For an athlete, hygiene of sportswear and shoes is of paramount importance!

And here is another instructive story from my sports practice...

I knew one powerlifter, I don’t even remember his name, let’s call him Anton for clarity. He worked out in our gym, and worked quite productively and successfully. Every month I made impressive progress and gained weight. I trained hard, with passion, with fire. Many even envied him in the good sense of the word...

But Anton had one negative point, which actually played a cruel joke on him, and which I want to tell you about today...

It seemed like he did everything right: he always warmed up well, and without a good warm-up he didn’t even lift heavy weights, and he never ignored cardio training. But still, he missed one little thing... It would be more accurate to say: “a little thing, in his opinion,” because the hygiene of sportswear and shoes is not a little thing at all, but an integral part of the training process in fitness, bodybuilding, powerlifting, and indeed in any other disciplines...

The fact is that Anton always trained in the same clothes and shoes! He preferred some cheap short-sleeved rash guard, thick sweatpants and sneakers. That's exactly how it stuck in my memory. Why exactly? Yes, because I’ve never seen it any other way. This is what he always wore in the hall. He didn’t have a wife then, he was young and single – of course there was no time for washing clothes...

After each workout, Anton threw his clothes and shoes, damp from sweat, into his sports bag and went home... Apparently it was in his bag that it dried for the next workout. Or maybe it didn’t even dry completely! And when he came to the gym again, he put it on again and again...

We already thought that he was injured, or where he went for permanent residence, or decided to change the fitness club. But it turned out that Anton, having not followed the basic rules of sports hygiene for a long time, contracted some kind of dermatitis or balanitis - in short, a corrosive disease. A rash appeared all over his body, itching and redness of the skin appeared. In general, Anton thundered with all this “happiness” into KozhVen, and there it’s not like swinging, you can really go out for a walk on the street and you can only do it at a set time, and only for half an hour!

This is how failure to comply with the basic rules of sports hygiene can knock an athlete out of a training rut for an indefinite period of time, and maybe even ultimately cost him the title step of the podium!

So, our dear readers - bodybuilders, lifters, weightlifters and fitness models, keep clean and never ignore the little things, because it’s the little things that add up to something meaningful and significant in our lives!