I did a practice shave of my legs last night, to get used to it and also figure out how long it takes me for planning purposes.
Today in practice, I was faster than usual. The most obvious was in my 200 free warm-up. I dps the first 100 and then gradually speed up to about 75%. Usually I am around 3 minutes. Monday, I went 2:51. Today, I was 2:36 with the usual effort level.
My 200 *** warm-up was about 10 seconds faster than usual.
Can shaving really improve things that much? Is some of this because I am tapering?
Also, for those guys who shave your heads, do you also wear a cap? If not, is the bald head better than a cap?
Former Member
It's not so much the hair but the top layer of newly exposed skin. One doesn't have to be part gorilla to benefit from the shave down. The jolt of entering the water usually gets most people fired up and in turn they move with much more vigor.
When you jump in, the feeling is akin to an electrical shock if that makes any sense. Every inch of skin is acutely aware of the water...and maybe in turn it creates hyper sensitivity...as per Rob's description.
Push off streamlined and see how far you glide,now shave and try it.I agree 100% with this but subjective testing is one of the things clouding the whole shaving mystery. I'm about to put together a pump, bathtub and force guage to end the controversy for good. Anyone want to donate some skin? I'd use mine but I just don't have enough hair. All I need is a 3 x 5 patch... hairier the better... it should grow back.
Very interesting articles but I still don't buy it.
The statement that shaving doesn't reduce drag is patently wrong.Push off streamlined and see how far you glide,now shave and try it.
I don't remember the reference,but they did tests on drag by pulling swimmers and shaving reduced drag by about enough to account for all the improvement in speed.
The improvement in DPS and deceased O2 use can also be explained by reduced drag.
Also in the first paper he shows how shaving can increase sensitivity and then asserts that the decreased sensitivity is the reason it is an advantage.
He also asserts that decreased muscle recruitment is a reason for increased efficiency with really no evidence.
The author may know much more about this than I(my medical training being 37 years ago) but it looks like he has a hypothesis and bends the data to prove it.I read his data and come to a different conclusion(but then I may be the stubborn,wrong one,fitting the data to my preconceived idea,Nawww,not me:bolt:)
Perhaps; I will try to remember to look at the papers more carefully when I have some time. But I have always questioned how applicable the measurements of passive pull experiments, if that's what they were, are to the actual act of swimming.
I will try to remember to look at the papers more carefully when I have some time. But I have always questioned how applicable the measurements of passive pull experiments, if that's what they were, are to the actual act of swimming.
Excellent point.Fluid dynamics of irregularly shaped ,moving ,flexible objects are incredibly complex and way beyond my understanding.
My point is that shaving clearly has some drag reduction effect.Measuring how much effect the techsuits had on drag reduction was also very difficult,but clearly the result was that there was some significant effect.I don't believe anyone is suggesting the drag suits worked by decreasing sensation,nor by increasing sensation.
If shaving decreases drag,which it does,and techsuits decease drag,which they do,and both increase speed,which they do ,then I deduce that the deceased drag from shaving increases speed.
From what I remember of fluid dynamics, shaving would help more with streamlining where water flow around you is more laminar. Hair will tend to disrupt the flow of water around your body and make it turbulent sooner and further forward which I suppose will break the streamline sooner.
Laminar flow is not necessarily advantageous from a drag reduction standpoint. Consider the flow around a cylinder: www.princeton.edu/.../blunt.html
You actually want flow separation to occur earlier (as in the turbulent case) because it creates a smaller wake. Now the question is whether or not a swimmer in the water is anything like a cylinder. In a streamlined position we should create less drag than a cylinder, but we aren't exactly airfoils, either.
My point is that shaving clearly has some drag reduction effect.Measuring how much effect the techsuits had on drag reduction was also very difficult,but clearly the result was that there was some significant effect.I don't believe anyone is suggesting the drag suits worked by decreasing sensation,nor by increasing sensation.
If shaving decreases drag,which it does,and techsuits decease drag,which they do,and both increase speed,which they do ,then I deduce that the deceased drag from shaving increases speed.
I agree it reduces friction, especially for pretty hairy people. But as Peter says, the real question is how significant an effect it is. Some less hairy people get pretty good drops too. Of course, pretty much everyone shaves AND tapers at the same time...
I am not so sure that the "change in sensation" didn't have some effects of the tech suits. I am not sure anyone quite figured out exactly WHY they worked.
I thought Megerle's recommendation to not increase yardage between conference and NCAA's was interesting. I have a feeling most teams bump up the yardage again after their conference meet for a week and then drop back down.
Agreed. I have had "extended tapers" many times and have never been disappointed; more often than not I've continued to get faster.
If (for example) I was doing a meet 4 weeks after nationals, I would probably bump up the workload slightly for awhile but nowhere near "in-season" levels (which I suspect many college programs do).
There is this perception out there that when you taper you have a couple days of optimum swimming and then it is a sharp downhill from there as you get "out of shape." I think that is wrong. I think that if you taper well you have a reasonably long period of fast swimming in you, and with proper management that period can be extended longer. That's why I think that, if you err, you should err on the side of resting too much rather than too little.
One season I did a 4-week long taper for LCM nationals (it was actually a double-taper: 2-weeks for one meet, then another 2-weeks for nats). Then I had a week-long vacation of no swimming whatsoever, followed by a 2-mile OW swim that I entered on a lark bc it happened to be in the area where we were camping. So after 5 weeks of taper -- including one of no swimming -- I should be in horrible shape, right? No, I did just fine, didn't die at all.
We do 1 hour or longer practices for races which mostly last 2 minutes or less. We're all in good shape.
Sorry for the thread hijack...
