To some people, yes. To others, chamois butter is a waste of time and money. It is all about personal preference. Apply the cream to the seams of your shorts that touch your crotch and glute area. You can also apply it along the seam that goes from the top of your inner thigh down toward your mid-thigh. Endurance training on a road bike often exceeds 3 hours. It is easy to experience discomfort during long rides. And chamois creams help with that. Sudocream will have some barrier protection, as many parents will testify when helping babies with diaper/ nappy rash, but it's not as lubricating to ward off chaffing that can occur with an endurance ride.

Although chamois cream is a really great tool to prevent chafing while riding, not everyone uses chamois cream nor is it always needed.One of the biggest things to consider when selecting the best chamois cream for you is whether or not you want the product to include the ingredient menthol. You may notice chamois come in all different shapes and sizes depending on the rider's individual needs. However, the original chamois within cycling shorts for men (and cycling shorts for women, once the industry saw fit to manufacture them) were actually made of leather from a chamois goat, not the antibacterial synthetics you see fitted today. Those are all worth a shot. Queen Helene’s Cocoa Butter Creme is a great value and it’s hard to tell it’s not an actual chamois cream. Then there’s the Noxzema Original Cream which contains neat ingredients – camphor, menthol, and eucalyptus – like Assos does.

These days you don’t technically need any sort of chamois butter since a synthetic chamois will remain soft and pliable on its own. Do my shorts have a real or synthetic chamois? John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work. Therefore, you should ideally apply it before you leave your house. But if you absolutely must do it in a semi-public place, remember to just awkwardly stare at the ground to avoid any uncomfortable exchanges. What should I look out for when buying chamois cream?

Some brands make women’s-specific chamois cream, which contains different ingredients from the men’s version. It may be a bit of a mouthful, but Athlete Performance Luxury Chamois Cream – Pour Femme is, you guessed it, the female-specific version of the consistently very well reviewed Muc-Off Luxury Chamois Cream. Like the men's cream, it does its job really well, keeping you comfy in the saddle on long rides thanks to a formula that means it stays put yet doesn't feel greasy. The big revelation wasn’t just that Chamois Butt’r is suitable for more places than the rear, but also that it wasn’t only for exercise-induced skin flare-ups. I have city girl problems too! General summer grooming issues! Random tantrums of the epidermis.

In general however, roughly around one scoop using two fingers (a highly accurate measurement) should be enough to cover most friction prone areas. But this will largely be a trial and error process, as everyone's needs of course differ. Where do you apply chamois cream? On the other hand, this numbing feeling won’t suit everybody. It also goes without saying, but if you are allergic to menthol, any chamois creams with this added ingredient will be a no go for you. The same can be said for any other ingredients used, so please make sure you read the label beforehand. Runners tend to experience underarm or chest chafing when tight clothing rubs against their sweaty skin. And, of course, there’s the all too familiar inner thigh rub that happens to so many of us, regardless of thigh size. You know those terrible padded shorts that serious cyclists wear? That’s not even the worst of their problems. Cyclists wear chamois (the bike shorts with a cushy little pillow sewn in the crotch area) to relieve the pressure of resting so much body weight on a thin bike seat. All this pressure around the underbutt crease also has some frictional effects on the skin. Things can go south. If you’d like a category of horrifying images to avoid Google-imaging, I can recommend “saddle sores,” which are a severe irritation in the butt region, prompted by sitting on a bike seat for too long. When I started biking a lot and far, I was so frightful of saddle sores that I took the recommended wisdom like it was law: use chamois butt’r.For hygiene reasons, don’t ‘double dip’ by taking another scoop with the hand you’ve used to rub in the cream. If you have a genuine leather chamois, you need to condition the chamois pad itself. However, with a new synthetic chamois, you have two options: lathering it on the chamois, or just putting the cream on your skin.

What I also like about it is that it soothes already-chafed skin. So, when I forget to apply it before a ride, I shower once I return and apply the cream afterward. Yes indeed. There are a number of cheap substitutes that work just fine. Some popular choices are Queen Helene’s Cocoa Butter Creme, Udderly Smooth, and Noxzema Cream. This method of application can still be a great one to try. However, many people opt for applying directly to the problem areas once they have their kit on.There is also a women's specific version, which aims to cater for "women’s more neutral skin pH" - however, neither of our two female testers have had issues with the unisex formulas, so whilst nice-to-have this isn't a product we feel is a 'must have' for women, based on our experience. Buyer's guide to chamois cream What is a Chamois?