The WFC Featherweight Champ has a (7-0-0) record, and one testicle that’s lucky to still be here. In 2014, while sparring, he ruptured his left testicle.
It was just a normal day, he says. He’d gone about four rounds and went in for a take down. His partner countered with a kick and Berkovic landed at a terrible angle on his (sparring partner’s) knee.
He wasn’t wearing a cup. Headgear, shin guards, a mouthpiece and 16-ounce gloves, but no cup. He’d forgotten it.
You’re slightly nauseous, all the strength is zapped out of your body and you have a heightened sense of sharp pain followed by a humming pain. Usually, Berkovic says, the pain subsides after three or four minutes. This time, even with ice packs, it lasted. He went to the hospital the next day and had emergency surgery to repair the testicle.
Damage to an actual testicle is called a rupture. Testicular torsion is when a testicle twists upon itself. Steixner emphasizes that the majority of groin injuries do not require surgical intervention. An ultrasound will reveal the extent of the wound—whether there’s an active bleed.
If surgery is required an incision is made to the front of the scrotum and the testicle lifted out for repair.
Recovery takes four to six weeks. There will be bruising and swelling, ice packs, and underwear that provides scrotal support.
During this time you’ll be no where near a gym. And you really have to consider your decisions if you lose one. You might have to stop the sport you love. Steixner says.
It felt very expensive. I lost money and training time. Berkovik says of his injury (which, fortunately, healed up well.) It’s so simple to make sure you have the right protective gear.
Needless to say, Berkovic now always wears a cup to train. Which means, as a professional fighter, he’s wearing a cup most of the time. He likens it to using a condom, the more activity the greater the risk.
And Berkovic’c cup of choice is Diamond. He was one of the fighters that tested prototypes during that year Coriano and Diamond spent buying and cutting up everything from knee and ankle braces to shoes to sports bras and hockey protective gear.
There was, Coriano says, a lot of hot glue and sewing.
They handed out the first 30 to The Scrap Pack, a team of pro fighters who train at El Nino Training Center in San Francisco.
We got real-time feedback…it was an iterative process.
The final four-strap jockstrap design was inspired, in part, by climbing harnesses. The cup itself replaces the standard foam edge with a contoured rubber that both dampens impact and adjusts as groin tendons flex and tense.
Berkovic calls the result the trifecta of what you’re looking for. Comfort, security, hardness and once you put it on, it doesn’t move.
He’s not alone in his praise. Diamond MMA has testimonials from NHL Player Scott Gomez and UFC Commentator/Tae Kwan Do and Jiu-Jitsu Black Belt, Joe Rogan who says, It took my balls completely out of the equation.
It sure as hell takes figurative balls to get into MMA, but when it comes to your literal balls, getting them out of the game is definitely the way to go.
