Today in this article, we’ll take a look at how to maintain your hockey gloves best and also how to wash them. But most importantly, showing you some steps that you can take that will prevent you from ruining them while you’re washing them.
Prevent your Hockey gloves
We all know if you do a bad job of this, sometimes your palms can go very crispy and brittle. We’re going to be showing you some steps that you can take to make sure this doesn’t happen. But most importantly, if you don’t want to have to do this sooner rather than later, the key is prevention.
The way you prevent your gloves from stinking and needing to be washed sooner rather than later is by making sure but every single time you use them, you unpack them as quickly as you can from your bag. So whether it’s training or a game anytime, you use those gloves to get them outside of the bag.
This goes for pretty much all of your equipment to get it out of the bag and let it breathe. You don’t have to have somewhere specific like a hockey drying rack to be able to do this. You can use anything around the house like a coat hook, a hangout, a doorframe, or whatever you’ve got to get your equipment out of the bag and now the air to circulate around. It is going to be key to making sure that it doesn’t build up bacteria smell. But most importantly, it doesn’t prematurely break down.
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Wash your Hockey gloves
If you’ve gotten to the stage, where prevention isn’t going to work because your gloves already stink and you want to get rid of this, you’re going to have to wash them. A lot of players can be worried because you know your gloves are perfect. They fit just the way that you want them to, and you don’t want to ruin them in the washing machine.
Bear in mind that your gloves are a protective piece of equipment. They’re built to take a beating sometime in the washing machine provided you do it correctly is going to cause your gloves no harm. What you want to try and do is wash them from anywhere between 30 minutes to 1 hour on a cold wash cycle. It is the important bit.
When you can see gloves getting crispy or getting ruined is when too much heat is applied to the gloves. They’re used to being cold. But they’re not used to being incredibly hot, so 60 degree washes to be able to kill bacteria that might be good with some items of clothing but not with your hockey equipment, especially your gloves a cold wash.
You can also add some antibacterial and some fabric softener, the antibacterial, obviously to fight the bacteria. The fabric softener to make sure that the palms stay nice and soft. What you want to avoid doing is adding anything like bleach because that’ll eat away the foam padding inside the gloves.
The spin cycle is going to be useful for you. You don’t have to be worried about this. It is not going to damage your gloves. What you want to do is use a spin cycle if possible to reduce or remove as much moisture and water from the gloves as you possibly can before they come out.
Dry your Hockey gloves
The drying process is the most critical part.
Then putting your gloves face down or palms down over a direct heat source like a heater isn’t going to be the best way to drive them. That’s when you can see the palms getting very crispy, very hard and brittle. What you want to do is drive a glove, palms facing up to allow as much of that moisture to seep away from the palms to keep them nice and soft.
You can use things like a regular house fan to be able to cool the gloves off again cold air. And you can even use a hairdryer if you are a little bit pressed for time. But still, making sure that you don’t use it on hot air. You want to keep the air that’s going through the gloves cool or at room temperature or maybe a little above room temperature but nothing too hot.
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You can leave your gloves in places like tabletops, countertops, work surfaces, shoe racks also great, anywhere that you’ll be able to ensure that the palms of your gloves are facing upwards and they get a good circulation of air.
Store your Hockey gloves
In terms of storing. My equipment after a finished playing or training, I tend to leave my hockey gear out of the bag until the day that I need it, then I pack it back into the bag. But of course, I know even though this is great for ventilating my gear, making sure that it gets plenty of air depending on how much space you have around your house, this might not be feasible for you to do.
*NOTE:
The trick is simply making sure you keep those palms up and finding a well-ventilated place for your gloves to dry. The drying process is key to make sure that you get the best result when you’ve washed your gloves. You don’t want to accelerate over the drying process because that’s when you can run into a few problems.
You want to avoid very hot direct heat because that’s going to contribute towards your gloves breaking down after you’ve washed them because it makes the palms incredibly crispy, and it affects other parts of the gloves in different ways. You want to make sure that you avoid direct heat and overly accelerating the drying process.
Something that’s important to mention is that equipment pads liners are forever changing because the sport is forever developing. So provided you keep the fundamentals in this article, which is using cold water avoiding direct heat sources, trying not to over accelerate the drying process or the washing process, and making sure that you let your gloves get as much ventilation and airflow as possible. So they can dry as naturally as they possibly can.
All of those points will go towards making sure that you can do the best job that you can. But of course, this is a trial and error process depending on what type of gloves that you have, but the points that we’ve gone over in this sharing will pretty much make sure that you don’t do anything that will damage the gloves that you have.
Just remember there’s absolutely nothing wrong with running your equipment to be more hygienic, although that’s where that smell is a sign that you’ve been working hard on the ice. All it does is indicate that there is a buildup of bacteria inside your equipment, and all that’s going to do is eat away at it and make sure that it breaks down a lot sooner than it should.
Making sure that your equipment doesn’t smell. It’s not only more hygienic. But it’s mean that your equipment is going to last a lot longer and you’re going to be able to get a lot more use out of it.
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Concluding
Thanks for reading! Hopefully, this sharing “How to clean hockey gloves without ruining palms “ of washing has given you a couple of pointers and tips that you can take away to make sure that your gloves don’t smell. If they do smell, hopefully, we’ve shown you some tips that you can use to make sure that you do the best job that you can when you watch them ensure you get the best result.
If there’s anything that you do particularly at home that we’ve not included in this sharing that does a really good job over number one stopping your gloves from smelling, and number two if they do smell maybe during the washing process you have a slightly different technique, comment down below. Because people are going to be reading it and you might be able to help somebody out.
I also wanted to give a big shout out, and a thank you to David. Who’s the equipment manager of the brave clan in Glasgow, Scotland. A lot of the points in this sharing. We discussed back and forth. He’s the equipment manager, so he has a lot of tricks of the trade that he uses to make sure that he’s players’ gloves stay in the best possible shape. So thank you very much, David.
Let us know what you want to see next. And Puck Drawn Hockey will catch you at the next one. Thank you guys and take care!
