Boost Your Cycling Performance with Helmet Ventilation

Lazer’s strategically placed helmet vents help boost performance by 8-percent

Wind. That age-old bicycling boogeyman. Sucker of speed. Mugger of momentum. Robber of breakaway dreams. As riders and racers, we do our best to hide from it at all costs. But what if you could turn that cycling antagonist into your ally? Harness its oft oppressive power? Find advantage (8-percent boost in performance!) where others see nothing but slog. That’s exactly one of the benefits of Lazer’s top-shelf cycling helmets.

So how can a bicycle helmet, with its primary goal of protecting your noggin, actually improve performance? It all has to do with strategic airflow over the head that keeps you cool and the helmet vents designed to harness that flow.

During exercise, as body temperature increases, muscle endurance drops. The hotter your core gets, the more your body shifts energy production from aerobic to anaerobic mechanisms, using energy quicker just to maintain the same level of effort. This means effectively burning matches at the wrong time, rendering you ineffective when it comes time to really light it up. And here is where the importance of a helmet and its ventilation comes in. The better the airflow and cooling, the better you’ll perform when it counts.

The Lazer G1 boasts an 8-percent increase in airflow compared to a bare noggin. Wrap your head around that–covering up and protecting your skull will actually cool you down and speed you up. Lazer designed and refined the G1 using the wind tunnel and a micro-thermometer-equipped head form at the University of Leuven in Belgium. There, engineers performed hundreds of design iterations to settle on the optimal vent pattern and shell shape. The G1 optimizes efforts and speed to generate currents of airflow over the surface of your head.

At 235 grams, it’s also one of the lightest helmets on the market, but not at the sacrifice of safety. The G1 MIPS is the top-rated road cycling helmet according to the Virginia Tech Helmet Lab’s STAR Rating System. In fact, of all 106 bike helmets evaluated in the latest round of the lab’s testing, the superlight G1 provided better protection against concussions than all but one of even the more robust mountain bike lids.

Of course, ventilation and airflow are all about temperature management, so what happens when the mercury plummets and the rain and snowfall? Low body temperatures can also negatively affect performance, shunting blood away from limbs and causing unwanted malaise when it comes time to mash through those final muddy CX laps. An optional Aeroshell cover for the G1 securely and quickly snaps over the vents, keeping warm air in and cold out to help prevent loss of heat, preserving performance longer on colder rides.

For those looking for on-the-fly airflow adjustment, the Lazer Bullet 2.0 offers the best of all venting options with the Airslide. It’s a self-contained, integrated adjustment that opens and closes helmet vents with a single, one-handed motion. It’s a mid-ride adjustment, made on the fly, that’s as easy as rubbing your head. Cool off on the climbs by opening the vents, then click it shut for the descent, blocking out the wind to put energy into sprinting, not shivering.

Whatever your preference for protection, ride assured that Lazer's lineup will manage airflow and temperature for your best ride. Harness the wind and turn that boogeyman of cycling into your secret weapon.