How to put on: First Blood
Starting from the large ring that has the 4 buckle end-points and 2 sewn-in straps on it, move up the straps to the upper chest rings. There will be straps connecting those to an identical set of rings (these straps are for your shoulders). Grab a shoulder strap with each hand and let the harness dangle. If it’s tangled in any way, be sure to fix that before continuing.
All of our harnesses will have a tag sewn into the inside, on the left-side chest. That exact location may vary slightly depending on the design of the harness, but it will always been in that general location.
Using that tag location as a guide, slide the harness over your head so the shoulder straps sit on, well, your shoulders. That ring with the 4 buckle-ends and the 2 upper-shoulder straps should be on your front, and you should not see either the tag or any of the seams.
Slide the harness down your back more, so that your hands can more easily reach the large ring back there. Either by feel or using a mirror, make sure the straps going down to that large ring aren’t tangled. If they are, fix them before continuing. The straps that connect to your chest (the center-side ones on the ring) also very often end up looping themselves through the center ring, so make sure those aren’t like that before continuing.
Now, grab those chest/center-side straps and wrap them around your side and buckle them into the buckle-ends in the same position on your front.
Next we recommend pulling the harness up to where it should naturally sit and tightening the shoulder straps. You can technically do this at any time after buckling the chest straps, but we find that doing this step now allows you to more accurately tighten the rest of the straps as you go along. You don’t have to tighten them fully, just enough where it’ll keep the harness where it is and have it not slide off your shoulders as easily.
After that, grab the lower straps on the back ring and buckle them into the front, the same way as you did the chest straps. If you’re struggling to reach these with the harness up in its normal position, loosen the shoulder straps, lower the harness once more, buckle these in, and raise and re-tighten the shoulders. Tighten the front and back straps that lead from the center rings down to your hips.
Feed the long end of the leg strap between your legs along the upper thigh, making sure to hike it as high up on the thigh as you can. Wrap it around and buckle it in.
We recommend making this as tight as you can handle, because the leg strap is what anchors the entire harness down. Without this connection the rest of the harness will, similar to chest harnesses, start to slide up your body as you move.
Finally, go back to all the slide adjusters on the harness and adjust them as needed. As your body moves, the harness will feel tighter or looser. For example, your shoulders lower when you’re sitting down versus standing, so the shoulders will feel looser while sitting. This means you’ll want to adjust the harness to what you’re doing/the position your in at the time.
