Being sweaty can mean being smelly, but it doesn’t have to be that way! So what can you do about it?
Let’s talk body odor:
🧼Wear deodorant. That crystal you rub in your pits? Yea, unfortunately it doesn’t do shit. There are great natural ones that do work and avoid aluminum as an ingredient if you can!
💧Hydrate. With water, not booze. Booze comes out in the gym and we can all smell it. Cocktails are cool at 8pm, not again at 8am.
🦠If your musk is particularly pungent and nothing works, see a doctor because there are RX deodorants for that particular thing. It is common and we still think you’re swell. Our bodies are hosts for tons of healthy bacteria, but there’s a stinky interaction between your sweat and your bacteria which can be fixed. (Google: Bromhidrosis.)
👕 Your gym clothes:
🧼Unfortunately, fabrics do retain body odor over time (especially synthetics). If they don’t smell fresh to you after a wash, do a load of gym clothes with a cup of white vinegar in the wash water. That usually works.
🧼Buy the fancy gym-clothes cleaner if you want (but vinegar works). This means knee sleeves too, if they develop their own personality, it’s time for a wash.
Perfume and cologne:
🧴PLEASE not in the gym. Regardless of what Johnny Depp said in the ad, it’s nothing but a soup of toxins, a headache trigger for many and a hormone disruptor for all (for real). Try to keep it out of the gym, where people are breathing extra hard. Yes, this includes that body spray that you may LOVE (I want to use this opportunity to personally apologize to everyone I went to middle school with re: my abuse of Axe body spray).
If you have questions around this issue, please ask a Coach – we’re here to help and keep a squeaky clean environment for all. Being smelly doesn’t make you a bad person, it just means we need a new plan. We also deliberately use unscented floor cleaner as well for specifically this reason.
We all have our own special smell and that’s part of our biology, but with a bit of care we can keep the gym fresh as a daisy so we can all focus on fitness and coaching. Thanks, you wonderful stinky beasts!
Also, thank you @rocketcommunityfitness for the bromhidrosis knowledge drop and content.