Wear an undershirt. It will protect your nice clothes from stains. Get cotton ones as it will absorb and breathe better.
If you’re a guy it will also make you look more solid. Kinda like a push up bra for dudes.
working out in cotton is hell
If you’re using antiperspirant that boasts that it lasts all day, it works by encasing the aluminium salts that make it antiperspirant in microscopic wax beads that are supposed to break open over the day as you move around. This leaves waxy stains behind that are a pain to wash out as the aluminium salts and wax protect each other from detergent and water.
What works is something acidic that will react with the aluminium salts and ideally the wax, too. I’ve had great success soaking t-shirts in water with some sulfamic acid (also available as coffee machine descaler) for a day or two. Vinegar might work, but it’ll be less effective and so take longer and need more, so will be smelly and more expensive.
They make non aluminum antiperspirants (least according to the package, I’m using Dove ones currently) that boast all day protection. Since I switched my shirts don’t get stained in the arm pits anymore.
Also found trimming armpit hair helped too.
From my experience, it’s from the deodorant, not sweat itself. Not sure the fix, but I know people have had varying success with their methods.
I’ll second this. I smelled worse wearing antiperspirant than deodorant. I switched because antiperspirant gives me a rash, but it turns out i smell better with deodorant too.
Same. I kept trying stronger antiperspirant, thinking the sweat was the stink but it turned out it was the combination of antiperspirant and sweat that smelled bad. Deodorant without antiperspirant works so much better for me.
Yeah, Id always heard the yellow was sebum, but I switched to deodorant years ago and haven’t gotten pit stains since.
wear black :p
but also, do “spa day” with oxiclean and very hot water. I think some people also use ammonia? Oxiclean by itself has worked fine for me tho.
:: cries in white cat owner::
Seriously though, darker colors and modeled is better than flat black.
Something I learned recently that I anecdotally believe based on my own experience is that synthetics get smellier faster, trap body odor and enable some types of odor producing bacteria to grow better than most natural fibers which I found interesting as all the exercise materials that are marketed as breathing better are synthetic or blends. I am not certain if there is a specific way to clean these materials to to avoid that but I have always found that if anything starts to smell ensuring that I hang it outside and let the UV go to work always helps but I am in Australia so our UV punches above many other parts of the world from what I have been told.
I just wear my synthetic workout clothes into the shower every day, hang them up, and I get several uses out of them before they start to smell and need to get properly laundered. Synthetic dries quickly, there’s no reason not to just give it a rinse every time you use it. Other than starting to smell faster, it’s vastly superior in performance to hydrophilic fibers like cotton. Only thing better is wool, but that requires cruelty, violence, and other abuses of vulnerable individuals.
A couple of other people have commented on this, but no one’s fully explained the mechanism, so:
Fabric that’s petroleum-derived like polyester and most other synthetics traps odors and resists washing in ways that natural fibers don’t. Some people think this is because synthetics are less breathable than natural fibers, and while this is often the case, that’s not actually the main cause. Rather, this is because being oil-derived makes the fibers water-resistant, which keeps them from being thoroughly cleaned, and also traps body oils, resulting in food for odor-causing bacteria.
Here’s a good video explaining this in more detail, for the curious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJVYTnFjiFg
Honestly, I don’t think there’s much to do about that one beyond making sure to get 100% natural fiber clothes. As a bonus, it’s often less irritating to the skin and helps reduce a major source of micro plastics.
Some antiperspirants are further much tougher to wash off and will tend to resist washing, but I don’t know the mechanism behind this one, so I can’t really advise on it, apart from saying that I’ve not encountered the issue with natural deodorants.
Mix oxyclean with washing soda and soak your shirts in it for a few hours before putting them in the washing machine with Gain detergent.
I rub a bit of detergent in trouble spots when I take my clothes off. Works really well with blood too.
I also switched to a deodorant that doesn’t leave marks on my clothes.
Citric acid is dirt cheap and does wonders for some cleaning jobs. Many recommend vinegar for these things, but citric acid doesn’t leave a smell and works for a lot of the same things. I guess anything acidic would do.
A human buying antiperspirant is like Superman buying kryptonite. Sweating is one of our biggest super powers. Learn to love it. Shower before you work out, and you won’t stink.
Sorry, this is more about some of the comments than OP, who never mentioned stinking.
Better detergent. If you are not sure which, just try a few out until you find one that works. For me it was ariel powder that really made a difference (also easy to store and lasts a while)
Saw a solution on the web somewhere that worked for me for colors (not whites, you will see why).
If you have stains already, I use a 50/50 of water and Tide Free and Clear in a spray bottle and I spray drench the stained area. Throw that in the washer and let it wait for wash day. Hours or days to let the Borax in it do its thing. Works great for oil stains too.
For straight up stank, like the mildew in the shoulder seams that will come out when you sweat, I use oxi in the tub with detergent, then cleaning strength vinegar (30%) in the fabric softener compartment (but not with whites and chlorine bleach, DON’T GENERATE CHLORINE GAS). Just like 2 or 3 tablespoons. You will smell it when you move the load to the dryer, but it mostly fades while it tumbles. The stank fades away every wash and is usually gone after 3. And it helps sanitize your washer between bleaches.
When I have issues with the underarms of my workout shirts coming out still discolored from sweat+deodorant, I like to take a small amount of laundry detergent = just enough to dampen the areas needing extra help. Then I put it in the washer, add my detergent for the load, with a presoak setting so the clothes all soak in the water and detergent for 15 minutes before the wash cycle actually starting.
I wash my workout clothes on the roughest setting. Probably shortens the life of the clothes but gets the drink out.
