This guide is only for synthetic and cotton fibers. This will destroy your wool/silk clothing if you use it on them. It’s good for your standard laundry, but especially important for athletic clothing, which is more prone to getting stinky.

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TLDR: Get Tide Ultra Oxi Detergent or 365 Sport Laundry Detergent + Oxygen bleach, wash your clothes quickly after training, use a little citric acid in your fabric softener dispenser. If clothes are stinky after washing, don’t put them in the dryer, rewash first.

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STANDARD LAUNDRY PRACTICE:

• Wash grappling clothes as soon as possible. Letting your sweaty clothes sit with no ventilation in a warm environment (like in your gear bag) is a recipe for microbial growth that will cause some stank. Leaving clothes in your car on a warm day = heat + humidity = stank factory.

If you can’t wash quickly, put them somewhere that minimizes heat and humidity - so don’t leave them in a closed bag or in a pile on the floor.

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If your clothes stink after washing, and before drying, DO NOT DRY ON HIGH HEAT. Ideally, rewash it immediately. Drying a garment will make oils more difficult to remove, and using heat will make it worse. If you have to dry it for some reason before you can rewash, ideally air dry or tumble dry with no heat.

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• Use a detergent that has enzymatic ingredients. Check the ingredients for ‘lipase’ or the word ‘enzyme’. If your detergent doesn’t have any, you can use “Biz Powder” that you can find at Walmart for pretty cheap (it also has oxygen bleach). If you don’t have enzymes in your detergent, your laundry will likely end up stinking eventually. Enzymes are expensive to add so a lot of detergent manufacturers are cutting them out to cut costs and formulas change often - check the label.
• Either use a detergent that contains ‘oxygen bleach’/’oxi’ product, or add something that has it. Check the “Laundry Ingredients explained” section below to find options for which products you can use.
• Adding an acidic rinse aid in your fabric softener dispenser will help bring the ph back down (even if you don’t use ammonia, detergents are alkaline) and will help make your fabric feel soft without feeling greasy. The cheapest option is citric acid powder. It’s worth doing I promise you will be surprised at the results. This goes in the fabric softener tray where it’s added right at the end of the wash - you only want the pH back down right at the end.
• Don’t use scent boosters and DEFINITELY don’t use fabric softeners. They add oils/wax to your clothes, which bacteria feed on and contribute to stank buildup.
• Wash on hot or at least warm. Extra Rinses Extra Better. Turn Soil Level/Water level up as much as possible.
• If your machine has a soak/presoak option, use it when possible. It will give the enzymes in detergent more time to work and you’ll get better results. If you don’t have this option, really make sure you’re not overloading your washing machine.
• If you think you might need a cleaning boost, you can add ammonia to your laundry for the wash cycle.

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DO NOT USE CHLORINE BLEACH WITH AMMONIA IT PRODUCES CHLORAMINE GAS WHICH IS HIGHLY TOXIC. Do not pour ammonia onto any laundry detergent. Put detergent into washer, then add clothes, then add ammonia product. Any 5-10% ammonia hydroxide product works fine - you’re really just trying to get the pH of your wash up high to improve the breakdown of oils and residues.

NOTE: Ammonia can cause some dye bleeding, color fading, and even potentially weaken fabric fibers. It is however, highly effective at odor removal when combined with detergents during your rinse cycle

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HOW MUCH DETERGENT SHOULD I USE:

There is a lot of conflicting information out there about dosing, but after digging through the research, the chemistry, and way too many laundry forums, this is what makes the most sense.

Use less detergent than the scoop tells you, but more than the minimalist “one teaspoon” advice floating around online. For most loads with grappling gear in most machines, two to three tablespoons of powdered detergent or one small HE cap of liquid is the right starting point.

If your clothes smell good out of the washer but stink again once you sweat in them, feel waxy or stiff, or your whites look dull, you are probably under-dosing. If your gear feels filmy, musty, or like residue is sticking around, you may be using too much.

In short, start with a moderate but not tiny amount and adjust based on results.

RESCUE ROUTINE FOR STANKY GEAR:

Synthetic fabrics (virtually all jiu jitsu gear) is more prone to stank buildup because they’re more prone to oil buildup compared to cotton. They’re hydrophobic and moisture wicking, but they hold onto oils very well. If your clothes got stinky, it’s okay. Don’t get worked up it doesn’t mean you’re gross. It has happened to all of us.