How to clean smelly boxing gloves? OR How to dry boxing gloves? If you are looking for answers to these questions – you have come to the right place. At Infinitude Fight, we take our boxing gloves and their care very seriously.
Moment of truth, no one wants their gloves to stink, and absolutely no one wants to stink out the entire gym. So, how can stinky gloves be avoided and cleaned? We will explain the process with a couple of steps that you can use to make sure your gloves are always clean, fresh, in pristine condition, and help you avoid hygiene issues or, worse, the smell.
Boxing Gloves Deserve No Blame
Boxing gloves are not to be blamed for that horrible smell – they are at no fault here. As evident, gloves or the materials in the gloves do not have any scent or smell-inducing properties. The gloves smell bad because of – well, you!
What happens is, hard sessions – whether for training, sparring or boxing – can fill your gloves with sweat, mainly when you do not wear hand wraps under the boxing gloves while training – it is still highly advisable that you do wear hand wraps.
This sweat build-up can increase bacteria, creating hygiene issues and, most of the time, a terrible smell.
As it is with everything, it is much simpler to follow a couple of steps to prevent this from ever happening than it is to fix the issue later on. But how to do that, though?
Keeping Hand Wraps Clean
If you want to keep your boxing gloves clean, keep the things you put inside them clean – the first rule in boxing glove care.
Keeping your hands and hand-wraps clean is a relatively common and simple to follow advice, which you should be doing at any rate; if you don’t, it will be a monstrous job to keep your gloves clean eventually.
In a situation where your hand wraps are not adequately aired out or washed often, they will start to grow bacteria, and the smell will follow. Using wet or smelly hand wraps with your boxing gloves will make your gloves smell bad too, there are no second thoughts on that.
Pro-Tip: When you buy boxing gloves, get one or two separate pairs of hand wraps with them. By doing this, you won’t have to rewash your hand wraps with every session.
Ditch the Gym Bag
Bacteria love enclosed spaces, and they thrive in such conditions. A closed gym bag can become a vast breeding ground for all kinds of bacteria. A gym bag is where all your sweaty boxing gear is thrown in after training, creating a lot of moisture that gets trapped inside.
The longer you procrastinate to take your gear out of the bag, the worse the situation will get. It is highly recommended to open and empty your gym bag as soon as you can after training.
Airing Out Your Gym Bag and Gym Gear
After you empty your gym bag, it is time to put on your gloves to air out the next step. It does not matter if your gloves have a mesh palm; things will get sweaty in them too. Provided that the room is well-ventilated, you should open the glove up just slightly, and voila, it will dry out properly!
If your gloves lack the mesh palm or your training intensity is higher, do this process more often – after every session is recommended.
For Velcro gloves, open up the Velcro strap completely, and let the cuffs open up as much as they can. With laced gloves, loosen up the laces as much as possible.
Wipe Your Gloves
Most people do not stress much on wiping down their gloves after training sessions as leather is good at drying off by itself – but it is for the best if you do wipe them properly.
Take sparring as an example; let’s assume you spar with ten people, that ten people whose gloves have you touched with yours – most of them will be sweaty too from the hard training. Interestingly, the gloves might have touched your face while you were blocking.
Post-training; all that other people’s sweat will remain on your gloves and will undoubtedly lead to the growth of bacteria. Nothing will be noticeable to the eye, but the next time you use your gloves to spar or train, you will spread that bacteria to others. That becomes even more dangerous if someone gets an unnoticeable nose bleed or a scratch.
Rest assured, your gloves will get pretty nasty after a few sessions – that makes wipe them down all more necessary to keep them clean and hygienic. After training, a quick wipe with a clean towel will stop most of the problem, and following that, a quick wet-wipe or anti-bacterial disinfectant wipe will further clean the gloves properly.
Employ Deodorizing Products
After airing out and using cleaning spray for boxing gloves, you can use absorbent materials to speed up the drying process. There is a plethora of some legit and some shady information on the internet about this very tip. People use cedar chips, silica gel, newspaper, and even cat litter to help speed up the drying process by placing them inside.
These impromptu solutions might work for a while, but essentially they are hardly a long-term solution. We will suggest using dedicated products for this purpose that are specifically made to resolve this issue.
Many companies sell their unique glove deodorizers – the small inserts are put inside the gloves in between uses and keep the gloves fresh.
The tips mentioned above will help keep your boxing gloves fresh for a longer time, which will extend their period of use. As we said before, it is always easy to prevent the growth of bacteria compared to removing it later on.
Considering today’s boxing gloves price factors, don’t you think your favorite boxing gloves deserve the love?
