Why do athletes have the habit of shaving their legs?

In addition to the remarkable achievements in the career of sports, between Cristiano Ronaldo and Michael Phelps . what else do they have in common?

Calm down! What we are talking about here is an extraordinary physical strength. Thanks to their physical strength, they do miraculous and admirable things. So it's not uncommon to see people wearing body parts of famous athletes for analysis. Even the hair is on this list.

Really. If you notice, you will see Ronaldo's feet are smooth and hairless. Actually, he shaved them off, but for what? Not for beauty, but for a very scientific reason.

Athletes almost shave their legs off.

Shaving helps to move faster

When we move in fluid (air or water), there is always a drag acting in the opposite direction to our movement, forcing the body to use more energy to be able to continue. move.

And shave also significantly reduces drag , which means the body will have to consume less energy.

This is not to say empty or baseless inference but it has been verified through many experiments.

Experimental evidence

A 1987 experiment conducted by Chester Kyle on prosthetic prosthetic legs showed that cyclists could save 5 seconds at 37 km / h thanks to their smooth feet.

Experiments in 2014 by two engineers of the Specialized Cycling company are "more invested", that is, they let the real bike ride in a room with a ventilator and then record and analyze. The results showed that drag was reduced by 7% when the legs were shaved. Or to make it easier to understand, a cyclist with smooth feet will save 80 seconds on the 40km race with the time of 1 hour.

Shaving off hair significantly reduces drag.

The experiment was conducted on 5 different people and on average it could save 50 - 80 seconds on a 40km distance.

5, 50, 80 seconds is probably something extremely small for us. But in competitive sports, one second of life is the sky of hope. As in the Tour De France in 1987, Pedro Delgado lost to Stephen Roche because of only 40 seconds. Two years later, Pedro Delgado won Laurent Fignon again by 8 seconds.

Every second is clearly the boundary between victory and defeat.

"Marginal" benefits

You know that athletes are very vulnerable, even just "minor" wounds on the skin are already very painful, scratching the knee, for example. If the legs do not have any hair, then cleaning and applying drugs will certainly be much easier.

Moreover, the feeling that you have to remove the gauze when it has stuck to the hair must be painfully sure you know. So it is obvious that in wound healing, shaving the legs is very beneficial.

If the legs do not have any hair, then cleaning and applying drugs will certainly be much easier.

The fact that shaving is now no longer just popular among athletes. The gymer also shaves his hair to see his efforts, and there are also people who shave his tattoo. Or do we shave simply to look more beautiful.

But obviously for athletes, this not only brings aesthetic benefits, but also affects physical and psychological as well. Davis Phinney - a famous American cyclist with more than 300 victories, once said: "I realized that every time I looked down while riding a bicycle I saw my hairy legs. I feel like I'm walking slower ".