stretching advice

Ok, New guys, so I learned something new recently and I wanted to share it with you.

We all know we are suppose to stretch our skin to help the razor glide on our face and then in turn give us a closer shave. Well for some reason it took me a year or so to see I wasn't stretching correctly for my face and therefore it was harder to get a close shave without doing about four passes or so. Today I was able to get a very smooth close shave with only two passes, usually I do four passes.

What did I do differently? Well, first off, I learned how to stretch my skin by watching the videos. You know, the ones on youtube and on this site and other forums. They're good and all, don't get me wrong, but they teach you to stretch for that particular person's facial hair, not your own. This means that you are stretching for their growth pattern.

for example, almost all the videos I see on straight shaving show the person shaving their neck while stretching the skin down towards the chest. The problem I have with this is that my neck hair grows mostly downward, which means if I stretch downward I am making the hair lay more flat on my skin. This makes it harder to get a close shave on the neck with less passes.

The moral of the story?

Well, you really should be stretching for your facial pattern. What I mean by this is stretch so the hair stands up on the skin, it shouldn't be forced to lay flatter. Another example is my cheek hair near the upper part of my cheek grows downward, so I pull the skin up to my hairline. About halfway down my cheeks though the hair changes direction, it grows back towards my ears. This means I stop stretching upward, dry my hands, and then stretch towards my nose/mid line of my face, this makes that part of my beard stand up.

We see the videos and hope that if we do the same thing we will get the bbs result, this isn't the case, you need to find out facial pattern and pull away from it, not with it.

Hopes this helps!
:)