Hacks for longer lasting activewear

Most avid activewear users know the struggle to clean your leggings, sports bras and tanks over and over again. Quality activewear in general is supposed to hold up to the toughest of workouts. Sometimes what shortens the life of a legging isn’t the wear....but it’s the wash. Here’s 5 tips for longer lasting activewear:

1- Hang Dry

This one is probably the most obvious and you’ve heard it before. Although it might be a pain to hang dry it is the number 1 thing you can do for your clothing. Dryers produce heat and heat overtime ruins the elasticity in your clothing. When we have our fabrics made they actually “set” the elastic/stretch in the fabric with a flash of heat. Once that fabric gets heated again it will begin to “reset.” Will one cycle in the dryer kill them? Probably not. If you do it weekly you will for sure start to feel the stretch become different. Many times we get emails from customer who bought our leggings over a year ago and also just opened up a new pair to find the stretch to be different. Most likely it is due to the stretch of the old pair being effected overtime. Just something to keep in mind!

2- Cold Wash

Very similar to the avoiding the dryer you will want to avoid the hot water of a washer machine. Any type of heat whether dry or wet will have an effect over time.

3- Like Materials

Washing your activewear with other activewear will greatly lengthen the life span and quality of your clothing. This means avoiding towels, heavy sweats or even light cottons. Beyond the actual blend of the fabric we work meticulously to bring you fabrics that have a smooth soft finish. Washing your leggings with abrasive materials will start to have a bad effect on the finish of the fabric. One of the effects and the most common is pilling. Even anti-pilling fabrics have a hard time holding up to cottons in the wash cycle.

4- Minimal Detergent

Yes you need detergent but it is important not to overdue it. If you created too many suds that don’t all wash out of the fabric you will actually begins to trap oder. If you want to take your wash game to another level look for detergents that contain enzyme cellulase which will help reduce pilling of the fabric.

5- No Dryer Sheets/Softeners

While Dryer sheets and softeners are great for average clothing, they aren’t very good for your activewear. The biggest effect they have is that they contain chemicals that are counter productive to wicking. Overtime they will actually wear away are the wicking properties in the fabric.

We hope all of these tips are helpful for your next wash cycle! If you have any questions email myself at michael@gtsclothing.com or our team at theteam@gtsclothing.com

Other good reads:

The 411 on all of our fabrics

Speed is everything