So for the longest time I have ridden my bearings with the shields on. I mean, it's pretty obvious that it's the smart thing to do, it blocks dirt and other crap from getting into your bearings and keeps from messing them up. I've ridden shieldless a few times in the past, but after like 4 or 5 days the bearings are just done and won't spin fast at all anymore. So from these past experiences I've always been one to just leave the shields on, even though so many people believe in popping them off. I've always thought it was just some stupid trend that people did only cause pros did it to make them louder.
I usually go through bearings pretty fast anyways though and they never last me too long, so I got a set of random mixed used bearings from a friend. They were given to me with the shields already popped off, but I didn't have any other bearings at the time, so I decided to put them on my board anyways because that's all I had. Well, within a few days as expected the bearings were all slow and laggy, but i didn't have any other bearings to put in and I was too low on cash to buy new ones, so I decided to just ride the slowed down bearings for a little while longer until i could get new ones. After another week of riding though I noticed that they all of a sudden spin really fast, as if they were brand new. They went from supper laggy to fast as fuck in just a weeks time. They were shitty for a week, but after riding em for a while i guess the dirt just flies out and theyre fast again, who knows. It's been a few weeks now, been skating close to every day, rode through some dirty grounds and I'm still riding this set of shieldless bearings and they're going faster than ever. So could this whole "shieldless is faster" thing really be true?