Suggested Research: Hairless Leg Performance

Semi-snide remark numero uno.

Do you need pseudo scientific support to feel good about shaving your legs?

Just go for it. Whatever floats your boat. You ain't hurtin' nobody.

Well, if you honestly want to do a research on this, you actually may want to have group 1 actually wax their legs, as shaving doesn't remove the hair roots from the pores. So, theoretically the body will still have to pump the same amount of blood as the pores are still clogged.

I don't know whether waxing your legs will lead to better performance because your heart is more efficient with blood circulation. That can only be proven by scientific research. But what I do know is, in my case at the least, that waxing my legs gives me a mental edge. I associate smooth hairless legs with speed (think Flash and swimming suits). And when it comes to mind games your brain has unbelievable powers. So, if I feel fast, I actually will end up going faster. Hence, my reason to wax my legs.

why not do an actual scientific study instead of this "race, shave, race again" bullshit, there's way too many outside factors and the affect of leg shaving would be negligible compared to the strength of the other factors. Get a decent test size of poor, fit college students, and have them each shave 1 leg, and throw them on a treadmill with some heatlamps or whatever the eff you want to do and start measuring shit. I don't know what you would need to measure or how, but this would be a much better experiment than the flawed pseudo science dribble you suggest.

Well, it's an interesting theory. There are a couple of confounds though. You arent controlling for how quickly some people recover vs others. You might have a guy who is a beast at recovering and will be able to duplicate the time a couple days later. You might have another guy who is still hurting 2 days after.

The best bet for a scientific design would be to test their max heart rate. Have them all perform a run on a treadmill at a percentage of that heart-rate. (This is where my lack of physiological knowledge will now show) Then you could conduct some form of blood test to verify whether or not there was more oxygen being carried to muscles. <--- I dont know what would be the best measure of this, but I am more interested in critiquing the method. Let somebody with more physio knowledge input on an appropriate test that would measure what you want.

It makes you look faster, so go for it.

I trim my legs with a trimmer, and that way they aren't super hairy, but I never get asked if I shave my legs. They just look less hairy.

I wish I could get a machine that would cut every third hair, that way I could have legs that look kind of like most asian guys. I like that look, essentially shaved legs but with some hair on there for effort.

It's an interesting research topic, and your hypothesis is probably true but the problem will be actually detecting a difference between the 2 groups. Sure, leg shaving MAY allow for better heat dissipation but I would think the effect of this heat dissipation on performance would be very, very small and would get lost in the "noise" associated with day-to-day fluctuations in performance. Unless you came up with a huge subject pool, you probably won't be able to differentiate the "signal" from the "noise". So, the publishing potential wouldn't be that great, even if you found an effect of leg-shaving on 5km performance. I'm sure the question would be raised as to how or why leg-shaving affects performance (was there a difference in skin surface temperature, peripheral blood flow, muscle oxygenation, etc.)? These are the types of things you'd probably have to measure as well, particularly since you don't have a true "placebo" group.

Not an Asian wrote:I wish I could get a machine that would cut every third hair, that way I could have legs that look kind of like most asian guys. I like that look, essentially shaved legs but with some hair on there for effort.

I also used to be quite hairy. Let me suggest you waxing your legs a couple of times. What happens is that when you start waxing the density of hair follicles decrease. So, every time you do wax, you have less hair growing out.

Already been done.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=3773666&query_hl=2&itool=pubmed_docsum

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=3952485&query_hl=2&itool=pubmed_docsum

I would think hair on the legs would promote vortices near the surface and thus would aid in heat transfer. Unless (of course) your legs were "furry."

luv2run wrote:

Already been done.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=3773666&query_hl=2&itool=pubmed_docsumhttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=3952485&query_hl=2&itool=pubmed_docsum

but they are measuring aerodynamics, not heat dissipation.

aged wrote:

but they are measuring aerodynamics, not heat dissipation.

Heat build up occurs in the upper body and the head. That's where the heat is dissipated. There is no need to "cool" the legs because they already are cooled.

I'm not a scientist, so there may be a better way to measure performance than my original suggestion. However, the bottom line for a runner is, "Does it make you faster?" Perhaps scientists could measure heart rate at the same pace on a treadmill. It's not about how the testing is done. That's the researcher's field. I'll defer to them on how to test.

My premise is that perhaps under some conditions, shaving the legs provides a cooling effect that slows the degradation of performance under hot weather conditions.

Actually, it doesn't really matter whether it helps or not from the researcher's perspective. Right now, some guys shave their legs because they "think" it makes a difference. Why shouldn't researchers figure out a way to test this variable? It could be a treadmill test under controlled conditions, for example.

If this thread is on the first page when the kids wake up it will be a bloodbath! I particularily like the every third hair strategy.

Great thread!!

This experiment would compliment nicely the work done already on the effects of tucking the male sex organs back between the legs and running performance.

Isn't it possible that hair could make you cooler? If you have hair on your legs, then that increases the amount of surface area for the sweat to cover, which would allow for faster evaporation and thus faster cooling.

Just a thought

you dont retain anywhere near as much moister as opposed to someone with "bearlike" hairy legs. This can create extra weight (although minimal) its enough over long distance (i believe 5k and up) to make a difference, especially in the marathon.

Of course it's totally logical that less body hair would make you run faster, but a lot of letsrunners will still freak! I don't think the top guys like bekele shave their legs. someone should flip him an email.

Not an Asian wrote:

It makes you look faster, so go for it.

I trim my legs with a trimmer, and that way they aren't super hairy, but I never get asked if I shave my legs. They just look less hairy.

I wish I could get a machine that would cut every third hair, that way I could have legs that look kind of like most asian guys. I like that look, essentially shaved legs but with some hair on there for effort.

Gayest post of the year.

Sweat cools by evaporating from the surface from the skin. If it moves away from the skin (i.e. along a hair) without evaporating then it isn't doing much to cool the skin's surface. Sweat evaporating from a hair does nothing to cool the skin's surface.