Cyclists should always consider potential hazards they could encounter while training or racing on the road. Obviously, vehicles are critical hazards, but you should also consider some of the smaller details that are easy to overlook, even though they can greatly impact comfort and safety.
This guide goes over one of those small but effective details: sweat management. Let’s break down how to keep sweat out of your eyes when cycling so you can focus less on the heat and more on exercising.
The Importance of Combating Sweat
Sweat is a major component of the body’s natural temperature regulation system. Whether cycling, running, or playing tennis, sweat happens, and that’s a good thing for your body. But moisture saturating a fabric headband across your forehead will feel uncomfortable when cycling. Also, a saturated cloth headband won’t prevent sweat from dripping into your eyes—it could even make it worse.
Stinging, irritated eyes and the resulting blurred vision and excess blinking affect your safety and your ability to control your bike. Fortunately, you don’t have to constantly shake sweat off your head or raise a hand to wipe it off your forehead—there’s a better way.
Sweat-Diverting Headbands
The primary issue with sweating while cycling is how it gets into your eyes: dripping from the forehead. For this reason, sweat-diverting headbands are the most effective way to optimize comfort, focus, and sweat management when cycling. For example, our Veo Strip under-helmet headband is a slim, lightweight band with a channel that redirects the sweat that rolls into it, diverting it away from your eyes. You simply apply the Veo Strip headband to your forehead, pressing it on until it adheres, and it will redirect moisture trickling down your head away from your eyes.
The ability to divert sweat rather than absorb it is critical to optimizing comfort. Sweat absorbing into a headband creates a heavy and uncomfortable feeling. Fabric headbands also trap heat against your forehead, and they have a saturation point. When they’ve soaked up all the sweat they can hold, the moisture just starts dripping off of them and running into your eyes anyway.
The Veo Strip doesn’t absorb sweat, so it can’t get saturated. It simply diverts sweat sideways toward the sides of your face, where it can fall harmlessly away, carrying excess body heat along with it. No matter how long your ride is, you can have peace of mind knowing you’ll never have to change a Veo Strip in the middle of it. The strip keeps diverting sweat for as long as it is affixed to your forehead.
The lightweight design of the sweat-diverting headband is also crucial. Cyclists don’t need the distraction of a soggy, sweat-soaked headband sagging off their foreheads. The Veo Strip is barely visible and never gets weighed down with excess moisture, so you can focus on your training.
Some cyclists wear skullcaps underneath their helmets to help with sweat management. But skullcaps also will get saturated over time and trap heat under the helmet at the top of the head. Losing heat from the head is necessary to cool the body during exertion, which is one of the reasons cycling helmets have ventilation built in. Skullcaps interfere with heat loss from the top of the head.
Veo Strips fit across the forehead, below the helmet. You don’t wear them within the helmet itself. Allowing for a healthy airflow ensures you can stay comfortable when you’re riding. Sweat builds up even if you’re cycling on a cool day, so having breathable gear is a must.
Well-Vented Equipment
Restricting airflow around any part of your body while cycling can create an unnecessarily hot, sweaty, and uncomfortable experience. Cycling apparel is made with sweat-wicking and ventilation properties to avoid that type of discomfort.
A helpful way to keep sweat out of your eyes is to encourage evaporation before sweat trickles down your forehead. Choose a helmet with proper vents that promote healthy airflow so you can avoid overheating during a ride.
Ventilation is also key when you’re choosing sunglasses for cycling. Good glasses help your eyes stay comfortable when you’re riding down the road. However, improper ventilation can cause sunglasses to fog up with the heat and moisture emanating from your face, forehead, and breath, impeding your vision. Make sure your sunglasses allow for adequate air circulation to prevent moisture build-up.
Optimizing Your Gear
Now that you have a better idea of how to keep sweat out of your eyes when cycling, you can optimize your gear for a better riding experience. Working up a sweat when you’re cycling shows that your body is putting in the effort to stay fit and ready for your next event.
However, sweat will interfere with riders who don’t properly prepare. Breathable cycling apparel, ventilated helmets, and sweat-diverting bands improve comfort during exertion so you can focus on optimizing your athletic performance.
You need to have maximum focus and clarity to stay safe when cycling. A big part of that is sweat management to keep your vision clear and avoid the distraction of sweat that stings your eyes and blurs your sight. Assess your cycling gear today, especially your sweatbands, to determine how you can improve it to make every training session more effective and bring every race performance closer to your personal best.
Explore how Veo Strips can minimize distractions, protect your eyes from stinging and blurring, and let your body regulate its temperature in the way physiology intends: the evaporation of sweat directly off your skin. The forehead produces more sweat per square inch than any other part of the body. Why soak it all up and carry it with you during a training session or a race? A Veo Strip works with your body, not against it. It catches and diverts sweat but doesn’t trap heat. It can’t get saturated and drip sweat into your eyes like a typical cloth headband. It’s slim, subtle, and effective. Once you fix it to your forehead, you can forget about it until your training session is over or until you cross the finish of your next race. Try Veo Strips today—we’re sure you won’t go back to soggy sweatbands or soaked bandanas!
