Please join us in welcoming Kru Clifton Brown as Head Coach at Lotus Fitness & Thai Boxing! Kru Clifton is Canada’s most decorated Muay Thai practitioner and a 5 times World Champion, attaining 32 knock outs, out of his 43 wins before retiring in 2010.
During Clifton’s competitive career, Clifton trained exclusively at Siam No.1 Muay Thai Academy, under the tutelage of Ajahn Suchart Yodkerepauprai. Clifton also trained with Professor, and Muay Thai Grandmaster, Kru Yodtong Senanan, at Sityodtong Muay Thai Camp in Chonburi, Thailand.
In April 2017, MuayThai Canada nominated Clifton Brown as the first head coach of the Canadian National Team. He’s also coached and cornered members of our fight team to success at recent MuayThai Ontario Provincial Tournaments (Hyedie Hashimoto, 2018 Gold Medalist 57kg C Class, and Charles Chen, 2017 Gold Medalist, 57kg B Class).
Many of us have been training under Kru Clifton’s tutelage for a while and we can’t wait for everyone at Lotus to learn the traditions and culture of the art of Muay Thai from such a venerable and esteemed teacher.
There’s nothing better than getting your first pair of boxing gloves! Maybe you love the color, the design, and you’re loving your new Muay Thai or Kickboxing regimen.
Then, a couple of months into your program, you start noticing… your hands smell extremely funky after you finish your class.
You take a sniff of your gloves and… OH MY, they smell like a critter crawled inside them and died.
Oh my, my fingers smell like death after class… does anyone else notice? (Answer: YES)
Stop Smelly Gloves Before They Start
If your gloves have gotten to the point where they smell like death, there’s little that can be done to bring them back. The odor can be reduced, or masked, but once the bacterial colony and odours inside establish, the smell’s there. We hate waste, but, sorry, the gloves are done and it’s time they are tossed out.
The key is to be proactive and maintain your gloves from day one. Here are our suggestions to keep your gloves clean and fresh for years to come.
Wash Your Hands
Start with clean hands, washed with soap and water, to minimize the amount of bacterial you put in your gloves.
Use Freshly Cleaned Handwraps
Always use freshly cleaned handwraps when you use your gloves. Handwraps should be handwashed in a sink the first couple of times (they bleed dyes heavily and can ruin the rest of your wash), and then machine-washed inside a laundry bag, and hung dry. Do NOT re-roll up sweaty handwraps and store them in your gym bag or else your handwraps will colonize your gloves with nasty bacteria!
Clean Inside and Out
Disinfectant products like Odor-Aid (our favorite, plus they’re Canadian), Disinfectant wipes, or even homemade sprays with teatree oil or other disinfectants should be used after class. Spray the interior and exterior of the gloves and wipe with a clean cloth. We keep a teatree oil/distilled water spray and towels at the gym for you to use for both our thai pads, belly pads, and your own gear.
Odour Aid is a Canadian-made product and we love it!
Moisture Wicking Inserts – Teabags or Cedar Chip Glove Fresheners
Our hands sweat a ton while punching and kicking, and the moisture that gets trapped in the deep crevasses, if allowed to remain damp, create that “wet towel” smell. After cleaning your gloves, be sure to either insert teabags or cedar chip glove fresheners or boot bananas to wick the moisture out. We keep a box of green teabags at our front desk so feel free to take a pair if you need. The teabags or the cedar chips do not need to be changed every time, they can often last for many months of re-use.
Green Tea Bags inserted into your glove help wick moisture out, preventing bacteria and odour from the start.Cute! Boot Banana from the UK
Store In The Open
Don’t leave the gloves in your zipped up gym bag, or in your car trunk. Put them out in the open where air can move and help with the drying process.
Strategies to Avoid
Putting them in the freezer – the freezer is not cold enough to actually “kill” bacteria, so don’t bother.
Washing them in the laundry – Gets them too wet, and damages the leather or vinyl.
Leaving them in the sun for extended periods of time – Can damage the exterior and doesn’t effectively wick the moisture from the inside of the glove. Short periods outside in the sun is fine.
Febreeze or other odour neutralizers – Are fine, but lack the actual disinfectant agents we want to kill bacteria.
Your Partners Thank You!
There’s nothing worse than holding pads (or even worse, sparring) with someone with smelly gear. So, practice good gear hygiene and both you and your partner’s noses will thank you. And, when you get more gear (shinguards, headgear, etc.) the same care goes a long way. Training should be challenging and difficult, but not because of odour!
