Plate Carrier & Body Armor Basics (Part 1) - Fitting a Plate Carrier

hi I'm Glen with independence training I'm Matt with interpenetrating and today we're here at the AR 500 armor shop and we're going to be talking a little bit about how to properly fit your plate carriers and how to get them set up for success so to start with I'm wearing one of the Banshee carriers from Shellback tactical and I've got it set up with the basic pouch set up that ar500 armor supplies when you order the the full armor package with the Banshee and what it is you've got two ar-15 or really any you know carbine magazine pouch and then you have two pistol pouches now the upside of this is that it's a really inexpensive way to get your armor set up quickly to be able to carry extra ammunition and it's really important to remember you know when you're setting up your carrier that you're not putting tons of crap on it right cuz you see plenty of that definitely you just really it's here to carry your armor and kind of give you the tools that you're going to need to do whatever you're trying to do whether that's defend your home or you know if your operational or your you know responding your copy responding to an active shooter or something like that you just want to put the gear on that you need for me primarily that's extra ammunition so the downside to these kind of carriers is that I have to rip open a velcro pouch to be able to get access to my magazine and then when I have access to my magazine now I've got this other magazine it's kind of just potentially floating around the strap doesn't completely get shut now you know it's falling out that's obviously a problem as far as you know the velcro being a not tactical or whatever and we joke about it all the time we don't really worry about tactically opening velcro because if we're reloading we just shot a lot so we're not worried about necessarily trying to always be quiet but that being said it is again a pretty inexpensive way to do things the other downside to it is it adds a little bit more girth so when I'm getting in and out of vehicles or I'm trying to lay down maybe get into a prone shooting position if that's something that's necessary for me to do it doesn't enable me to get quite as low or if I'm getting in and out of vehicles again they can you know increase my chance of getting hung up on stuff definitely I'm also wearing a banshee carrier by Shellback tactical I'm using the hsgi taco magazines which as you can see a side profile is a lot slimmer than the double mags what's great about these is that there's no flap as soon as I need one it's up it's ready to go and off to worry about thing else after that point on my left side I have my hsgi taco mags for my pistols and then you can see I move my medical pouch to my right side which goes against the commonly accepted medical pouch goes on your left side which is a consideration we'll get into as you can see I'm wearing a two-point sling to fit on that a little bit later now a really important thing to consider about putting medical kits you know I mentioned hey all I like to carry around is ammunition it is really important to carry a med kit of some kind as well he's somewhere on your body where that's on your plate carrier a belt or a pocket or something like that we're big proponents of the course and independence training you know that's that's a bulk of the training that we do is emergency medicine and also here they are 500 armor they have a great selection for different medical kits and even just kind of some odds and ends medical supplies so you know it's definitely something you want to consider in addition to ammunition good to make holes also really good to know how to plug now air 500 armor already has a pretty good video out there on good fit and placement but we want to talk about it briefly here because we feel it bears repeating proper fitting placement of your armor alright when you're looking at front armor your front armor plate should sit basically right at your clavicular line or iso right there at the bottom of the collar bones is where your front plate should sit and on the back you should basically have the exact same placement all right that way when that raises his arms as if he was going to have you know a rifle he's reaching up to grab something is getting it out of the vehicle he was sitting down anything like that the plates not going to potentially come up and jam him up in the chin also helpful for when he is raising his hands to bring a firearm up rifle handgun anything like that it comes up just slightly higher and helps to protect even more that vitals area now another consideration you have to make is how tight the carrier is you know oftentimes we'll see people with carriers too loose because they want you know comfort the problem is over time that really starts to shape and rub in areas you don't want to be shaped and rubbed in and so what you want to do is you want it to be tight enough or snug enough that you can feel yourself breathing against the plate you know you want it to not be too tight that you can't breathe but you want to definitely know when you inhale a big full breath it's tight it should be tight in your chest cavity an easy way to check that is you know first match is going to take a couple big deep breaths and feel and make sure it's nice and snug and tight next thing you do is put his arm straight up in the air and I was and over the left you bent over all the way to the right and now he's going to twist his torso and you want to make sure that the carrier is moving with your body it shouldn't be shifting or moving around as you're twisting on side bending it needs to stay with your torso and that's going to bend over and touch his toes and again just make sure that that carrier is not shifting make sure it's not pinching anywhere if it's pinching anywhere and you need to adjust your carrier or potentially adjust any equipment that you have on your carrier so a great basic exercise to do to check the fit and comfort of your carrier is a burpee Burpee is good because it's going to give you maximum range of motion your arms are moving your body's moving you're checking to make sure that the carrier doesn't shift if you feel it shift if you feel it start to shape at all if you feel that I think the carrier is loose at all when you're done doing these exercises then you need to adjust your fit also you want to make sure that nothing on your carrier is going to fall off or fall out so this is you know lets you know if your equipment is appropriately placed and you have good retention [Music]

Channel: AR500 Armor®

Views: 671,533

Rating: 4.8814759 out of 5

Keywords: BodyArmor, Plate Carrier, Body Armor, AR500 Armor, AR500, AR500 Body Armor, Independence Training, Banshee, Banshee plate carrier, Bulletproof Vest, Bulletproof, Armour

Id: CreBI5tPfVs

Length: 5min 50sec (350 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 12 2014