[Music] what is up trabbies and welcome back to the tribe i first want to say thank you to all the new tribe members who joined into this big beautiful melania tribe and if you have not joined into this big beautiful melanated tribe i'm gonna need you to go right over here hit that red subscribe button and join into all of the tribalness that we have got going on over here so today's video is going to be about protective styling and why you may not be seeing any results despite the fact that you're putting a lot
of effort into protective styling why you're not seeing that length be retained and why are you not seeing the overall health of your hair uh progress so protective styling by far is one of the best methods that you can use along with low manipulation but primarily protective styling is one of the best methods that you can use to retain length and to get overall really good results when it comes to your hair health now when not done the right way you can find yourself still stuck at the same length no progress your health of your
hair seems to be at the same state or even declining or you're not retaining that length that you want so if you're interested to hear the tips that i have for you guys and how you can maximize your protective styling game just keep on watching so what is protective styling well just what it sounds like it's a style that primarily protects your hair and when i say protect your hair i mean your ends are tucked away that is the whole and complete idea of protective styling the less friction you have on your ends the less
they're like rubbing against your clothes and rubbing against things the less breakage and the more length of retention you'll have now don't get it twisted no pun intended just because you throw some twists in your hair and let them hang in slang does not mean that style is protective it may be low manipulation but it is not protective until your ends are completely tucked away now let's get into low manipulation styles and what that is predominantly now a low manipulation style is a style that helps you prevent over manipulation which causes mechanical damage to your
hair if you are over manipulating your hair constantly and that in return you're gonna start seeing decline of your hair health and also length retention now as low manipulation style it does not help to retain as much length as a protective style was it is still a very good method to practice if you are not the type of person who likes to fully you know do protective styles to your hair and that is completely fine and things like protective are things like low manipulation styles would be things like twist outs and braid out predominantly because
you're twisting your hair you're letting those twisting in for however long you let them stand for you untwist your hair and then you have a style now you tie it up at night and you'll wake up in the next day and then you'll go about your business shake it out and you're good to go that is low manipulation because you're not sitting there combing and tugging and you know pulling your hair every which way you're just wearing the style as it is all right so let's talk about some common protective styles and how you can
maximize the benefits of those protective styles and the common mistakes that we also do when all right so the first style we're going to be talking about are twist two strand twist now you guys know that i have grown my hair out predominantly with two strand twists and head wraps if you guys haven't seen my head wrap tutorial i'm gonna post it right here so go and watch that but i have predominantly growing my hair out with two strand twists when i started my natural hair journey my hair was about collarbone length my bang was
about this short i'll post the picture right here that is me i don't know if you can really see it but that's all i got to work with right now so with twists first you must find the perfect size twist for your hair type your hair texture and your hair density now you guys know that i have a lot of hair it's very very high density very high density maybe like abnormally like danced but i have a really dense hair and my twists have to be at a very precise width for my hair not to
tangle up too much or for it not to shrink up too much and that is your goal you want to make sure that your twists are either big or small enough for it not to shrink up too much or tangle sorry i got interrupted by my mother calling me thanks mom i know you're watching this thank you so like i was saying you really want to make sure that your twists are at the perfect width for your hair because if it's too thick your hair might tangle up too much if it's too thin it might
tangle up too much um if it's uh too big then it's going to shrink up too much what's going to call the tangles and if it's too thin it's going to shrink up and cause tangles so you really have to find the perfect width for your hair type for me a mini twist to my to me and my hair would be about the width of my pinky so that is considered a mini twist when it comes to my hair density so if you're wearing your twist in too many styles that could kind of set you
back because your twists are you know rubbing against your clothing um you're wearing them in different ways and that can really hinder your retention of your hair because you're just doing too much so the idea is to keep your twists tucked away uh whether that is wearing your twist in a bun or wearing it in a head wrap like i predominantly do is going to be the best thing for you to do letting your twists mat up now you guys know when i put twists in my hair i'm able to leave them in four months
at a time because i worked my way up to that i didn't just start off doing that and bam all this hair grew i worked myself up to that so you might want to leave your twist in for about two weeks and take them out redo them leave them in for another two weeks take them down redo them then leave them in for three weeks take them down redo them but in this time that you are um that you are putting your twist are the the duration of the time you have your twist in your
hair you still want to pay attention to the individual twist themselves and if you feel like certain twists or certain areas of your hair is matting up more than others are getting frizzy you need to remove those twists and twist them and retwist them because what's going to happen is those twists are going to match together and when you go to take them down you're going to cause yourself breakage because it's dry because it's matted and that is what we do not want to do so for me the area of my hair that gets a
lot frizzier quicker is just like this front row so i tend to redo these twists around my edges a little bit quicker than normal and then the very nape of my neck i find me doing those twists a little bit more frequently than the rest of my head so i might have one dedicated day to where i predominantly work on the back or work on this side or work on that side but you really want to make sure that your twists are not matting up on itself and that you're taking the time to really look
at those twists at the end of the day and saying to yourself okay maybe i need to redo this twist maybe ready to redo that twist but really paying attention to your hair is key when you have twisting and not just putting twists in and saying all right we're done i'm good that's it see your hair for like the next two or three weeks like no you don't want to do that you want to pay attention to your hair and you want to pass into your scalp and make sure that your scalp is cleansed if
you need to jump in the shower wash your hair wash your scalp do whatever it is that you need to do but you really do want to make sure that your your scalp is also healthy all right number two is braids i said it breaks box braids with extension hair okay so now we're going to talk about hair um that you are adding in to your hair specifically to achieve these styles now with the box braids they are a very very very good protective style like i said if you're doing them right the one thing
you do not ever ever ever want to do you never want to do this you never want to put additional hair into your hair if your hair is not healthy enough to withstand the tension the extra tension from the additive hair okay so what does that mean if your hair is already dry and brittle and you know um and breaking off you do not want to put box braids in your hair with additional hair because that is going to just cause a lot of habit you can't get to your hair properly your hair is already
breaking so why would you add more hair to it you need to take care of the issue first and get your hair to a healthy state to where your hair is able to withstand that tension from extra hair and as well as your scalp so you don't want to just throw in you know um extension hair to your hair and um and just you know call it a month because when you take those braids out you're gonna have even more of a problem than you started out with so just make sure that your hair is
healthy enough before you start adding in you know a synthetic or whatever kind of hair you're using that you really want to make sure that your hair is healthy first um because it's just it's not going to be a good thing you can't really get to your hair and moisturize it the way you would be able to if you used no additional hair to begin with all right number three weaves sew-ins let's talk about it so the same thing about box braids putting it in when your hair is damaged putting in weaves when your hair
is already damaged no ma'am no no no do not do that when you take that weave out yeah you're gonna have some growth but you're also gonna have a lot of breakage as well so kind of counterproductive you never i'm gonna repeat this i'm gonna say this louder for the people in the back do not do not do not please do not put in weaves when your hair is already damaged for one you can't get to your hair and moisturize it the way you need to you cannot take care of your hair the way you
need to you cannot condition it the way you need to and all of that is going to catch up so like i said with box braids make sure that your hair is healthy enough to withstand tension of foreign hair number two your foundation is just too tight you do not want a foundation when it comes to sew-ins you don't want a foundation that's too tight because that's going to put a lot of stress and tension on your scalp honey and on top of the foundation you know you have the sew-in and the thread and all
that going on no that's not gonna work it's it's not going to work okay you are going to it's just it's not going just don't do it just leave it here cut the video cut cut it when you take out your sew-in you'll either have balding areas thinning areas scalp damage you just don't want to do it i've seen it so many times when i worked in a natural hair salon i was a natural hair stylist so i've seen it so many times and you just do not want to do that some damage that you
get from that is very irreversible and i'm saying i'm just letting you guys know don't do it quick weaves um i've seen a lot of those where you're using glue to glue on your hair i do not suggest you do that either because that glue definitely is going to be tearing out some areas in places of your hair which they have um they have this certain type of solution i'll say like a cream that you put on your hair like you lay you gel your hair down and then you put on this stuff and it
acts as a barrier between your hair and the glue i mean that's a lot of stuff you know that's that it's it's just a lot and you're kind of taking a gamble because you really don't know when you're you know pulling the weave out you don't know if some of your hair is going to come along with that and that can really really really really be detrimental when it comes to retaining your length and your hair health even though even though things like weaves um are protective styles because your ends are tucked but the issues
that i was explaining to you guys are really the things that can hinder your protective style from flourishing especially in weaves and quick weaves you really have to make sure that you are doing them right there is nothing wrong with wearing them let me say that again for the people in the back there is nothing wrong wearing them but you want to make sure that you are doing it properly properly you want to make sure that you are doing these things properly with caution okay please all right let's go to wigs wigs so the problem
with wigs and how we can counter at that those issues that arrive so for some reason when we put wigs on we automatically associate the wig with being our hair over you know prolonged amount of time right depending on the mindset that you're in and all that good stuff and we completely forget that we have our own hair under there and the same with weaves whenever we visually see something on our head that is supposed to mimic our hair sometimes we can forget that we have our actual own hair and that's where the neglect comes
in so if you are wearing wigs which to me are a little better than wearing sew-ins because you can directly get to your hair but if you are wearing wigs please make sure that you are properly taking care of your hair underneath it okay you want to make sure that you're removing those wigs at night and you're moisturizing your hair and you're giving your hair the love and attention that it needs and if you wake up the next morning and decide you want to plop it back on your head that is you that is your
business but please just make sure that you are taking care of your hair underneath in all of these like i said with weaves you can't really get to your hair um as accessible as you could if you were just wearing a wig so that is something to think about that's a personal decision that you have to make for yourself but as far as wigs you guys know that i've been wearing them i think i wore them about four or five times i wore the hair the her given hair one i only work for the video
so i haven't worn it out yet and then the one that i got for halloween i wear that a couple times out and i just braided it um on the side and put like the scarf on it if you guys haven't seen that video i will link that video up right here but like i said you really want to make sure that you're taking care of your hair underneath and you're not just putting on these things to cover up what is what is on your head right because the whole idea is to appreciate love and
treat your hair with kindness and give your hair what it needs and all of these things are just additions right so overall protective styling can be amazing when you're using braids and weaves and wigs and twists all four of those can be absolutely amazing and help you retain a lot of length um i know there are a lot of youtubers who primarily use sew-ins and i've seen a couple um that use wigs i think it's wigs to waistline i think that's her channel you guys go check her out um i know that she predominantly uses
wigs and stuff like that to grow out her natural hair and her natural hair is beautiful so it can be done don't let anybody tell you that it can't it can be done but you also want to make sure that you're doing it properly because when not done properly it can really cause havoc on your hair and you don't want to set yourself back even further your main priority first should be the health of your hair okay so if you're coming from heat damaged hair like really damaged hair and you're just saying okay you know
what i'll just put some box braids in let me just put a sew-in in and just i'll just wait for it to grow out that is the mindset you do not want to have you want to start taking care of your hair and giving your hair love and and conditioning it and moisturizing it and finding a real true protective style to put your hair in until you're able to do those styles okay even buns bunny is a really good alternative as well if you just want to put your hair up but also the thing with
bunning is that if you do it too frequently where you tie the the hair band around your hair that area is prone to a lot more breakage so kind of weigh that out you know just decide if that's something for you if it's not for you you can do a couple times a week maybe once a week twice a week whatever you want to do um but to me one of the best styles to get you going in the direction of health first is something like two strand twists or even braids with your own natural
hair because you're able to moisturize it every day you're able to just throw it up in a cute little like ponytail a bun um you can do head wraps you can do so many things with your twist that involves your ends being tucked away they look really pretty they're elegant you can dress them up you can dress them down like i said you guys that has primarily primarily been my go-to style for so long and i really have that style to thank for my um length retention as well as my head wraps and as well
as just me learning my hair so it's all about learning your hair and knowing when your hair lights and not what it doesn't like and it's a learning curve so never let anybody tell you that what you're doing to your hair is wrong and never let anybody tell you that you're not beautiful the way that you are in your style rocket rock the style you want how you want and when you want but like i said always take care of your hair underneath so if you guys have any questions leave them down below in the
comment section and i will see you guys in my next video don't forget to rate comment and join into the try until next time
