Equipment Maintenance

[Kurisu]

Just curious as to how dojo operators are going about maintaining / cleaning equipment such as heavy bags, striking pads, bigs mits, etc.

[Aunty Ichigeki]

Not much! But any blood is cleaned with a combo of bleach, detol & water & disposable towels.

[Kurisu]

Hi Aunty,

I'm glad you responded. I really like what you've done with your dojo from what I've seen in pictures. I hope to try to emulate that some day.

Do you have any suggestion on an alternative to bleach and detal?

Maybe I'll bump into you Japan sometime soon

[StarKodama]

Originally Posted by Aunty Ichigeki

Not much! But any blood is cleaned with a combo of bleach, detol & water & disposable towels.

Here in Japan, EVERYTHING is cleaned with a nappy rag that's been rinsed in tap water. No cleaning fluids are used at any time. I used to be like, "Shouldn't we at least be using bleach...? Or some kind of soap?" but no one listened to me.

Oh well. No one's died yet, so I guess it's ok?

(But if I ran a dojo, I'd be cleaning it the Aunty way! )

[seienchin]

Originally Posted by Aunty Ichigeki

Not much! But any blood is cleaned with a combo of bleach, detol & water & disposable towels.

This is the standard required to prevent the spread of blood-borne viruses. The link below is to a pdf document that spells out a precise recipe for cleaning after a blood contamination.



http://www.ntis.nt.gov.au/__data/ass...ne_viruses.pdf

[JAzze]

A big concern in the US lately has been MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus). I'm not sure there has been an actual upswing in the number of these staph infections, but people have been freaking out about it recently. (Lot's of hand wringing in the newspaper.)

This kind of infection can move through a dojo pretty quickly if shared gear isn't cleaned properly, though I think wrestlers struggle with this issue more due to the increased contact.

We've been using disinfectant wipes in the dojo on the gear.

[Dent]

Osu!

I clean my mats and vinyl surfaces with an anti-bacterial wash. Leather is wiped down and then fed leather food.

A note on carpet. We once got to visit and train at a school that had the world's first carpet. How do I know it was the first? Because the first footsteps of Man, and the imprint of the entire ancient armies of Persia and Babylon had left their marks. Either that, or it had never been cleaned.

Part of the training included grappling, and post that training, three guys got infections. Immediately. I've never seen anything like it. We were at lunch, and one guy's arm started running goop. Goop. The only word than could describe it.

Another guy waited to clean his leg up until he got home. Over the next couple of days the thing got worse, until he had to be admitted to hospital. He now has a large, circular divot out of his calf as a reminder of that day.

I don't know how you'd clean carpet with any sort of consistency, or with a real reduction in the gunge that accumulates, so I just stay away from training on them now.

Osu!

[vapor]

At the dojo in Asakusa, floors were cleaned with tap water and rags...pads were at least sprayed with some sort of cleaning concentrate, before being wiped down (with the same rags that are used to do the floors!!!)

vapor

[Aunty Ichigeki]

Thanks Kurisu. We'll get there I guess any antibac will do it. We did have problems with the grapplers getting some horrible skin disease a while ago. I took to the mats with commercial strength toilet cleaner. My feet were burning for 3 days but it seemed to do the trick. One of them kept getting infected but they decided he had some bacteria on his body (great - pleased they blamed him & not the mats). Apparently there is a product that wrestlers use on their skin to create a protective barrier against infection.

[MilkManX]

Yeah the grappling folks have to worry about Staph infections. It actually comes from your own body but if the mats are dirty then it spreads and gets on the skin surface. Yikes!