Hands up if your hair has stopped you from working out?
Exercising regularly is great for your body, for developing discipline and it's also amazing for your hair. When you work out, the increased blood flow pumping through your body can stimulate hair growth.
Ironically, if proper haircare isn't practised alongside regularly working out, maintaining length can be difficult; although sweat means well, it can be extremely drying to the hair and lead to breakage.
Luckily, we've listed four tips you can easily implement in your regime to help care for you hair whilst you work out.
1. Wash Your Hair Regularly.
A build up of sweat and hair products can leave hair dry and prone to breakage. We usually recommend washing your hair with shampoo every 7-10 days. Whilst working out, you may find you want to tweak this depending on how often you work out and how much you sweat. However, we do not suggest washing your hair every day as washing your hair too frequently can actually be damaging.
2. Keep Your Hair Moisturised
We say this all the time: moisture is key. Moisturised hair is less likely to break so if you want to retain length, your tresses need to be hydrated. You can moisturise your hair before and after workout sessions using the LOC method (applying a liquid then oil, then cream in that order) or LCO method (applying a liquid, then a cream, then an oil in that order).
3. Find Your Go-To Gym Hairstyle
The ideal gym hairstyle will eliminate contact between your hair and clothing. As such protective styles are great to wear to the gym. Styles that involve tying your hair up or twists and braids that allow your scalp to breathe are ideal. If you're afraid of messing up your style, wrap a satin scarf around the front of your hair and edges, this helps minimise frizz.
It may take some trial and error to figure out what works for you. The practices mentioned above are important for a healthy hair routine ordinarily but even more so when working out. Your hair doesn't have to be a hindrance — you just need to know what to do with it.
So grab yourself some travel size natural hair products for your gym bag and work out with confidence!
Other articles:
5 Reasons Your Hair is Breaking