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TECH NEWS
specialized shaving arms.pngShave your arms and ride faster!
Specialized have run a wind tunnel test that says shaving your arms will make you faster on the bike.
How much faster? On their test volunteer, the result suggested a time saving of 19secs over 40km (25 miles) in their test conditions.
Specialized have their own wind tunnel, called the Win Tunnel, at their HQ in Morgan Hill, California, and they have run several experiments lately to measure the aero impact of different factors such as clothing, disc brakes (compared with rim brakes), beards (no, really!), and hairy versus shaved legs.
This time they’ve put a volunteer with moderately hairy arms on a bike in the wind tunnel, then got him to shave his arms and repeat the test in the same conditions. He wore a short sleeved cycling jersey for the experiment and was on a road bike.
Of course, that doesn’t mean you’ll finish 19secs ahead of the bunch in a road race simply by taking a razor to your arm hair; a thousand other factors come into play there. But if you’re after every advantage you can get, well, now you know what you need to do. You'll have to spend your life wandering around with bare arms, mind, but sometimes you have to make sacrifices!
Mat has been in cycling media since 1996, on titles including BikeRadar, Total Bike, Total Mountain Bike, What Mountain Bike and Mountain Biking UK, and he has been editor of 220 Triathlon and Cycling Plus. Mat has been road.cc technical editor for over a decade, testing bikes, fettling the latest kit, and trying out the most up-to-the-minute clothing. He has won his category in Ironman UK 70.3 and finished on the podium in both marathons he has run. Mat is a Cambridge graduate who did a post-grad in magazine journalism, and he is a winner of the Cycling Media Award for Specialist Online Writer. Now over 50, he's riding road and gravel bikes most days for fun and fitness rather than training for competitions.
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27 comments
Hair schmair - cut your arms right off! That'll reduce wind resistance and it's a significant weight saving.
But then what would you turn the pedals with?
It's right that the 'seconds gained' results compare the different tests, but you also need to know the speed to see if it's worth doing for you..
In the leg one, it seems to show the tunnel wind speed is 49kmh. As we know drag rises at the square of speed, so if that is the test speed, and you are doing 24.5kmh then the difference is only 1/4 of the posted time saving, and 34.6kmh will give you half the gains.
19 seconds over 40 km doesn't mean anything without knowing how fast the wind was!
Not so. It's the standardised approach they use to express all of their test results and means you can make comparisons between the various concepts and decide what is/isn't worth doing.
There's another video in the series which explains why they use X seconds over 40km. Worth watching.
No way am I doing that, head no problem but some things just not worth it for marginal gains !
I do the shaved head thing.... not much hair left anyway, I shaved my legs last summer. I liked it and will do it again. Arms might be a bit of a stretch I'm quite hairy..... but if it makes any significant difference I might give it a go.
I did trim my chest hair which helped with keeping cool in the hot weather, and when I went to Crete. Certainly be doing that again.
The only problem is her in doors, she not too keen on the bald all over look.
What about the 'aerodynamic accoutrements' on the torso of a female rider (versus a male rider of the same mass & power)?
mankini anyone??
I hadn't heard about Engers, but certainly Chris Boardman was doing this back in the 90s for his track work...
'Manscaping' will be all the rage in 2015.
hmmm, I wonder how much quicker bald guys (like me) are over pony-tailed (not hipsters, they are stuck ordering coffee) riders.. with helmet. i seem to recall someone (think it may have been specialized) doing a wind tunnel test with women... plus whilst we are on the subject, with and with out hair under the (non-aero, i dont want to have a boiled brain) helmet..
If you have long hair, then how you wear it will make a significant difference in drag. My understanding is that the least slow long-hair option is a single braid done down the center.
At our track, we see an American called Zak Kovalcik race fairly often. Nice guy with a long, wispy pony tail. Very, very fast, and hilariously when he is going flat out his pony tail will stick up at about 45 degrees due to the wind coming over his shoulders.
Fignon lost the TdF in the last time trial. Blame his pony tail !
This is not new, the great Alf Engers was shaving his arms in the early 70s
Specialized male grooming kit and morphsuit coming soon to your local friendly bike shop !
Have fun amazing all and sundry as you enter the pub mid or post ride like a member of the blue man group
might save you time on bike but you'll still have to spend the time shaving, lol
Or you could just TT in a close fitting long sleeve jersey, or indeed a skin suit. Isn't this partly the reason behind them?
The image of Neo awakening in the gloop (The Matrix) just momentarily - Eugh.
Amongst other things, and as stated in the video, they've looked previously at:
Beard vs no beard. Conclusion - no difference.
Shaved legs vs hairy legs. Conclusion - worth shaving.
I suspect (but can't prove) that eyebrows will be like beards. Apart from being the other end of the face of course. And smaller
I shave my head...........cos i'm nearly bald....but i also wear a helmet, cant win
Full body waxing will soon be the only acceptable way to time trial
But only if you ride naked.
how will you protect the, ahem, meat n two veg? will that particular forest need to be razed?
Tick! Tock! Tick! Tock! Tick! Tock!
Eye brows?
Is it 1st April?