Do you love using gloves when working out? Undoubtedly, they provide you with a better grip and prevent your hands from getting callused.
So, what’s next? When you are done with the workout, you put gloves inside the gym bag. More often than not, you take out the workout clothes to give them a good spin in the washer but don’t take out the gloves.
Gloves are small, don’t get very sweaty unless you are drenching, and don’t begin smelling until you have put them through rough use.
Perfect. Right?
Wrong.
The dark, damp, and moist environment inside the gym bag is the perfect place for a bacterial breeding ground. After a few uses, you are walking around with a germ-infested rag that has grime, dust, grease, and bacteria collected from all the gym equipment touched by strangers. So, yes, you do have to wash your gloves. But they happen to be a little trickier than other garments.
If you use gloves for a light workout, then instead of washing every single day, you can just take them out, run in clean water, and put them somewhere that has plenty of sunlight. But not open sunlight, as that can dry out the rubber or leather parts of the gloves and crack them up, quickly aging down a quality piece of gym wear. However, every once in a while, you should wash the gloves properly and disinfect them.
What Is The Right Way To Wash Gym Gloves?
To understand whether you should hand wash the gloves, or toss them in the washer, look at the washing instructions. Leather gloves and certain materials should never be put in the washer. You have to hand wash them.
- Take a small container and fill it with water. Put plenty of antibacterial soap. Some people love dish soap because of how easily it takes off grease, salt, and soot. You can simply use a strong antibacterial soap of your choice or even laundry detergent.
- Turn the gloves inside out because the inside is harder to clean otherwise, and it usually accumulates all the nasty germs. Massage the gloves manually and squeeze them lightly to take out the water. Rinse and repeat a few times until the water coming off the gloves is clean and soapy. If you have leather gloves, take extreme precautions not to wring it or squeeze it hard.
- If your gloves still smell after a thorough hand wash, you have to soak them in detergent water for an hour. You can clean after the soak and you will notice the difference it makes. It will also be easier to clean dirt if you soak, however, this is not recommended for all kinds of materials.
- Make sure you wash the gloves completely clean with normal, room temperature water, so none of the detergents leave any residue. Chemical residue stuck inside the gloves when in contact with your skin for a long time, and can cause bad allergic reactions.
- If your washing instructions say you can throw the gloves in the machine, you can do it. But make sure you secure any Velcro straps well as you don’t want that to get stuck with any other clothes.
Video Credit – FITNESS Magazine
How Do I Dry The Gloves?
If possible, try to put toilet roll cardboard tubes inside the gloves when you are putting them out to dry. This will create an airflow inside the gloves.
Don’t put the gloves anywhere that gets a lot of sunlight, or gets too hot. The heat will weaken in the glove fibers and cause the material to crack, or lose integrity.
The Next Steps
As you can see, washing gym gloves is easy. All you need to do is keep the pointers mentioned above in mind. What are your views on this? How do you wash your gym gloves? Let us know in the comments below.