In addition to the remarkable achievements in the sports career, between Cristiano Ronaldo and Michael Phelps… is there anything else in common?
Calm down! What we are talking about here is an extraordinary physical strength. Thanks to their physical strength, they do amazing and admirable things. So it’s not unusual to see people bring every part of the body of famous athletes for analysis. Even hairs are on this list.
Really. If you pay attention, you will see that Ronaldo’s legs are smooth and hairless. Actually, he shaved them off, but for what? Not for beauty, but for a very scientific reason.
Athletes almost all shave their legs.
When we move in a fluid (air or water), there is always a resistance acting in the opposite direction of our movement, forcing the body to use more energy to keep going. move.
And shaving less hair also significantly reduces drag , which means the body will have to expend less energy.
This is not a mere talk or an unfounded inference, but it has been verified through many experiments.
A 1987 experiment by Chester Kyle on furry prostheses showed that cyclists could save 5 seconds at 37 km/h thanks to their smooth feet.
The 2014 experiment conducted by two engineers from Specialized Cycling company was more “investment”, that is, they had real people cycle in a ventilated room and then recorded and analyzed. The results showed that the drag was reduced by up to 7% when the legs were shaved. Or easier to understand, a cyclist with smooth feet will save 80 seconds on a 40km track with a time of 1 hour.
Shaving the hair reduces the drag significantly.
The experiment was carried out on 5 different people and on average, 50-80 seconds can be saved over a 40km journey.
5, 50, 80 seconds is probably something extremely small for us. But in competitive sports, a second of life is a sky of hope. As in the 1987 Tour De France, Pedro Delgado lost to Stephen Roche by just 40 seconds. Two years later, Pedro Delgado beat Laurent Fignon again thanks to a small 8 seconds.
Every second is clearly the line between victory and defeat.
You know that athletes are very easy to get injured, even if it’s just a “light” skin injury, it’s already very painful, scraping the knee, for example. If the legs are hairless, cleaning and applying medicine will certainly be much easier.
Moreover, the feeling of having to remove the bandage once it has stuck to the hair is painful to the heart, you know. So obviously in the treatment of wounds, shaving legs is very beneficial.
If the legs are hairless, cleaning and applying medicine will certainly be much easier.
In fact, shaving isn’t just popular with athletes anymore. Gymers also shave to see their efforts, there are also people who shave to tattoo. Or do we shave simply to look better.
But obviously for athletes, this is not only beneficial in terms of aesthetics, but also affects physical and psychological well-being. Davis Phinney – an American cyclist famous for his more than 300 victories once said: “I realize that every time I look down while riding my bike and see my hairy legs, I feel like I’m going slower.”