One Tuesday evening I was complaining about my back acne to my training partner in the locker room. An older guy named Marcus overheard me. Marcus was a competitive bodybuilder and the unofficial mentor of our gym.
Marcus walked over and pointed straight at my shower caddy. He looked at my damp plastic loofah with absolute disgust.
"That thing right there is the reason your back looks like a warzone," Marcus told me.
He explained the reality of gym bag hygiene. Every time I showered I was scrubbing dead skin and sweat into the plastic mesh. Then I was tossing that wet sponge back into a dark unventilated gym bag. It was the perfect environment to breed aggressive bacteria.
When I scrubbed my back the next day I was literally pushing thousands of bacterial colonies directly into my open, heated pores. The harsh chemical body washes were just drying out my skin barrier and making the infections worse.
"You need to throw that biohazard in the trash right now," Marcus said. He unzipped his own gym bag and pulled out a long woven cloth. "You need a sterile physical exfoliator. Get a Blissal towel."