Eww, That Smell: A Guide to Cleaning Your Football Equipment
September 16th, 2019The offensive smell emitting from your athlete’s football equipment contains bacteria from sweat, skin cells and occasionally blood. These bacteria love to grow and multiply in your athlete’s equipment because it is confined, wet and warm. To avoid your athlete experiencing skin irritation, Staph infection, MRSA and other illnesses caused by these bacteria make cleaning your football equipment a daily habit.
CLEANING FOOTBALL HELMETS
The helmet is one of the most notorious pieces of equipment for harboring bacteria. For this first step in cleaning your football equipment, you should:
Avoid:
- abrasive cleaning pads that can scratch the outside of the helmet and damage the soft interior surfaces
- strong cleaning detergents that can leave a harsh residue and irritate skin.
Remove loose mud, dirt and debris from the helmet. You may need to use a clean dry cloth or paper towel.
Check for and replace rusted or missing hardware and broken or torn straps.
Helmets with removable pads
If your helmet has removable pads, remove the pads and set them aside.
Use a microfiber or soft cloth with warm water and gentle, liquid dish soap to thoroughly clean the chin strap and helmet shell (inside and out), rinse and dry with a soft cloth or paper towel.
Dip the removed pads in warm soapy water and wipe away any extra grime with a microfiber or soft cloth, rinse and set aside to dry.
Once the pads are dry, spray them with a disinfectant spray to kill stubborn bacteria.
Once all the parts are clean and dry reassemble the helmet and have the athlete put the helmet on. Check that pads get reinserted properly and check for proper fit.
Helmets with non-removable pads
If your helmet has an air bladder or non-removable pads, use a microfiber or soft cloth with warm water and gentle, liquid dish soap to thoroughly clean the chin strap and helmet inside and out. Make sure to get in between the pads on the inside of the helmet as best you can. Wipe the inside and outside of the helmet with a rag dipped in plain water to remove the soap.
To kill the bacteria from your sweat and skin cells that can travel inside the pads of your helmet, you will need to spray the entire inside of the helmet with a disinfectant. Leave the helmet sitting upright on a hard surface until it is COMPLETELY DRY; the spray will penetrate the pads as the helmet dries. Keep the helmet out of extreme heat or bright sunshine as it dries, as these can degrade the pads.
When cleaning your football equipment, have the athlete put the helmet on and check for proper fit. Air bladders will expand in hot weather and contract in cooler temperatures. Add or remove air to adjust the fit as needed.
CLEANING FOOTBALL SHOULDER PADS
Football pads need to DRY after each practice and game to reduce the growth of bacteria and mold.
You can cut down on the frequency of laundering pads to once or twice a week during football season if you allow the pads to completely dry after each practice and game. Once you get home from practice or a game, take your shoulder pads out of your gear bag and set them on the floor to dry.
Use a microfiber or soft cloth dampened with water to clean off dirt. Then wipe with a dry cloth to dry the shoulder pads. To remove stubborn streaks and disinfect football shoulder pads, clean them with an athletic gear disinfectant cleaning solution or a household disinfectant cleaning solution labeled safe to use on plastics. Always follow the instructions printed on the label.
Check for and replace rusted or missing hardware and broken or torn straps.
After the season is over, take your pads to be professionally reconditioned and sanitized. The pads will be removed from the hard-plastic shell and washed in 140-degree water and the shell will be inspected for cracks and cleaned with an anti-bacterial solution.
CLEANING FOOTBALL BODY PADS
Another step in cleaning your football equipment is cleaning football body pads. To clean removable body pads, remove pads and belt from the pants and launder them in a washing machine set on cold water using a bleach-free detergent. You may launder pads, belts, pants and jerseys together and you may air dry them or dry them in a clothes dryer set on LOW HEAT. Replace the pads and belt in the pants after drying.
To clean non-removeable pads, remove the belt and launder them in a washing machine set on cold water using a bleach-free detergent. You may launder pants with pads, belts, and jersey together and you may air dry them or dry them in a clothes dryer set on LOW HEAT. Replace the belt in the pants after drying.
Football pads need to DRY after each practice and game to reduce the growth of bacteria and mold.
Summary
Cleaning your football equipment should be part of your regular routine. Get into the habit of taking care of the football equipment that is designed to take care of you. Don’t get sidelined by bacteria that can cause skin irritation, Staph infection, MRSA or other illnesses. Wash and dry your football equipment regularly.
Thanks for explaining that jerseys and pads should be washed in cold water. My sister wants to help her son’s rugby team find high-quality uniforms before the start of the season. The info in your article should help his team learn to care for the uniforms properly!
It’s great that you talked about how important it is to clean your sports equipment the right way. Recently, I started to get back into exercising. I want to join a football team to switch up my working routine, so I’ll be sure to follow your cleaning tips! Thanks for the advice on what type of cleaning supplies I’d need to keep my helmet perfectly clean.
It was interesting when you mentioned that cleaning football equipment needs to be part of a regular routine. I would think that it would be a good idea to use a commercial laundry service in this situation. A commercial laundry service would be able to keep football equipment clean.
Henry – while a commercial service may be able to provide good cleaning and sanitization results for football equipment, our guide here presents ways that anyone, including players, parents, and team staff, can easily clean equipment. We recognize that the manufacturer you linked to in this comment (we have removed the link) counts commercial laundry services as its customers, but our aim is to provide information to allow everyone to improve the cleanliness of their equipment, just as we aim to assist parents, coaches, team staff, and others to ensure that athletes are properly fit to play according to manufacturer fitting guidelines. Thank you!
Thank you for your article as I plan on forwarding it and a few others to my son’s JV football coach. My son and I were discussing laundry today and it made me bring up his football things since a friend of mine asked why I had to wash certain things and said they should have a mesh bag with all of their things to wash or none, meaning the school does it so I asked my son why everything isn’t brought home in his bag and he said the shoulder pads, practice pants and helmet have to stay at the school so I asked him if they wash them regularly and he said no and that he’s even gotten comments from kids at football saying he stinks etc to which he has to choice but to reply that it’s the shoulder pads so now I’m kind of outraged. Between your article and the couple others it’s apparent they’re full of bacteria and sweat, left in lockers to try overnight (my son said they’re more like cages than lockers but since they’re not in direct open air that’s the same thing in my opinion) and that there’s no routine for at Least spraying them down with even just alcohol or some type of disinfectant before they hang them up and that the school does not wash them at all, only the game day jerseys and pants. I swear if my son catches staph or mrsa or even bacterial pneumonia from his football gear they Will have a lawsuit on their hands so Monday his coach and I are going to have a very serious conversation because to find out they’re not even being disinfected at the very least is appalling to me. Have you ever heard of this? An entire football season full of four days a week every week practice/games with no washing or disinfecting done on the helmets, shoulder pads and pants by a high school nonetheless? Thanks for your help with answering this because if they’re going to send home his mesh football shirt thing and of course his girdle we bought ourselves to be washed then they need to send all or at least disinfect the rest every day and maybe wash them every week or something since we aren’t allowed that opportunity to do it ourselves since it’s “their property” and has to stay at school smh.
Hi Ashley – unfortunately we cannot comment on specific laundry and sanitization practices of specific schools. We do always encourage proper cleaning of football equipment, and other sports equipment, as outlined in this post.
Hi, Thank you for the useful information. What are some types of antibacterial sprays you would recommend for cleaning the helmet? Thank you in advance for your help.
Hi Natasha! We don’t have any specific brands to endorse at this time, but you may find that both aerosol-type sprays or isopropyl alcohol-based sprays work for you, depending on the helmet manufacturer’s guidelines. We would not recommend bleach-based products.