How to wash and dry your BJJ gi.
This is part 2 of my BJJ Hygiene miniseries. You can check out part 1 here. If you subscribe, you’ll never miss a new post in your inbox. And it’s free.
You’d think I wouldn’t need an article on how to do laundry, but 1) society and broken families have failed many of us, and perhaps you weren’t taught how to do a load of wash, and 2) you’re a white belt.
I was talking to a friend at church who taught the white belt fundamentals class at his gym. He recalled one particular adult who always had a damp gi … at the beginning of class. He had to pull that guy aside and investigate: Did he not have enough time to air-dry his gi after the wash, or was it never taken out of his gym bag from the last class?
Because one of those options is an understandable oops. I’ve rolled in a partially dried but clean gi before. It was like putting on a wet pair of jeans. Restrictive and hardly helpful.
The other option is how hospitals make money. They got enough, they don’t need more because you didn’t wash your gi and now you gave the gym staph. Don’t be a jerk.
Like many things, details matter. How you take care of your gi says a lot about how you take care of other things in your life, like people, spouses, work, etc. Your gi isn’t just a pair of gym shorts, it is a uniform you will put on to become better than you were yesterday. You need to treat it well.
Here’s how: air dry, wash, air dry.
Air dry your gi before you wash it.
If you can, spread out your gi so it can dry in the sun and open air. UV rays kill microbes and germs, from the bacteria that make things smell to the fungus that infects your skin. Also, sunshine and air help dry out the gi, removing the moist environment most funk-causing microbes need in order to grow big and strong. Drape it on the patio, over the hood of your car, or even on an old-fashioned clothesline. When it dries, it probably won’t even have a smell.
However, this can be a problem for folks like me who go straight to work after training. I used to spread my gi out on the trunk of my car … until someone stole it. Whoever wanted a dirty, used A4 gi so badly they stole one off the back of my car in the parking lot, thanks for not also stealing my catalytic converter.
Now it stays in the gym bag in my trunk, festering like a Wuhan lab experiment. I can smell the boar taint when I get in my car after even a moderately warm day, and it’s horrible (but they ain’t getting another gi from me!).
So I get it, you can’t always lay it out to air dry immediately after training. I have to lay it out when I get home and let the sun do its thing before I wash it.
Wash your gi (duh).
Obviously, the critical step in managing boar taint is washing your gi.
Editor’s note: “boar taint” is a highly technical term used to describe the smell of a wild boar/feral pig, whose testosterone is so funky you can smell him in the thicket. It can also permeate the meat and make it gamey.
The lesson here, for those with eyes to see and ears to hear, is not to be a pig.
Admittedly, smell is easier to manage if you use regular scented detergent. I don’t, because they are made with endocrine-disrupting chemicals and fragrances that jack with your hormones. My hormones are jacked enough as it is without adding Tide Pods to the mix.
Instead, we use this stuff, which has done a great job on all my dirty work and gym clothes.
The ingredients are pretty clean, and it smells like mint. It does a good job and stores well. (I don’t get a kick back if you buy this, but maybe I can if enough of you read this article.)
We used to make our own laundry soap in a 5-gallon bucket, but my wife and I didn’t feel like it quite had enough oomph with the gym clothes. Here is the recipe we used if you’re interested in being extra crunchy and trying it.
I’ve also added extra borax, essential oils like tea tree and eucalyptus, and white vinegar to the wash. However, while researching this article, I realized I was probably doing all that wrong. Not using enough essential oils to matter, not using enough vinegar, or mixing it at the wrong time in the cycle, etc. Additional research may be needed.
Air dry your gi after you wash it.
We already talked about moist environments and smell, so when the wash cycle is done, hang your gi up to dry as soon as you can. It smells better, and then you don’t have to use fragrances. But the main reason is that if you dry your gi in the dryer, it will often shrink and become unusable.
You might get away with it with certain brands, but it would suck to spend all that money on a gi and then not be able to wear it anymore because it shrank in size. Suddenly that A3 is an A2 and you’re a
Though, you could wage a bit of psychological warfare on your favorite high-calorie grappler and give them your old gis that shrank in the dryer. It’ll either motivate them to lose some pounds, or mess with their minds so you gain an advantage while rolling. Win-win.
Conclusion
That’s it: air dry, wash, air dry. I prefer this method because I think it makes my gi cleaner, and because of the moral superiority it gives me.
Fellow grapplers, what did I miss? Crunchier people than me, how do you handle your dirty gym clothes? Comment below.
Note: Much thanks to John Moody from whom I gathered a lot of this information through Facebook messenger. You can check out his article “A Martial Arts Primer – Choosing what and where to train” on his Substack.
