Shaving

no. don't shave now! you don't shave until the night before your champs meet, or a shave n' taper meet. it helps out a lot. it feels awesome too. until your meet you want to be as hairy as you can, its added resistance while you train, then when you shave it all off you have less resistance in the water and if you have been training hard, you will have faster times. also, what you shave depends on who you are. i have always just shaved my legs b/c when i shaved my arms i couldn't feel the water correctly, i swim freestyle. i know some *** strokers who don't shave certain parts of their legs cause it messes up the feel of the water. i also know others who shave everything : legs, arms, back, head, face, palms.........

If you want to shave do it like she said before the champonships. I never shave my legs in my life. So, I'm different from everyone else in this regard. Its up to you. I think that since women have less body hair than men it doen't make that much of a difference.

I've nothing to add to the other posters on shaving. They have covered all my points. One thing to consider is using one of those whole body, designed for low drag, swim suits. I was very skeptical of the manufacturers' claims, but a couple of years ago, a teammate let me borrow his old Arena shoulder to knee suit. I noticed right away as I was warming up clear, objective proof that it made at least some difference. My stroke count went down 2-4 strokes over a LCM 50. I don't mean down relative to my usual working out stroke count, I mean down compared to my warm-up the day before. (BTW, I was shaved for this meet.) Later, I blew the doors off of a 400 free (that is "blew doors" for me). I purchased a Speedo shoulder to knee suit, used it at every meet since, and believe it does make a difference. I have even wondered whether it makes sense to shave the areas the suit covers. I do not have the nerve end feeling that Jdut mentioned, and it would be nice to not have to hassle with that, or restrict it to my arms and lower legs. Food for thought. Matt

Originally posted by Matt S One thing to consider is using one of those whole body, designed for low drag, swim Yes but a suit is totally different from shaving. Those suits were designed for a number of reasons including reducing drag. I can see that using a suit might really drop times but I'm still doubtful that shaving will cut much of any time and all I've heard is the same thing, I shaved before the big meet and I went fast. Well I didn't shave and went fast too. We also had a shaving party in high school and I don't remember anyone doing any major time drops for the big meet. What I would like to see is real proof, as in a number of people train etc, then one day swim their event, hard as they would in a meet without shaving, then either the same day or the next day swim again after shaving and see how much the times change. It would have to be done rather close in time though as things can change over a few weeks. Unless there is such a study I'm not going to accept personal experiences.

Check out Swimming Fastest by Ernest Maglischo. He has a nice discussion of this subject and provides good evidence that shaving does reduce drag (as much as a 5% increase in distance per stroke cycle).

Do you believe in aerodynamics? Then why not hydrodynamics? When sprinting (25.0 for a 50) you are traveling ~1/18 the speed of a car traveling at 70 mph in a medium (water) 1000 times thicker than air. A thousand times thicker than air! And you do not think something that reduces drag, like shaving, will not help you go faster? Not shaving does not mean you can not go fast in a big meet. But what it does mean is that you did not get all the bang for your buck.

In bicycling and auto racing it is aerodynamic resistance that limits speed - look what effort is spent reducing resistance in those sports. In swimming what limits speed is hydrodynamic resistance - look what effort is spent improving form and thus reducing resistance. Anything that reduces resistance will improve speed, including shaving. It is not apriori obvious that shaving should reduce resistance - smooth surfaces are not always better than rough ones - look at golf balls. But the evidence is that smooth skin is better than hairs waving around with lots of trapped air bubbles. (My opinion - it is the bubbles that are the problem. Look at your hairy skin after you jump in the water, it will be covered with bubbles. Also, look at how water flows off of shaved skin, compared to unshaved skin, after you get out of the water -- it is a big difference.)

I would really, really like to know how much time you can really save by shaving. I've heard a lot of people say the same thing over and over and over again. However, shaving for just one meet how would you ever know? I know that for the most part the "chapionship" matches are my fastest since I am training for them. I would really like to see some real proof that shaving will save you the seconds that I've heard so many people talk about. I can see it taking off some time, as in a few hundreths of a second which makes all the difference in the world to the best in the world, but nothing at all to me.

From what I can see/read, it's not the drag component (of the quantity/quality of hair) that makes the difference, it's that shaving exposes the nerve endings in the skin which respond to the stimulation of the water and change the feel; thus the reference to shaving palms of hands, etc. Just taking off the top layer of skin with a loofah or something like that can change the way the water feels on your skin - try that sometime for a good experiment. It's quite a mental game as well- the HS boys I coach make a party out of it, shaving patterns on heads and legs before conference, then completely before sectionals or states. That, combined with taper, makes for some great times at the end of of the season. So much of swimming is mental prep that whether the effects of shaving down are physical or psychological or, most likely, a combination - it's all good.

I think that I have posted this before: In college my team always competed at a mid-season shave/taper meet. Shaving was optional, everyone tapered. Right after the meet, our team would go on our training trip. The guys who shaved were not only faster at the meet, they would train much faster on the trip. And I mean faster on a relative basis (Example, a 1:00 breastroker was leading a lane of sub minute breaststokers because he was the only one who shaved). It works. No one can really explain why. And it is NOT just mental. Don't try to figure out how it works (well if you want to be my guest), just accept that it does!