Prior to my hair journey, my heir ends always seemed to become damaged when I tried to grow it beyond shoulder length.
I am glad I have finally created time to write this post. When it comes to Hairducation I love writing educative posts the most because I believe that it such posts that truly helps ladies with their hair journey.
This post is inspired by all the ladies who have said these famous words ….” my hair gets to a shoulder length and stops growing”.
I assure you I said the same about my hair pre my hair journey.
At shoulder length my hair would have loads of split ends and would become thin from breakage. This resulted in me doing mini-chops on my ends and being back to neck length. This was a cycle for me and I believed that my hair was not designed to grow beyond shoulder length and that if I tried it would somehow become damaged by itself and need to be cut.
If you think your hair has stopped growing at a certain length, it is likely that what is actually happening is that your hair damage and breakage has increased (especially at your ends).
Basically your hair growth has remained the same but you are experiencing breakage at your ends which makes it appear as though your hair has stopped growing and is stuck at shoulder length.
What I hope to do in this post is show how our hair care and hair styling habits at shoulder length causes so many of us to experience breakage which we what we think is stagnant hair growth. The aim is that making readers aware of the points below will help them move past this length.
Common Causes of The Shoulder Length Hump
A) Styling Habit 1 – Increased use of heat on the ends alone (heat damage at ends)
Throwback picture from many many years ago. My hair was fully relaxed shoulder length. I always wore my hair down with the ends curled with a hot iron/curling tong. Sorry about the picture quality its a scan of the actual picture
A lot of ladies are really happy to show off their hair when it has reached shoulder length. I might be speaking for myself but I believe that for many ladies shoulder length used to be seen as long hair “for a black lady”.
Whenever my hair crept to shoulder length I would be eager to wear it down and show it off at every opportunity but I didn’t want the ends to just hang down. I would want the ends to be a little curled so every morning I would comb my hair down, apply a little grease to my ends and use the curling iron on my ends alone. I know so many other ladies who have this habit.
I have discussed the cons of using direct heat on our hair in some of my older posts.
Regular use of direct heat on your ends will cause the ends of your hair to become drier, very brittle and more susceptible to breakage than the roots or middle parts of your hair (ie the parts that you are not heat styling every day). The heat damage will also cause an increase in split ends which means even more breakage and need to trim/cut the ends. This in turn leads to many of us thinking our hair just isn’t meant to grow past this length.
B) Styling Habit 2 – Hair worn down more or exclusively (physical & environmental damage at ends)
Nowadays my hair ends are usually hidden and protected from environmental and physical damage. I do wear it down sometimes….
This is really just a follow on from point 1 above. Protective styling has helped me and so many other ladies move past the shoulder length hump.
When our hair is shorter than shoulder length, the ends are in some ways protected from the friction and rubbing on clothes and scarves or chair backs that occurs with shoulder length.
By the time we reach shoulder length, keeping our ends up becomes necessary to avoid or reduce physical damage.
Also ladies who wear their hair down tend to comb and brush their ends often during the day to keep it looking neat. This further increases the physical damage suffered by our ends.
By keeping our hair in protective styles we reduce the frequency of physical damage our ends will experience.
Another factor that is to be considered is that the sun, wind, harmattan (this is one my Nigerian ladies will understand) and winter cold can really make our hair, especially at the ends feel super dry. Moisturising and sealing and hiding our ends in protective styles helps to keep them better hydrated, elastic and better equipped to fight breakage.
I am not saying we can never leave our hair down; we simply need to wear it in protective styles more often than we leave it down.
C) Not Updating Your Regimen
One of the many things I was not taught but had to find out from experience on my hair journey was the importance or reviewing and updating my hair regimen. Practices, techniques and products which may have worked for you at one length may not work for you at another length.
as your hair gets longer if you start experiencing more tangles, or maybe your hair seems to be breaking more or just isn’t holding on to moisture as well you should probably switch things up a little.
For example maybe you need to change the type of comb you are using to a bigger one, maybe you need to work in smaller sections, maybe you need to use a heavier moisturising product, maybe wrapping your hair every night isn’t working for you anymore because your hair is longer, maybe you should start shampooing inn sections, maybe you need to review your protein ,moisture balance etc
Simply think of what hair challenges you are facing at this longer length and possible ways of overcoming them. So if your hair seems to not be moving past the shoulder length hump, maybe its time to review your hair regimen.
As always I hope this post has been helpful to someone out there. Are you stuck at shoulder length? What do you think may be the culprit? Have you recently moved past shoulder length after years of being stuck there? Please share tips on how you did it.
The next post will be about the benefits of pre-pooing (a pre shampoo treatment). I know some ladies do not see the point of it but I NEVER ever shampoo my hair without doing a pre-poo because it has does so much good for my hair. Please come back soon to find out how.
X
Lade
Learn | Change | Grow
