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?
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
Yes, if that's the case people who "miss their taper" probably just didn't rest enough.
There have definitely been cases where I taper for a meet, then stay out of the water for a few days and when I come back to practice I swim very fast.
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.
I write software now so keep in mind that my mechanical engineering backgound is very fuzzy. I did like fluid dynamics since it applied well to my sailing hobby. With that in mind, I recall that drag is reduced in turbulent water. That partly explains why swimming in someone's draft improves performance. I used to wonder if it would improve the performance of a sailboat to place a tripwire just below the water at the bow of the boat. The problem with that is the boat isn't a cylinder... it is a streamlined shape and you want to keep the laminar flow and reduce skin drag as much as possible.
Humans are a bit different that boats. We are forced to surface at 15m at which point our streamlined shape is lost. At some point, we are better off on top of the water either because we can propel ourselves faster than we can SDK or due to threat of disqualification. So, we transition from a streamlined shape to a not quite so streamlined shape at some point. If I read the link right, during the streamlined phase, we are more concerned by skin drag. This is where I believe shaving makes a difference if it does at all. Once we break streamline, pressure drag is more dominant and we prefer turbulent water for wake reduction.
As to Chris' links, they sound good but don't talk much about methodology for quantifying the physiological components. I'm sure the referenced papers address that in some way. One comment he made struck me as odd: "Shaving does not reduce water resistance nor eliminate the amount of friction on the skin." That's a pretty bold statement as hair folicles would at the very least increase the surface area on the boundary layer. I don't think anyone is arguing that shaving has no effect on drag... its a matter of whether it has negligible effect or not. I'm also a bit skeptical about whether or not the physiological response (if it exists) is due to a change in how the nervous system senses water after a shave or due to a placebo effect. The write up makes some compelling arguments for the former and I'm hardly qualified to debunk any of this... nor am I up for digging through research papers at the moment.
www.tuftsmarathonchallenge.com/.../Why Swimmers Shave Down!.doc
forums.usms.org/attachment.php
I don't have the time right now, or know enough physiology, to be able to evaluate carefully what Megerle is claiming. But it is enough to convince me that the standard answers of "reduced friction," "hypersensitivity," and/or "it's mostly psychological" may not have much actual weight of evidence behind them. Enjoy reading, do additional research and decide for yourself. But most of what is claimed on this thread (whether true or not) are purely speculative.
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:)
I know that for awhile after a taper meet I am really fast in practice until the hair grows back.
Living that right now... I feel fast as hell but endurance seems lower because its hard not to swim everything sprint when you feel fast. :)
100m pull swims on 1:30 interval holding 1:12's seems somewhat effortless right now whereas normally it'd be somewhat tiring after a bunch.
To bring back a dormant thread, but interesting topic
I saw a paper (I think cited in these forums, tho I can't find it now) where they did a study of the effect. Shaving actually DECREASED nerve stimulation (like a suit does) and this had some physiological effect that I can't quite remember, decreased lactate levels or something.I am curious if whether the physiological gain in performance is a temporary thing, as a decreasing response to the state of being freshly shaven, or if it remains active so long as you are shaved
What's next, enter a 500 at your next meet?
Strangely, I wanted to do the 500 just for something different. There is only one more meet this season with a 500 in it, and its right before the 50 free. Not willing to sacrifice a 50 for a 500 at this point. If I could've added it at the end I would've done it. I'm betting i could go 5:25 in yards without too much trouble.
