The Postbag: Dispatches from the Locker Room
Six letters from the changing room: the unhurried strut, the towel years, a jammed locker, a dentist at the worst moment and eleven years of Tuesday swims.
The Postbag: Letters from the Gym Floor
Six letters from the gym, the bike, the five a side pitch, the dojo and the boathouse on what men actually train in, and the editor writing back to each.
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The Postbag is where readers write in and the editor writes back. The correspondents are, let us say, composites. The situations are not.
Sport finds out your kit. A garment that behaves impeccably on a sofa becomes a research problem at kilometre twelve, and a waistband nobody has thought about since the day it was bought turns into the only thing in the world.
This is the edition where the column stops being a comedy about changing rooms and becomes, briefly, a comedy about friction. Several of the letters arrived with diagrams we were not able to reproduce. Under a suit, underwear is a preference. Under a pair of running shorts at mile eighteen, it is an engineering decision with consequences, which is roughly the argument Right Support, Right Sport: What to Wear for What You Do has been making to a mostly empty room for some time.
One of the six is entirely serious and we have printed it as it came. Another is from a man at a rowing club who tried to start a debate and received a fixture list.
Under the shorts: a matter of settled fact
Sir,
I have ridden with the same club for nineteen years, over which time the sport has lost almost every argument worth having, and I am obliged to write because it is now losing this one too.
There is nothing to discuss. The pad in a cycling short is the garment. It is shaped and positioned to sit against skin, and every hour spent riding with something else between the two is an hour conducting an experiment whose result is known. I say this without heat.
In April a new man joined us on the Sunday run. Pleasant enough, good on a hill, and at the coffee stop it emerged that he had a pair of ordinary boxer briefs on beneath his bibs. I said nothing at the time. I said a considerable amount at Tuesday's committee meeting, where it was minuted, and I understand the wording caused some difficulty.
He has since corrected the matter and is riding well. I claim no credit, only that the club is now, on this point, sound. My concern begins at the chamois and ends at the chamois.
Nigel Batsford, Harrogate, writing from the turbo
The editor writes: You are right, and you are the reason people find it hard to admit it. A pad is engineered to sit against skin, and a seam underneath one for four hours becomes a pressure point long before it becomes a chafe. That is the whole case, it takes eleven seconds to make, and the full version is in What to Wear Under Cycling Shorts.
Two amendments. A committee meeting is not the venue and a coffee stop is not a tribunal. And the better question is what goes on after the ride, because a man who drives home in a damp pad has won the ride and lost the evening. Change at the car. Everybody sees you and nobody minds.
Eighteen months of chafing, one waistband
Dear editor,
I want to report a solved problem, because I spent a year and a half not solving it and somebody else may be where I was.
I run four times a week, always have. When I put my distance up for a half marathon I started chafing badly at the top of both thighs, and I approached it the way I approach everything, which my wife says is the problem. I bought a balm. I bought a second balm. I taped. I changed shorts twice, then changed back. I had my stride filmed at some expense. I blamed the sea air, which you can get away with in Chorley for about a month.
What I never did was look at what I had on underneath, because it had been there the whole time and therefore could not be the variable. I had lined shorts and a pair of boxer briefs inside them. Two waistbands, four leg openings, and cotton sitting wet against the exact place that was raw.
The physio's teenage son worked it out in under a minute while waiting for a lift. I have thanked him. I have not entirely forgiven him.
Ray Pilkington, Chorley, mile eighteen and holding
The editor writes: The physio's son is going to have a good career and we hope he charges properly for it.
Your mechanism is right and it is the commonest chafe in running. A lined short already contains the supportive garment, so anything inside it adds seams, a second waistband and a layer that holds water. Cotton aggravates rather than causes, because wet fabric under load abrades skin far faster than dry, as set out in The Sweat Article: Moisture-Wicking Fabrics, Explained Properly.
If your shorts are unlined, one close cut layer and no more: a seamless sports brief with bonded edges rather than stitched ones. If the top of the thigh is your permanent weak spot regardless of distance, Underwear for Big Thighs: The Chafing Problem Solved will save you a third balm.
Thirty years, no incident
Dear sir,
I am not much of a letter writer, so I will keep this brief.
I have been going to the same gym since I was twenty six. I am fifty seven now. I have worn briefs the entire time, before it, and I expect after it. In thirty one years nobody in that changing room has ever said one word to me about it. Not a comment, not a look, not a joke. Once a man asked me where I got them because his had gone at the waistband, and that was the sum of it.
I read the piece about young lads being frightened of the changing room and I thought somebody ought to write in and say plainly that it does not happen. Whatever it is they are bracing for, it is not there. Men in a gym are thinking about their own set and whether the bench is free. That is genuinely all.
I train three mornings a week and I am slower than I was, and I have never once got changed and thought about it afterwards. I would like the lads coming in to have that thirty years earlier than I did.
That is all I wanted to say. Thank you for the column, it is a good bit of nonsense.
Tom Merrigan, Athlone
The editor writes: Thank you. There is nothing here that needs our help, so we will not give it any. Thirty one years is a longer run of evidence than anyone else in this postbag has offered, and it points one way.
We would only point the men Mr Merrigan is writing to at The Locker Room Question: Getting Over the Fear of Being Seen in Briefs, and note that everything in it takes several thousand words to say what he has just said in four paragraphs from a kitchen table in Athlone.
The keeper's case
Dear postbag, I am writing because I have been the keeper at our Wednesday five a side for eleven years, which makes me the only man on that court who ever goes to ground, and the outfield lads in their loose boxers have no idea what that involves, because they trot about for fifty minutes and go home dry while I am down and up again on rubber crumb, and there is a specific moment about half an hour in when a garment either stays where it was put or does not, so I now play in a brief with a proper waistband and a base layer over the top, and that was my arrangement for years without comment until March, when a lad we had borrowed from another team saw me changing and said something he clearly thought was quite good, and I said nothing at all, and then I saved his penalty in the last minute, and the thing I want on record is not the save but that he came over afterwards and asked, entirely seriously, where I get them, and I told him, and he has one now, and that is the whole story.
Deano Wicks, Sunday mornings, Kettering
The editor writes: The goalkeeper is the one position on a pitch with a genuine kit argument rather than a preference, and you got to the standard solution on your own, which is how most keepers get there.
The requirements are unusual: repeated impact, repeated ground contact, and a garment that cannot be adjusted mid game without an audience. That is what the supportive layer was invented for, and the history is better than you would expect in The Jockstrap Never Left the Locker Room. On crumb the abrasion case for a longer leg over the top is real, so your two layers are not belt and braces; they are two different jobs.
If you ever want the traditional answer instead, a cotton jockstrap still does what it always did. And well saved.
The dojo has rules nobody has written down
Sir,
I write concerning a convention which every member of my judo club observes and which no member of my judo club has ever articulated.
The gi trouser is wide, light in colour and made of a cotton weave that is honest about what lies beneath it. There is therefore a settled local practice, which I set out here for the first time in its correct order. Nothing bulky at the hip, because belts and grips arrive there constantly. Nothing that migrates, because a proportion of any session is spent inverted. Nothing dark, for reasons of the weave. And nothing bearing a slogan, a cartoon, or the name of a stag weekend in Riga.
I learned all four by breaching the third on my second evening, in front of a gentleman of seventy one who did not speak but raised one eyebrow approximately two millimetres. I have thought about it since more often than I care to admit.
I would like the convention written down and framed by the door. The committee has declined, on the grounds that it is obvious. It was not obvious to me and I have a doctorate.
Colm Fahy, Ennis, second dan, third row
The editor writes: Your committee is wrong and your eyebrow gentleman is right, which is the usual arrangement in a martial arts club.
Every requirement you list is practical rather than moral. Belts and gripping hands make bulk at the hip a nuisance; being inverted means a long loose leg will travel and stay travelled; and a light weave under gym lighting settles the colour question without anybody discussing it. Four separate routes to the same answer, which is a plain white or skin toned brief. A white cotton rib brief is the whole solution and always has been.
Loose boxers under a gi are the one genuine mistake, and everybody makes it once. On clubs that run on rules nobody prints, see The Unwritten Rules of the Communal Changing Room.
I raised the subject at the boathouse
Dear editor,
I should say at the outset that I had prepared.
Our boathouse changing room holds perhaps a dozen men on a Saturday, and I judged that the period after the second outing, when everybody is warm and nobody is in a hurry, would be the moment. I had a position. I had, if I am honest, an opening line and a fallback.
I said, into what I would describe as a promising lull, that the question of what a man wears under an all in one was more interesting than people allowed.
Nothing happened.
A man named Ferguson continued a conversation about a gate that has been broken since February. Somebody asked whether anybody was going for coffee. The coach read out a crew list, and I was in it, and I said thank you, and that was that.
I am not upset. I am disappointed. I had assumed there was a debate to be had and it turns out there is none whatever, at least not at Henley, at least not while that gate is outstanding.
Hugo Netherby-Slack, Henley, undefeated in argument because there was not one
The editor writes: Sir, you have won and mistaken it for a loss.
The entire project of this site is to reach the point at which a room of men hears the subject raised and finds it about as gripping as a broken gate. You got there in one Saturday and were then selected for a crew. The case for saying less is in So Someone Asked Why You Wear Briefs, recommended chiefly for its account of a man who did the opposite in Galway.
On the substance, since Henley would not take it up: an all in one is worn on its own, for the reasons the cycling correspondent gave above at greater length. Save your kit for the drive home, where a merino sports brief earns its keep in a cold car with wet hair, and let Ferguson have his gate.
The editor's postscript
Tom Merrigan's letter is the one we would frame if we framed things, and it is the reason this column exists. Nothing happens. Thirty years of nothing happening. Readers whose difficulties are domestic rather than athletic should turn to The Postbag: The Home Front, and the swimmers among you have their own edition in The Postbag: Dispatches from the Locker Room.
Questions people ask
What should you wear under gym shorts?
Wear a close fitting garment with flat or bonded seams in a fabric that moves moisture, which in practice means a brief, a trunk or a short boxer brief in a technical knit, a cotton blend or merino. Loose boxers are the weakest option, because the fabric shifts independently of you and bunches under shorts during lunges and squats. Seam construction matters more than the style name: raised overlock ridges sitting on skin are the usual cause of irritation over a long session.
Do you wear underwear under cycling shorts?
No. Padded cycling shorts and bib shorts are designed to be worn against bare skin. The pad is shaped to sit directly on the body, and anything underneath it adds seams and a waistband that become pressure points over the length of a ride, as well as holding sweat against skin. This is standard practice at every level of the sport. Wash the shorts after every ride, and change into dry underwear afterwards rather than travelling home in a damp pad.
Should you wear underwear under running shorts with a built in liner?
No. The mesh liner in running shorts is the supportive garment, and wearing underwear inside it gives you two waistbands, extra seams and a second layer that holds sweat, which is one of the most common causes of thigh chafing on long runs. If you dislike the liner you can remove it and wear a single close fitting sports brief instead, but wear one layer or the other and never both.
What underwear stops chafing during exercise?
A single close fitting layer in a moisture moving fabric, with bonded or flatlock seams rather than raised stitched ones, and a leg opening that sits flat instead of gripping. Avoid cotton for anything long, because it holds sweat and wet fabric under repeated load abrades skin much faster than dry fabric. Make sure you are not doubling up with a lined short. If one area still rubs at distance, an anti chafe balm applied before you start covers the remaining gap.