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Male Swimmers And

Body Hair Removal For Men

Various researchers concluded that male swimmers can enhance performance by removing exposed body hair. Skin friction, frontal resistance and eddy resistance are reduced, but propulsion is enhanced.

Water is more than 700 times denser (thicker) and 55 times more viscous (glutinous) than air.

Physics is the reason why a fraction of a second can make such a huge difference in an Olympic race.

A fraction of a second can mean winning a gold or a silver medal to a competitive male swimmer.

The difference in time is so minute that it doesn't really count for less important competitions.

In this case the swimmers, like the cyclists and bodybuilders, just want to show off their well-toned athletic bodies.

Resistance vs technique

Swim resistance is the effect water has on the forward movement of a swimmer.

Many factors contribute to a swimmer's performance during a competition.

Of these factors hydrodynamic drag resistance and super technique are the most important two.

A swimmer experiences passive drag in his forward progress through the water, while he is exerting active drag with his actions against the water.

Research was done to determine the active drag resistance of the four different swim strokes.

The results were published in "The Relationship Between Drag Forces And Velocity For The Four Competitive Swimming Strokes".

The strokes were ranked from greatest to least drag resistance as:

breaststroke,
backstroke,
butterfly and
freestyle.

Lift forces of water

Lift forces can be either lift or drag and are defined as planing perpendicular to the direction of water flow.

Lift forces must be taken into consideration with all aquatic sports. The image to the right is of my fellow South African, the Olympic champion, Ryk Neethling.

The general idea with water sport is to produce propulsive (forward) forces, while minimizing resistance forces at the same time.

Research by the Edith Cowan University in Australia found that drag resistance contributes more to propulsion than lift forces.

Over the course of many years various techniques have been developed to try to reduce the amount of drag a swimmer experiences during a race.

Lets start by discussing the three types of drag resistances.

1. Frontal pressure drag

This type of resistance occurs when the swimmer adopts a body position where big areas of the body (normally the head) are exposed while passing through the water.

As the swimmer's speed increases, the drag pressure also increases on the front of the body. The ideal is to limit this frontal resistance and skin friction as much as possible.

This can be achieved by a number of ways:

positioning the body as high on the water surface as possible,
roll body from side to side during the strokes,
angle the body between 30 to 40 persent in the water,
keep head as close to the water's surface as possible when breathing,
"streamline" or glide off starting blocks and after turns,
extend arms as far as possible with each stroke,
wear swim caps, Speedos or full body racing suits, and
shave all exposed body hair. Read about this further down.

2. Wave drag

When any object moves through the surface of a liquid, there is an increase of pressure around the object because of different water velocities.

The result is waves or eddies shaped as a vortex or whirlpool that forms at the water surface.

It becomes problematic when the height of the waves increases with the swimmer's speed.

This means there is more resistance on the male swimmer's body when he swims faster. As mentioned above, breaststroke creates the biggest eddy resistance of the four strokes. The vortexes accumulate around the swimmer's body and the resistance is increased.

3. Frictional drag

This type of resistance is the result of the interaction that results between the male swimmer's body and the water molecules.

Because there is friction the swimmer's motions are slowed down. Interestingly this drag also propels the body through the water, according to Newton's third law.

Body shaving by competive male Australian swimmers was started in the 1950's. It was quickly copied by the rest of the world's competitive swimmers.

The research done by Sharp and Costill are published in "Influence of Body Hair Removal on Physiological Responses During Breaststroke Swimming". Results showed that shaven swimmers experienced significantly less drag during underwater glides than unshaved swimmers.

The conclusion was that "shaving reduced active drag and decreased the physiological cost of swimming." Other scientific studies concluded that shaven swimmers travel further per stroke than they were able to do before shaving.

Several studies concluded that the special full body swimsuits are relatively ineffective. Sports Biomechanics found the polyurethane bodysuits to give 2% instead of 7.5% drag resistance as claimed by the manufacturer.

Shaving to remove body hair

Do male swimmers shave their body hair? Of course they do! Males are genetically programmed to have a lot of body hair. Male androgenous pubic hair is a given fact.

Of course we ladies love to look at male swimmers in speedos. The swimmers bulge reveal who are the hung swimmers and those who wished swimmers and speedos didn't go together!

Hairy swimmers realy have our sympathy, because we prefer not to look at the hairy crotch of male swimmers in speedos. Shaven men get the thumbs up and we "assume" shaven genitals are covered by the tiny swimwear.

Whole body shaving by swimmers

It can safely be concluded that the shaving of body hair have some impact on the hydrodynamic characteristics of the male swimmer's body.

There are some benefits for sprinters (up to 1,500m) to perform some type of body hair removal method. But there are huge benefits for marathon swimmers.

Competitive swimmers shave their arms, legs and torsos the evening before an important competition. Some swimmers even shave their heads and eyebrows!

Shaving also strips away dead skin cells which adds to their feeling of speed in the water.

According to "Effects of Taper on Swim Power, Stroke Distance, and Performance" the researchers concluded that performance capabilities were enhanced by reducing training before important competitions.

They also concluded that removing of exposed body hair of male swimmers enhanced their performance capabilities by increasing the distance per stroke.

What is your personal opinion on the fact that swimmers remove their body hair? Write your own unique story and I'll publish it on this website.

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