How dirty is your gym equipment?

You’d never expect working out to make you sick.

But a new study from UC Irvine suggests the gym might be more of a germ-generator than you think.

After collecting bacteria from a basketball court, players’ hands, and the basketballs themselves, researchers found that Staphylococcus aureus — the bacteria behind Staph infections — can survive and grow on a basketball in normal storage conditions for up to 3 days. Even when the researchers sterilized a ball before a game, the ball still transferred Staph. a from the floor to the players.

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That’s not the only way bacteria gets transmitted in the gym, says study author Dr Joshua A Cotter. You also need to wipe down surfaces like toilets, showers, and benches with an antiseptic or Clorox wipes.

But the biggest cold-causing culprit — the equipment — is tougher to tackle. A study in the Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine found rhinoviruses (instigators of the common cold) on 63 per cent of the gym equipment at the fitness centers they tested, and discovered that weight equipment was contaminated significantly more than aerobic equipment (73 per cent versus 51 per cent.)

Even worse: the study found that disinfecting the equipment twice a day didn’t do anything to lower the virus count.

The solution: avoid touching your face between sets, since most colds are transmitted through hand-to-nose contact. And make sure to pack an alcohol-based hand sanitizer in your gym bag.

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