No Stupid Questions

Is the issue the stains, or smell? If it’s the former, it’s likely your antiperspirant. Switching to non-aluminum deodorant avoids stains, but won’t prevent you from sweating. There are also “non-staining” antiperspirants, but I don’t know how effective they are.

If it’s lingering smells, probably try changing laundry detergents. You can maybe also try dabbing a little baking soda on the pits of your shirts before throwing them in the wash.

I also, despite being in good shape, sweat a ton. I honestly hate it, but there are much worse things to live with.

Anyways, I had the same pit stain problem as you. I found that it was my antiperspirant causing the problem. I switched away from an antiperspirant (which honestly wasn't really helping me sweat any less anyway) to a straight deodorant (Old Spice) and the problem went away.

I'm going to second the undershirts. They also prevent the wet spots on your good shirt.

Also, Old Spice, the blue gel stick not the powdery stuff, has been the only thing that actually keeps the sweating down.

From my experience, it's from the deodorant, not sweat itself. Not sure the fix, but I know people have had varying success with their methods.

My advise is to wear undershirts. Even the tank top ones will make a big difference in keeping your shirts clean.

Wear an undershirt. It will protect your nice clothes from stains. Get cotton ones as it will absorb and breathe better.

If you’re a guy it will also make you look more solid. Kinda like a push up bra for dudes.

My top tips:

Wash or at least rinse the garments as soon after getting them sweaty as you can.

Wash them with actually dirty clothes if possible. The dirt particles will absorb smell and act as an abrasive on the stains. If your clothes are generally too clean for this, use an oxy powder additive which will achieve the same effect.

Also: consider going without deodorant and antiperspirant and just use some isopropyl alcohol or similar to kill the bacteria in your armpits as needed; this results in less smell and less junk in your sweat to clean out of your shirts.

Lastly: wearing a technical shirt when working out will mean less sweat actually adhering to the fabric, making cleaning easier.

What are your current laundry methods, i.e., what sort of detergents do you use? Do you wash on warm or cold? Do you know the hardness of your water?

Most of the time when it comes to odor sticking on clothing related to exercise it's strongly related to the fibers of those cloths. The geometry of polyester fibers often used in athletic wear is known to hold on to oils and other body junk.

Generally, there are three factors that go into successfully washing clothing experiencing these problems.

1. Adequate detergents. You want something with good surfactants to capture and lift away soils, and enzymes of the right types that will help break down difficult soils into smaller molecules that the surfactants can better manage.
2. Temperature. Just as cold water will have a hard time washing away butter and oils from your dishes, cold water in your laundry is gonna have a more difficult time to wash away oils in your clothing. It's a common misconception that warm in your laundry is bad for clothes. In reality, in the US anyway, most warm settings on washing machines are only around 85 degrees Fahrenheit. Hot settings are usually barely reaching the 100 degree mark, so both of these are in line with your own body temperature as you're wearing the things. If the care tags on your garments say they can handle warm or hot washes, definitely do so. Things that may say cold can probably tolerate warm, too, given the temperature is really not that hot at all.
3. Time. Surfactants and enzymes need time to work. If your wash time is brief, or you're using a speed wash setting on your washer, you may not be giving enough time to let the chemicals do their work.

In regards to detergents, in the US, probably the best thing you can get is powdered Tide or Gain. These products includes a good surfactant system, a complete enzyme package, and oxygen bleach all in one. You don't really need anything more than that.

If you're using liquids, there are more options but also limitations. Again, Tide is probably the best as far as surfactants go but all liquids are going to be missing the other components. Certain enzymes don't like to live in a solution with water so they are missing from almost all formulations. Oxygen bleach is activated by water so by definition it can't be in a liquid product. In these cases you can use a booster product. OxiClean is a common one for just the oxygen bleach but it lacks enzymes. There's another product called Biz that you can find at Walmart and Meijer stores for very cheap. It's like seven bucks and has all of the oxygen bleach and enzymes you need.

TL;DR: wash in warm water for a longer time, and add Biz booster powder to your liquid detergent.

If you're using antiperspirant that boasts that it lasts all day, it works by encasing the aluminium salts that make it antiperspirant in microscopic wax beads that are supposed to break open over the day as you move around. This leaves waxy stains behind that are a pain to wash out as the aluminium salts and wax protect each other from detergent and water.

What works is something acidic that will react with the aluminium salts and ideally the wax, too. I've had great success soaking t-shirts in water with some sulfamic acid (also available as coffee machine descaler) for a day or two. Vinegar might work, but it'll be less effective and so take longer and need more, so will be smelly and more expensive.

I don't know but im now going to read to see if anyone has good tips.

The trick is not to wait until the end of the week to do it all during laundry day.

If your nice dress shirt got sweat on it during the day, best to wash it immediately when you get home.

How does your washing machine work? A standard cycle with mine takes 3 1/2 hours, and after so much soaking at 30C, even my workout t-shirts smell fine. The detergent is standard aldi powder.

The Hyper Fixed podcast has an episode about this called "The Pits."

TL;DL (iirc) don't let stains set by letting dirty laundry sit for a long time is probably the most important. Don't use a dryer. Try different solutions to pre-treat (vinegar/baking soda+water/dish soap).

I rub a bit of detergent in trouble spots when I take my clothes off. Works really well with blood too.

I also switched to a deodorant that doesn't leave marks on my clothes.

wear black :p

but also, do "spa day" with oxiclean and very hot water. I think some people also use ammonia? Oxiclean by itself has worked fine for me tho.

I could solve this issue for myself by dampening the shirts pre wash and massaging in hard soap (That's what wikipedia claims "Kernseife" is called in English. I hope it's righ lol) Then you let your clothes sit for 20 minutes or so, before putting them in the washing machine. I don't think I rinse it out. The mashine will do it anyways.

Once I started making my own deodorant, which is surprisingly easy, my shirts stopped getting pitted out. There are a bunch of recipes on YouTube and you can buy empty deodorant twist up containers. Bit of a pain but it works.

Mix oxyclean with washing soda and soak your shirts in it for a few hours before putting them in the washing machine with Gain detergent.

Something I learned recently that I anecdotally believe based on my own experience is that synthetics get smellier faster, trap body odor and enable some types of odor producing bacteria to grow better than most natural fibers which I found interesting as all the exercise materials that are marketed as breathing better are synthetic or blends. I am not certain if there is a specific way to clean these materials to to avoid that but I have always found that if anything starts to smell ensuring that I hang it outside and let the UV go to work always helps but I am in Australia so our UV punches above many other parts of the world from what I have been told.

Im so glad I grew up and can work shirtless remotely… high school was hell for me.

Sorry that doesn’t directly answer – but I found that aluminum antiperspirants didn’t help the clothing pits situation.

Also, wear black.

Citric acid is dirt cheap and does wonders for some cleaning jobs. Many recommend vinegar for these things, but citric acid doesn't leave a smell and works for a lot of the same things. I guess anything acidic would do.

Saw a solution on the web somewhere that worked for me for colors (not whites, you will see why).

If you have stains already, I use a 50/50 of water and Tide Free and Clear in a spray bottle and I spray drench the stained area. Throw that in the washer and let it wait for wash day. Hours or days to let the Borax in it do its thing. Works great for oil stains too.

For straight up stank, like the mildew in the shoulder seams that will come out when you sweat, I use oxi in the tub with detergent, then cleaning strength vinegar (30%) in the fabric softener compartment (but not with whites and chlorine bleach, DON’T GENERATE CHLORINE GAS). Just like 2 or 3 tablespoons. You will smell it when you move the load to the dryer, but it mostly fades while it tumbles. The stank fades away every wash and is usually gone after 3. And it helps sanitize your washer between bleaches.

Better detergent. If you are not sure which, just try a few out until you find one that works. For me it was ariel powder that really made a difference (also easy to store and lasts a while)

A couple of other people have commented on this, but no one's fully explained the mechanism, so:

Fabric that's petroleum-derived like polyester and most other synthetics traps odors and resists washing in ways that natural fibers don't. Some people think this is because synthetics are less breathable than natural fibers, and while this is often the case, that's not actually the main cause. Rather, this is because being oil-derived makes the fibers water-resistant, which keeps them from being thoroughly cleaned, and also traps body oils, resulting in food for odor-causing bacteria.

Here's a good video explaining this in more detail, for the curious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJVYTnFjiFg

Honestly, I don't think there's much to do about that one beyond making sure to get 100% natural fiber clothes. As a bonus, it's often less irritating to the skin and helps reduce a major source of micro plastics.

Some antiperspirants are further much tougher to wash off and will tend to resist washing, but I don't know the mechanism behind this one, so I can't really advise on it, apart from saying that I've not encountered the issue with natural deodorants.

Soak every once in a while in oxyclean/generic oxyclean you can also use a laundry sanitizer, Lysol makes one now I use it because we have well water that’s kinda stinky and it works great for that. Between these two things stains and smell have no chance. Air drying workout wear can also help with smell and color as well as longevity of the clothes.

I have had some success with soaking in a solution of vinegar for min 20 minutes. And or oxy bleach, (not at the same time).

Don't wear shirts with anything other than 100% cotton.

I can't get a shirt with even a little bit of polyester to not stink after washing multiple times.

https://www.rinse.com/blog/care/how-to-remove-armpit-stains/

Just a heads up that laundry stripping will not remove antiperspirant stains. I'm going through this with my white undershirts and after doing a stripping treatment the shirts came out pristine except for the waxy buildup on the pits.

If they are white shirts: then use Dish Soap and Bleach. I am assuming your dish soap is alkaline, careful not to add to much or it could build pressure and overflow. Use a soak cycle.

If they are not white shirts: then just do a quick cycle with dish soap or other degreaser, then a regular wash, and you can treat especially bad cases by applying liquid laundry detergent directly to the stain and letting sit half hour before washing.

If you're conscientious of your impact on the environment and you only wear these specific shirts when you work out: then it doesn't really matter if they are stained, no?

If you're some kind of trendy hippy who believes weird diy hacks on the internet: wash with the contents of a can of cola.