Advanced guide.

Softening the hair is quite possibly one of the most important parts of the shave.  Trying to shave through hard, unsoftened hair will absolutely increase and cause additional irritation, and dull your blades faster.

Shaving immediately after a shower (or in the shower) would be the best case whenever possible. If you can’t shower, then doing your best to wet the area, and let the water soak in over 2-3 minutes before you start shaving is next best.

No matter where you’re shaving, you want to use some kind of lubricating layer, ideally a high quality shave cream.  Anything you can use that will let the razor glide over the skin.  Aim to use a “wetter” consistency, rather than a thick/sticky consistency.  A shave foam from a can for example is a bit thick and sticky.  Compared to if you lathered up a bar of soap.  Henson works best with a slicker, lighter application of shave cream.

This is something that will come with experience and is difficult to convey through text or a video, but when you start shaving, you might be surprised at how little pressure is required for the Henson to shave well.  

We recommend that you start almost too light, the shaving equivalent of a whisper over your skin, and work up from there. Some cues for seeing where you’re at pressure-wise: If you’re going too light, the hairs might feel like they’re being plucked or pulled because you’re not keeping enough contact with the skin and if your skin is heavily deforming as you shave, then you’re probably pushing too hard.  

Again this will come with a bit of experience as everyone’s shaving muscle memory is different.  But if you’ve been using a multi-blade for years now, you most likely would be pressing too hard if you shaved with the same technique/pressure as with your multi-blade.

Where possible, trying to keep the skin pulled tight helps with the razor gliding and shaving.  Again, this will vary depending on where you’re shaving (areas like the tip of the chin will be difficult to hold tight, vs pulling the skin tight over the knee cap is easy). But trying to remove as much of the skins ability to move as possible leads to a mechanically better shave and less irritation.

Speed makes a big difference when you shave.  Move too fast, and your skin may not move and flex out of the way of the blade, and you increase your propensity for nicks and cuts.  

You want to be controlled as you shave.  This is actually one of the most difficult things to master with shaving.  The self control to keep your speed consistent.  All it takes is one impatient stroke to ruin an otherwise excellent shave.

Ideally rinse the blade after every stroke. Ensuring the blade is clean every time you go to take a new stroke, your shave will be drastically more consistent and require less touch up passes.

Your cheeks are generally a pretty free zone.  Typically flat and the skin can be pulled fairly tight.  

Shave direction: Hair tends to grow downward.  So shaving your cheeks with a downward stroke first pass is recommended.

The upper lip is another fleshy spot of the face, but you can sort of pull your lip down over your teeth to tighten it up.  

Shave direction: Hair tends to grow downward on the upper lip, so typically aim to shave from the nose, down.

The chin is probably one of the trickier spots of the face. It’s often a “fleshy” part of the face, and the skin typically can’t be pulled tight, leaving you having to just move slowly and gently when shaving over it. Best recommendation is to really make sure you’ve soaked the hair on your face well to help the razor cut with less force required.

Shave direction: The chin is often kind of all over the place, with a downward bias as it curls around to the lower/underside of the jaw so just aim to follow the direction the hair grows.

The area under your jaw that leads into the base of your neck is again, typically a fairly flat surface that can be pulled tight if needed.

Shave direction: Typically the hair grows towards the neck, so shaving from the jawline/chin down towards the the initial crease of the neck is preferred.

Traditionally the most troublesome zone on the face (that our research confirmed as well).  Both because of how the pores tend to be more pronounced around the hair and because of direction the hair grows tends to be the reverse direction of the hair under your jaw.  Slow and steady wins here.  Try to pull tight the skin where you can. 

Shave Direction: Often hair will grow upwards here, or side to side, or many directions.  You have to try and look at what the best angles would be for your hair growth here.  But often, and upward, sweeping angle to where the underjaw and neck meet is best here.

We’ve mentioned it before, but it warrants another mention here.  The scalp is primarily skin on bone with very little fleshy areas.  So you really want to stay light and be mindful of the pressure you’re applying. The razor should be like a whisper over your scalp.

If you’re shaving frequently this won’t really come into play, but anytime you shave, and your hair is longer than around 3-6mm (1/8” - 1/4”), it would be best to trim the hair down.  Razors work best as a finishing pass or to shave very short hair.

You’ll want to use your hands to “see” for you.  With your free hand, rub and feel for any hair patches you may have missed or are still there as you shave and clean them up.  Becomes a bit of a shave, feel, shave, feel, shave, feel rhythm and with experience you’ll get better at it.

You can always try to set up a mirror behind you, so you can shave while seeing the back of your head, can make it easier to connect what you’re feeling with a visual helping you learn faster.

There’s no rules here.  Hair is going to grow out in all sorts of directions out of your scalp, so you’re just going to make a best effort to try and make your first pass shave with the grain depending on how your hair grows.  Move slowly along the natural curves and planes of the scalp.

No matter how carefully you shave, your skin will have received micro damage during the shave.  Moisturize after after to hydrate and help the skin heal, and if you’re about to go outside, it would be a good idea to protect your freshly shaved scalp with some SPF as it will be getting directly exposed to the sun.

We’ve mentioned it before, and we’ll mention it again, it’s that important.  The razor should feel like a whisper over your skin, especially when shaving over the bony areas.  Knees, ankles, elbows and more.  Keep pressure light, and the skin pulled tight where ever possible. Body hair tends to be less course than hair on the face or scalp, so the razor should require very little force.

Lathering a bunch of shave cream all over your leg might seem like it will save time, but there’s a good chance that as you shave, and get near the middle to end of the shave it will have started to dry and set on your skin, making it completely ineffective and even making the shave worse.

So consider breaking up everything into sections.  For example, If you’re shaving your legs, lather up the bottom half of one leg, shave complete, then move on.  This ensures your shave cream isn’t drying out and working against you.

Legs are typically pretty easy.  Large, fairly flat sections of skin, punctuated by tricky points at the middle and bottom with your ankles and knees.  There’s a relatively large area to shave, so it’s important to keep your strokes consistent and on the slower side.  It’s all too easy to get impatient shaving such a large area. 

Shave direction: Hair on the legs tends to grow mostly out and down towards the ankles.  Where possible try to shave downwards towards the ankle. And if that’s proving too difficult,  you can shave upwards on the leg, but make sure to move slow as you’ll be shaving against the grain.  If shaving against the grain is causing irritation, then try to find a seated position, like the edge of a bathtub, where you can lift your foot up onto the edge as well and reach your lower leg that way.

As the ankles and knees are quite bony, and the skin can move fairly easily overtop the bone, you can be prone to catching the skin if you’re moving too fast or with too much pressure onto the bony sections.

For the knee, probably the simplest way to get the skin tight is to just lay your palm flat on the skin just above the knee on your thigh, and pull up towards your hip.  Ankles tend to be tighter already, so just go slow and pull tight where needed.

Try to be intentional with the shave strokes here.  The underarm is pretty uneven surface wise and that could lead to you accidentally overshaving peak areas if you’re taking too many strokes to clean up valleys.

Shave direction: The hair in you underarms probably grows out in a variety of angles.   So do your best to shave with the grain as much as possible.

Your arms are similar to legs.  pretty open flat planes, with sharp bone at the elbow and wrist.  Don’t rush the big areas, keep the lather wet, and be very mindful of your pressure and speed when going onto the bony areas.

Shave direction: Typically hair grows down towards the wrists. So shaving in that direction is generally safe.

Again slow and steady here. Watch the way hair is growing out, and do your best to follow the contours and direction of the hair.

Then for the rest of the body, you’re just going to follow the same basic rules.  Aim to shave with the grain where ever possible.  Don’t get impatient and speed up strokes too fast over larger areas, and try to break things down into smaller sections so you don’t let your shave cream dry out before you’ve even shaved.  Re-apply/reactivate your shave cream whenever you go back over a previously shaved area.