All day, your skin needs constant hydration, especially when you’re sweating. With vigorous movement, your bodies circulation improves, and so when you train or exercise, your body warms up causing your pores to open allowing you to perspire. It’s important to keep your skin clean in order for it to do this. By ‘letting your skin breathe’ what you’re really doing is allowing it to be free of pore-clogging materials such as cosmetics and surface dirt collected throughout the day. Your skin doesn’t actually breathe, but it does absorb things and having a surface layer of makeup, environmental grime, and other skincare products can cause it to get congested.

It’s when you’re training that your body most needs rehydration. You notice this mostly because your mouth gets dry, or you feel thirsty. BUT your skin is crying out just as much for rehydration too. It’s too easy to arrive at the gym after a day at work and head straight into a class, but have you noticed how tight your skin feels afterwards? You might feel like you’ve just conquered Mount Everest in that 45 minutes, but did you think about what was happening to your skin? Your body was busy expelling toxins, salt, and urea, and all of that has been trying to push through cosmetics, pollution and other grime, which act as a dehydrating, skin drying concoction.

So instead why not take three minutes (tops) to remove the dirt, either with a cleanser and pads or gentle micellar wipes, making sure the last pad or wipe comes away with next to nothing on it (that’s when you know you’re squeaky clean). Your skin still needs protecting; one of the best clean, hydrating moisturisers to use is Aproderm^® Emollient cream. One key ingredient is purified water, which means it’s free from chlorine and halogens. It’s also parabens, fragrance and sodium lauryl sulphate free. AproDerm^® is fast absorbing because of its high-water content-  which is uncommon in emollients. It won’t leave a residue on your skin or clog your pores, allowing your skin to be protected, hydrated and ‘breathe’ throughout your workout.

For those who train for races, if you experience chaffing from running or cycling AproDerm^® barrier cream can be applied to any area of the body and makes an excellent lasting barrier cream without leaving your skin feeling sticky or greasy!