Must-read advice before growing your long mane to your waist!

Out of all long hair lengths for men, a waist length is extremely rare (and so is anything longer than that!). Most dedicated long haired men will keep their tresses anywhere from shoulder length to chest length. These lengths still offer a relatively low maintenance when it comes to hair care for long hair, and, understandably, most long haired guys will keep their locks at those lengths and won’t go beyond that.

But what if you want to grow your hair long to a waist length?

Growing you hair to your waist has three main issues that any long haired guy must take into account prior to getting into the journey of growing hair super long. I will go through these three issues in a moment, but I should first say that the journey of growing your hair long is one that many men find that they enjoy. If you’ve ever heard the cliche of “it’s the journey that matters, not the destination”, then this could not apply any better to growing long hair for men.

Growing your hair to your waist is quite the task, so I will not sugarcoat it, and we ain’t talking about trendy long hairstyles either when it comes to have super long hair that reaches your waist. However, growing your hair so long will give the word “freedom” a new meaning for you. All long haired men, regardless of their actual hair length, agree that having long hair is the ultimate freedom experience and it gives a real meaning to doing whatever you want to do with your life. Long hair is not viewed positively in society and men are pressured to keep their hair short and homogeneous, so going out of the pre-conceived social box (while still keeping things civil) is something that many men enjoy as, after all, you should be the one dictating your own rules and the path of your life (but, again, while keeping things civil!).

So, here are the issues that you will be facing in your quest to grow your hair to your waist. Nobody said it’d be easy, but it sure is worth it!

Hair care for men with waist-long hair

First of all, long hair by default is notoriously known for requiring much more time and effort to look after. This is innate to long hair as in, you just have to deal with it if you want to grow your hair long. However, once long hair grows longer than chest length, its hair care does become exponentially more time-intensive and effort-intensive. You will have to use a conditioner frequently (at least four times per week) and you will have to keep your hair tied when not “showing” it off. That’s the life of a dude with waist-long hair!

Men who grow their hair longer than chest length and down to their waist must keep their hair tied in protective hairstyles anytime that they don’t want to have their long locks dangling. What this means is that, unless you’re showing off your Tarzan-like mane, you’re better off tying your hair into a man bun or keep it braided. Both the man bun and braided hair are considered protective hairstyles as they keep your hair tight and secured in one place, be it in a bun or in a single braided ponytail, and so the hair won’t be rubbed (and thus damaged) against all kind of surfaces or catch on stuff like your clothing. The key for keeping your long hair damage-free is to avoid pulling it hard unintentionally, and both the man bun and braiding the hair are two fantastic ways of keeping your waist-length hair healthy and damage free.

To keep your waist-long mane secure and in protective hairstyles, you should be investing in hair bands. No, don’t just be a couple of them, buy dozens of them (hence the word “invest”) as losing hair bands as a long haired guy is extremely common!

Other hair care methods that you should be using to protect your waist-long mane are using conditioners at least four times per week, trying to use your own sebum to spread it across the hair (see Rogelio Samson’s fantastic Sebum Coating method and No Shampoo method), minimizing your use of hairstyling products (a conditioner and a leave-in conditioner are enough) and not tying your hair too tight into buns, ponytails or braids. By all mans, avoid cornrows and even dreadlocks if you care about the health of your follicles!

Patience to grow your hair to your waist

Growing your mane to waist length will take you many years, and you may even never achieve this length. Starting from a buzz-cut haircut or from short hair, it will take you some six to eight years to grow your long hair to your waist. That’s a lot of time, and lots of things will happen in your life during that time.

Say, you’re 30 years of age, can you imagine what will your life be like when you’re 38? Maybe you will have two kids, be married and have a high-earning job that doesn’t allow long hair. I can think of dozens and dozens of scenarios in which your super-long hair goals will have to be “cut short” (no pun intended). So, while the minimum hair length for the top knot is six inches, you will be having to grow some fifty inches of hair length to get your epic all the way to your waist. Easier said than done!

On the other hand, not every male can grow his hair to his wait. Hair growth is dominated by your genes and so is your maximum hair growth potential. For example, if the life cycle of your hair strands only last four years, then you will never achieve waist-long hair. The hair life-cycle range for healthy men is between two and ten years, so, if you got the end of the short stick, you will barely be able to achieve shoulder length hair. You probably have heard some women complain of how they can’t grow their hair beyond their shoulders; well, that’s the reason for it: their genes “kill off” their healthy growing hair strands after two years.

Of course, your follicles continue to produce hair until you go bald. So the 100,000 follicles on your scalp are all producing hair strands at different stages of the hair’s life cycle. When the hair is about to have its life cycle end, the hair simply falls off (i.e. sheds) and then room is made for a new hair strand to be produced in the same follicle. A healthy male can shed up to 150 hair strands per day, and long haired men will find that their shedding can become quite visible as fifty-inch-long hair strands can take up quite some space!

Lack of trendy hairstyles for waist-long hair

Once your hair gets so long that it reaches your hair, you will find that just about the hairstyles that you can do are braided hairstyles and man buns but the manbuns and topknots that you will be able to tie will not even be those trendy man buns that you see everywhere in San Francisco, New York or Berlin; instead, your man bun or topknot will be one huge ball of hair that won’t look very trendy.

Basically, forget about this:

And embrace your new range of hairstyles with your super long hair like good ol’ Willie Nelson!

As someone who too has grown his hair to his waist, I do not mind the lack of trendy hairstyle choices for long hair. However, if you’re the kind of guy who likes to keep up with the men’s hairstyle trends, then growing your hair long to your waist won’t be a very enjoyable journey. In a nutshell, the main hairstyles that you will be wearing with waist-long hair are either a “down” hairstyle (the hair is worn down and not tied) or an “updo” hairstyle where the hair is tied into a ponytail or braided. Most guys won’t even braid their hair since it takes some skill to get it right, although I highly recommend that you practise braiding your long mane.

Do you still want to grow your long hair to your waist?

Growing men’s hair to waist length isn’t for everyone; growing your hair so long should only be attempted if you truly want to sport such massively-long hair. It’s no child’s game and you will have to put time, effort and dedication into look after your hair proactively and you will be limited in terms of what hairstyles are achievable if you would rather not spend too much time styling your long mane. What’s more, growing your hair to your waist can take six to eight years, which is quite the long frame to be able to plan ahead.

If the above hasn’t convinced you against growing your mane to your waist, then I can sincerely tell you, my long haired brother, that you are prepared to grow your hair to waist length!