Your shoes might look and smell good when they come out of the box, but they won't look like this forever!
We've all been there. Sitting on the floor in the gym, you gently stretch and warm up to begin a workout, your climbing shoes set down beside you. Suddenly, a dank, acrid aroma tickles your olfactory and you cringe, possibly choking back that Clif bar you just stuffed in your mouth. Your shoes are the kind of gnarly that you thought was reserved for Sasquatch himself. So you got the funky-foot, let's figure out how to get rid of it!
Stinky feet and shoes come from a couple of particular types of bacteria that accumulate and incubate when you sweat and shed skin into your climbing shoes. Yea, it's pretty nasty, but we are all a veritable petri dish of microscopic organisms and dead skin cells. That stuff creates a gunky film inside your climbing shoes which only gets worse with every training session or outdoor send day. First of all, let's check out some ways to first prevent the funk.
For a couple years, I managed to keep my climbing shoes and feet quite healthy and nearly stink-free. However, recently I moved to the south and it's noticeably more hot and humid than where I used to climb. Subsequently, my feet sweat more and my shoes almost never dry completely.
The first thing is, don't climb in wet shoes! Store your shoes in open air. Those dark, damp, warm places like the toe of your shoe are perfect for that bacteria to reside so keep your shoes as dry as possible and rotate which shoes you wear if possible to allow shoes to dry completely and get less wear over time, as well.
Also, I had been neglecting to properly wash and clear my toes of dead skin. As we climb harder and our feet get stronger and more callous, dead skin can accumulate quickly and it rubs off into your shoe liner, harboring and feeding that terrible yeasty bacteria. So use a pumice stone to get crazy patches of dead skin off and use a salt solution occasionally to wash and disinfect your feet.
Another great addition to the two methods of prevention above are to lightly spray the inside of your shoes with rubbing alcohol each time you climb. Secondly, use an essential oil based moisturizer, like tea tree oil, on your toes and cuticles to keep the skin healthy and the toe area of your shoes from accumulating bacteria. Of course, each of these methods becomes much more effective when they are all used together! Also, make sure your daily shoes or boots are also cleaned and deodorized so you don't continually reinfect your climbing shoes with work gunk!
But if you do succumb to that unfortunate day that your shoes reek like Skunk Man, there are a whole lot of things you can try to rid your favorite kicks of the hex.
After your workout, you probably want to take a shower. So wear your shoes into the wash with you! Sounds crazy, but it has worked wonders for me in the past! Use a bit more soap than usual, let it run down into your shoes and squish around a bit before taking them off and scrubbing the interiors by hand then thoroughly rinsing them out. Be very thorough and soap them up twice or more and make sure to rinse all the soap out otherwise it will lather up when you sweat and that makes a terrible experience while climbing. The most important part of washing your shoes out with soap and hot water is ensuring that they dry thoroughly and relatively quickly. You can turn the oven onto its lowest setting, around 170 degrees and warm your shoes up slowly until you can see the water vapor escaping the shoes. Be careful not to overheat the shoes as too much heat could melt the glue between seams or even disfigure the rubber or plastic bits. This method really works but it also takes some work! You can also leave the shoes out in the direct sun for a day or more. Leaving shoes outside for a little while is a good way to ensure complete drying.
Baking soda washes are also a great way to ensure odors and bacteria are completely eliminated. This concept goes along with using rubbing alcohol or other disinfectants like Lysol to kill bacteria and eliminate odors. Use these methods sparingly though because the ingredients in these products can adversely affect the health of the rubber and glue on your shoes. They do work to eliminate odors! But be careful.
Some don't do things when it comes to ridding your shoes of the nasal nightmare are powders, dryer sheets, febreeze or air fresheners. All of these things will only mask the odor and will fail to kill bacteria and actually clean your shoes. Foot powders are not recommended for use inside climbing shoes because your feet will eventually sweat again and that powder will just become another filmy funk inside your shoe. Dryer sheets leave strong chemical smells that will just leave you with two embarrassing smell issues! And febreeze and other air fresheners are meant to alter your nose chemistry so that you don't smell air odors but they will ultimately fail at killing bacteria and actually cleaning your shoes, just like powders.
Keeping our feet healthy is important and it gets harder as you climb harder! I used to have some embarrassing and funky shoes in the gym so I got to work on cleaning up my shoes and finding good methods. I'm open to new options though; this is an ongoing struggle! So let me know if you have any other suggestions on how to reclaim your shoes from the brink of stink!