Your Rash Guard Is Destroying You, & How To Fix It

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Chapters

• 0:00 BJJ Gear Meets Environmental Costs
• 2:45 Fast Fashion And Synthetic Waste
• 6:30 Microplastics, Health Risks, And Sweat
• 9:15 The Hydration Ad Read
• 10:45 Flame Retardants And Endocrine Disruption

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

BJJ fashion and environmental awareness. This sounds strange. How can these things go together? Fast fashion, it's something that doesn't really get talked about in the world of BJJ, but we all like a new rash guard. I like a new rash guard, same as the next person. And I used to collect gis. Like I used to, when I was like deep in the gi game, I wanted all the new shit. Like it's just like one of those things where you have a hobby, you get really passionate, and you want to get all the toys and all the things. But then as you grow up and you do certain things, you learn more and more about the repercussions of your actions. And sometimes that is confronting. And it I was fucking shook. I was just like, oh my God, I'm I'm a terrible person. I'm fuck me. Oh my god. More not so much the BJJ element, but if I think about how many clothes I went through in my kind of health and fitness career, because it I'll be honest, people, when I squat, I destroy pants. I I tear the crotch out of most pants if they don't have some degree of nylon or stretch in them. So I've been wearing artificial plastic shorts, pants, you name it, for the last 25 years. Because if I didn't, I'd be hanging out all over the place.

SPEAKER_01: 1:30

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:30

And but I I had never really thought about the environmental fucking impact of how much how much stuff I'd bought cheaply, because I've always kind of been a you know, probably a bit more on the broke trainer side of things, and and kind of chewed through a lot of like just plastic-based clothing, whether it be shirts, singlets, shorts, you name it. And man, this documentary had me fucking rocked. So like was it about like the wastefulness of the whole poly like polyester and shit? Polyester, it was also talking about like obviously fast fashion is a movement that's really taken on in the last probably five to ten years where something's super cheap and it gets turned over. Yeah, and then also with And we want to buy it, we rebuy it.

SPEAKER_01: 2:17

Yeah, because it's a new one six months later, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 2:20

And and it's this consumer cycle. But then also people, the influencer thing of people buying clothes and they're having a 30-day return, they buy it, wear it, and then send it back with the label on. Yeah. Which is I can't, that's a whole nother level of fucking wasteful fuckery that I can't abide. But it was showing that there was these um clothing dumps in different parts of Asia and Africa. Uh, where you know, like a what's great in Australia, we have like a ton of thrift stores and there's a bunch of recycling there. But for the best part, um, many different countries would buy or we would ship those bulk used clothing over there.

SPEAKER_01: 3:02

We those thrift stores still still send a whole bunch of that shit overseas. Oh, wait, you do it. Because they get so much they can't deal with.

SPEAKER_00: 3:09

Yeah. Yeah. And basically, what it was saying is if the clothing you bought is made of synthetic polymers, it lives, it's a plastic bag, right? It like lives for hundreds of years. Right.

SPEAKER_01: 3:21

The shirt might fall apart, but those little bits of plastic stay in the environment.

SPEAKER_00: 3:25

Yeah. And and you know, microplastics is a a bigger and bigger thing. I think, you know, we're we're more aware of like forever chemicals and all these things. And I'm not saying this to be particularly negative, but it really made me go, fuck. I I mean, it made it really it it confronted me because I was like, I'm not someone who buys a lot of stuff. I don't. Uh I don't feel the need for it. I'm not a particularly fashionable person, but I have bought a lot of jujitsu stuff in my life, and I still have most of it. But you know, when a rash guard just goes a bit too far, or it doesn't matter how many times you fucking soak it, rinse it, stinks, or it starts to fray, and you think, okay, this guy goes to the bin now. But it kind of lives forever. And and so the challenging thing for me has been I have actually been gradually over time replacing some of my more plastic-based clothing with more natural fibre stuff. That has just been a personal choice. That's nothing I've really talked about. But yeah, man, I still this documentary lives in my head rent-free forever.

SPEAKER_01: 4:31

I mean, um, from that health point of view, there's a lot of there's a lot of science coming out, isn't there, that like wearing plastic, especially when you're doing when you're sweating because your paws are open, so you're pulling the plastics in is a bad idea. So here for dudes, particularly around the junk, like this is a this is a big one for like um the armpits. Don't count and shit. Yeah, right. Don't count.

SPEAKER_00: 4:52

It's it's pretty wild. Now, here's the thing that um confronted me when I was because I thought, all right, I'm gonna um do a little bit of research about this thing. Just just have half an idea. And I thought to myself, man, what is it about this clothing, like this plastic clothing, which is particularly bad? Stop wasting money on useless sports drinks that do not help your hydration for BJJ. You know what you need? You need sodi. Sody is the perfect blend of sodium, potassium, and magnesium. These things are what they call electrolytes, which keeps the water in your muscles to keep them working for better rolling. Now they have all the flavors of the rainbow. It is the chef's kiss of electrolytes. And when you use the code Bulletproof15 at checkout, you go to sodysod double i.com.au, you get 15% off. So not only do we save you money, but you also get the best product out there. Go to sody.com.au and get it today. And when I started to look at it, I was like, oh my god, I didn't realize the situation. So there is a particular chemical which is a flame retardant. I believe it is called RBA. Now I'm just flipping back because I I wrote it down in my journal because I'm like, right, I gotta bring this up. And the thing that makes causes it to leach from the fabric in particular is oils, like oils in your skin. Right. And specifically the oils in your skin that get released when you sweat. Yeah. And this is true of every stretch fabric.

unknown: 6:34

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 6:35

Pretty much every stretch fabric. Not like anything you wear that's like, oh, that's nice and easy to put on, whether it's a like a hoodie or some some track pants or a pair of underpants or whatever it might be. You mean cotton stuff? Um, it depends on how much of that cotton material is uh has this flame retardant stuff in it. Yeah, so endocrine disruption, yeah, your balls, your thyroid, your adrenals, it fucks with everything. Ovaries, they're saying for women's yoga gear as well. Oh yeah. Because it's right up on the um right up on the vag. And so that that can have effects. But uh they're talking about phthalates and bisphenol, and this is it's called brominated flame retardant, BFR. So this is the thing. They've shown that they've that in animals. So what they've done is they've put like artificial like plastic underwear on wolves and rabbits.

SPEAKER_01: 7:35

That's so fucking unethical.

SPEAKER_00: 7:37

So unethical. I mean, the wolf does actually sound milk.

SPEAKER_01: 7:40

You're like, yo, how can you do that to a wolf, man? Shit. And you just see these wolves roaming and underwear on it. You're like, God, Calvin Klein's guys, relax.

SPEAKER_00: 7:48

Yeah, and they're saying the the wolf pack falls apart because there's no leader, and they all just agree with each other.

SPEAKER_01: 7:52

And oh there's no alpha males anymore. They actually put um Calvin Kleins on one and then they put the Trade brand on the other. And they found that the one we're in Calvin Klein's naturally elevated to leader, and the tradey one became, you know, subordinate. Anyway, I digress. The show was not sponsored by Calvin Klein. It's a class battle out there.

SPEAKER_00: 8:15

But I but this is the thing that it really is not just the environmental impact, there's the health impact, right? Yeah, and so we wear rash guards and we because it's easier, if it's got stretch, it's easier. And this led me down a rabbit hole of like, fuck, is there like sustainable, like environmentally friendly, human-friendly jujitsu stuff? And there is some stuff out there, but it's very minority. So I just want yeah, I want to take a chance here to talk about our chemical because they did send us some stuff, so I did want to give them a shout out. And they are an Australian-based brand. I had seen some stuff of them on social media, but not really paid much attention to it necessarily. But I was speaking with Hope Douglas because she's sponsored by them. And she Hope is a friend of the show. She's a friend of the show, she's a bulletproof for BJJ athlete, and she Australia's top female black belts, one of the most achieved, and you know, soon to return to competition. Um, and so she she was wearing one of their kind of rashies, and I was like, Oh, it's interesting, because I felt it and I looked at it, and it it looked more almost like a thermal, you know, like for any of you out there into camping, stuff like that. Thermals are predominantly, you know, plastics, and that's why they keep you warm. But this was I know you get a lot of merino, like wool ones, and then you get yeah, you get more the artificial ones. But I said to her, like, how is this like this? And she's like, Oh, you know, it's it's it's actually partly um bamboo. I was like, Oh, okay, that's interesting. And she's like, and yeah, it's only um five percent, five percent spandex or whatever that was, which is the less harsh of all of the kind of stretch materials you can have. Right. So I was like, oh wow. And she's like, oh, you should talk to them. And yeah, they sent us some gear. So man, I I I've used the rash guard. Actually, when we rolled the other week, I wore it. And it didn't feel it feels like a little bit heavier. You know how you can get a rashi that's slightly heavier, but it didn't make me feel hot or anything like that. And yeah, I loved it. I wore mine in training the other day.

SPEAKER_01: 10:22

I thought it was really good.

SPEAKER_00: 10:23

Yeah, I I was I was surprised that you could get a natural fiber um like rash guard. Yes, I mean they can handle like the rigors of I just kind of couldn't believe it. And and having having had a chat to them, they they said yeah, and it just doesn't hold the stink either.

SPEAKER_01: 10:39

Yeah, you you know the stink, the stink has always put me off with with rashes because you're like like and I actually spoke to a training partner this week about it, and he's like, bro, I I can't wear um, I can't wear rashis anymore. We're talking about wearing rashis under the ghee. And like, should you, should you not? And I often don't. And he was like, he was like, I can't. Like if I put a rashie on, even a brand new one, he goes, I stink within like 10 minutes. Oh wow, I stink.

SPEAKER_00: 11:05

It reacts.

SPEAKER_01: 11:06

And I'm like, and I and I'm like, I don't get that, but I know that certain rashis, once they're of mine, once they're a bit older, I put them on and and it I stink instantly. And it's like I it's like the the bacteria that lives inside that rashi gets reactivated on my skin. Yeah, and I'm like, that's actually fucking disgusting. It is, and what's going on there? What's living in that shit?

SPEAKER_00: 11:27

And I found that with old sports gear, like those kind of you know those artificial fabric polos they make kind of uh trainers wear, so it's like trainer on the back, yeah, like the ones that big gyms give to their trainers, yeah. Yeah, they're typically the worst for that, yeah. And so, yeah, for me, since seeing this documentary and thinking about it, I'm like, right, I gotta make a bit of a move here. Like, and and the thing too is like speaking with the alchemical guys, they do bamboo, hemp, and organic cotton. And and and you know, this is across all their stuff, their gis and their and their fitted stuff. But it made me think no one's fucking talking about this, you know, and they're talking a lot more about it in the context of like yoga gear sports gear. But think about how much you sweat in jujitsu. It's pretty pretty intense. You're swimming in that rashi, yeah, 100%. And and even I've thought this with my underwear because most of my underwear is like stretch material.

SPEAKER_01: 12:24

That's why all the elite guys have to take exogenous hormones, yeah. Because they're all fucking bad, like fighting the war against microplastics.

SPEAKER_00: 12:31

Imagine the T levels are on the decline. Your Rashi is shrinking your balls. Imagine. And so start calling you not so boy, it's gonna be rashi boy. Rashi boy. So it look, this is just something I want to bring up because it it is something that I haven't heard anyone really in the jujitsu community talking about. We've always been on the crest of the wave here at Bulletproof for B2J. That's true, breaking new ground. And so I think that this will be more of a thing in the future as this kind of comes through. That it's it's pretty important.

SPEAKER_01: 13:06

Yeah, you can you can heed JT's warning now, or you can wait 12 months for Huberman and Chris Williamson to talk about it, whatever you want. But you just so you know, you heard it here first.