How to Clean Inside of Boxing Gloves
Cleaning the inside of your boxing gloves is essential to remove the bacteria that can damage your gloves, cause your boxing gloves to smell and even cause skin irritation and fungal infections on your hands. Like the rest of your gym clothes, you should always clean them after each use and never leave them for long periods in an enclosed space such as a locker or gym bag, as these are the ideal environments for bacteria to thrive.
Let’s look into the when, why and how of cleaning boxing gloves, so you can keep yours fresher for longer.
Why You Should Clean Your Boxing Gloves
Although our sweat doesn’t contain bacteria and can even be useful at cleaning our skin by washing the bacteria and microbes from our skin, if the sweat rinses the bacteria away and then collects in our clothes or boxing gloves, it can stagnate and the bacteria will grow rapidly. Bacteria thrive in dark and damp environments such as inside boxing gloves, which damages the lining of the gloves and causes them to wear down quickly, resulting in you needing to replace them regularly.
Bacteria growth also causes your gloves to smell and when they come into contact with your skin, especially for long periods like an hour-long training session, they can irritate your skin, causing fungal infections, spots and flare-ups in pre-existing skin conditions like eczema.
To avoid all of this unpleasantness, you should regularly clean your boxing gloves.
How Often You Should Clean Your Boxing Gloves
You should clean your boxing gloves after each use. However, how intense your training session is i.e. how much you sweat into your boxing gloves is the biggest indicator of how thoroughly you should clean your boxing gloves each time.
Each time you train, whether you’re sparring, hitting focus pads or punching bags, or alternating between punching bags and weight training in a boxing fitness class, you’ll be working up a sweat. That sweat will likely drip from your arms into your gloves, as well as being produced by your hands in the hot environment of the boxing gloves, so your boxing gloves will always be sweaty after training, and will always need some form of cleaning.
There are several ways in which you can clean your boxing gloves.
How to Clean Your Boxing Gloves
Since you can’t just throw your boxing gloves in the washing machine with the rest of your workout clothes as it will damage the materials and render them ineffective at protecting your hands, you need to take some time to clean your gloves each time. What’s more, as well as cleaning your boxing gloves, you need to take some preventative measures to reduce the bacteria in the gloves. This includes:
- Washing your hands before wearing your boxing gloves
- Wearing a clean pair of hand wraps under your gloves each time
- Alternating boxing gloves if you don’t have time between training sessions to fully clean them
Let’s look at how you should clean them now.
Disinfectant Spray
The number one way to kill bacteria when you can’t soak an item in soap and water is by using a disinfectant or deodorising spray. You can buy specialist sprays in supermarkets and sports shops, or you can mix one part white vinegar with two parts water and spray the inside of your gloves a few times, ensuring you cover the curve of the fingers and the thumb area.
Once sprayed, you should leave them overnight or ideally for 24 hours, so the disinfectant can work and any moisture left in the glove can disappear. Alternatively, you could also sprinkle a teaspoon of baking soda into each glove, ensuring it covers all areas and leave it for 24 hours, as baking soda can kill bacteria, however, this is less effective than chemical sprays or vinegar.
You should avoid using alcohol to wash the gloves, both inside and outside as well as perfume sprays. Alcohol can dry out the leather or synthetic leather used on the gloves and cause cracks to form, breaking the gloves, while the perfume sprays simply mask the smell of the gloves, without killing the bacteria.
Air Flow
If your training session was light, then you can simply air out your gloves without disinfecting them, however, the best cleaning method for boxing gloves is to spray with disinfectant and then air dry them.
Opening the gloves as fully as possible and allowing air to pass through them helps stop any bacteria from spreading, as well as reducing the smell and helping them to dry thoroughly. You can hang them outside to ensure the air is warm and dry, however, if you hang them on a washing line, never leave them in direct sunlight for more than 20 minutes, as the heat from the sun can dry out the leather of the gloves and cause them to crack and break.
Moisturisers
With repeated cleaning, leather boxing gloves may appear dry, so it can be useful to use a leather moisturiser, also known as conditioner, or simple essential oils such as lemon. By gently rubbing them into the exterior of the boxing glove, it will reanimate the leather glove, just as moisturiser does for our skin, allowing it to become more flexible and less prone to cracking under pressure.
Using essential oils will also give your gloves a natural pleasant scent, which will help with gloves that may begin to smell slightly if you haven’t previously washed them well or regularly.
When You Should Replace Your Boxing Gloves
We don’t bare-knuckle box anymore as boxing gloves protect your hands from harm, so if your boxing gloves are beginning to wear down and your hands hurt after training, it’s time for a new pair. Heavier gloves that protect your hands more like 14 or 16 oz gloves have more padding in them than smaller gloves that allow you to hit harder like 10 oz gloves pros use, but both can wear down after time, as the padding takes the impact of your punches.
Ideally, you wouldn’t wait for your hands to begin to hurt, however. If you notice cracks in the leather, wearing down of the materials, or the velcro or string closure around the wrist beginning to fail, you should invest in a new pair of boxing gloves to reduce the risk of injury.
Choosing the right size boxing gloves for you is also integral for your safety, so you should understand the weight of boxing gloves before buying.
How to Choose the Best Boxing Gloves
Whether you’re a beginner looking for boxing gloves or a seasoned professional, the main thing to look for when buying boxing gloves is the weight of the glove. Boxing gloves are measured in ounces, and generally, the heavier the person, the heavier the glove needed. However, different-weight gloves are needed for different aspects of boxing training and fighting.
A pro boxer will use 10 oz boxing gloves in a real fight as they intend to hurt their opponent to achieve victory, however, when sparring with a training partner, you’ll use sparring gloves which are much thicker, to protect your hands and their body. When training with focus pads and punching bags, you’ll want gloves somewhere in the middle, as you still need to protect your hands, but not to the same extent as you would when sparring.
Children under 10 years old should use 6 oz boxing gloves, however, older than this, you should choose your training gloves according to your weight as follows:
- 6 – 8 oz gloves for people under 45 kg
- 10 – 12 oz gloves for people between 46 and 68 kg
- 14 oz gloves for people between 69 and 80 kg
- 16 – 18 oz gloves for people over 80 kg
So, for example, most adult men choosing boxing gloves should have 12 or 14 oz gloves for training. The gloves won’t make you hit harder so don’t make the mistake of choosing heavier gloves than you need.
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