Why Use ACTIVE Detergent For Activewear?

Have you ever wondered why your workout clothes never smell 100% clean or maybe they start smelling within 5 minutes of starting your work out, even if you just washed them? Also, have you noticed that they don’t quite perform as they used too? The sweat-wicking effect isn’t as pronounced, the fit/form of the clothes have changed, etc?

There’s a reason for this!

In the past, clothing tended to be made using only natural fabrics like cotton, silk, wool, etc.  Today’s activewear is developed with performance in mind and features like sweat-wicking, active cooling, form-fitting, breathability, and so on require a different type of fabric. So today’s activewear uses what’s known as synthetic or technical fibers. These materials are developed using very thin, natural and manmade fibers, that are woven extremely tight together using advanced manufacturing techniques that didn’t exist in the past.  This is the opposite of old school clothing that used thicker threads that were woven together either by hand or less sophisticated machinery.

There are some good and bad things that come with these advancements in fabrics. The good is they perform exponentially better than old school fabrics when it comes to performance. The bad news is excessive amounts of oil, sweat, and dead skin are trapped in these tightly woven fibers.

Why Traditional Detergents Don’t Work Well

These problems associated with technical fibers would not be problems if regular detergents worked well, however, traditional cleaning and care methods just aren’t effective on modern clothing. This is due to how traditional detergents are made.  Traditional detergents were made with “old school” fabrics in mind (think thicker, looser fibers.) Traditional detergents could easily get into the crevices and break down trapped “gunk” while also leaving fresh scents and coating the fabrics with fabric softeners to boot. In fact, one of the main branding & marketing strategies of old school detergent brands was to coat fibers with a memorable scent (remember how your clothes smelled growing up?). 

Sadly, these things actually do the opposite with new technical fibers. Today’s new age materials are woven together so tightly that traditional detergents aren’t able to get all the trapped gunk out of the crevices. Then things like fabric softener & artificial scents actually coat over the trapped contaminants and lock them into these “pockets.” It goes against everything we learned growing up, but fabric softeners and clean scents actually warp your clothes, cripple their performance, AND make them smell worse!

That’s why after washing your gym clothes they tend to have a faint musty smell and start to stink 5 minutes into your workout as your body heats up.  You are essentially reactivating all this junk as soon as you start working out!