Hydration & Performance

Now I’m not saying you don’t know that water’s important…

Because it obviously is…

And you’re all intelligent people…

Most of you…

But how many of you consider the effects of hydration on your performance levels?

The Boring Stuff

When you train, you sweat… Its a fact… Ask anyone who knows me, I speak from experience.

And if you’re highly trained you likely sweat more, especially if you’re a bigger athlete.

So obviously if you don’t replace those fluids you can become dehydrated.

Now, slight dehydration will likely occur during training, however if you walk into the gym under hydrated from the start, you’re probably not going to have a great time.

I’ve listed some of the benefits of dehydration below, just so you know I’m not full of shit:

Reduced blood flow to the skin
Impaired dissipation of heat
Increased body temperature
Strain on the heart
Increased RPE

Non of the above are ideal in terms of maximising your training session.

Obviously theres a load of other undesirable things dehydration does in terms of health, but we’ll keep it to the side of training.

The more interesting stuff

…Now the interesting stuff.

A loss of sweat equal to 2% of your body mass can lead to a noticeable reduction in physical and mental performance and losses of 5% or more can reduce work capacity by around 30%. For the record 5% is pretty critical, don’t get to that point.

This’ll hit you hard no matter the training or sport, but if you have to think quickly and react in your sport, it’ll likely hit you harder due to the mental impairment…

It probably explains a lot about powerlifters too…

How would you know?

There’s multiple ways to know if you’re dehydrated… most of them fairly impractical to carry out in the gym…

Nobody wants you pissing into a refractometer mid set.

The most practical way is simply to check the colour of your urine against a hydration chart, or if you want to go a step further check your bodyweight change at the start and end of your sessions, its not foolproof, but it’ll give you a good idea of if your drinking enough in your sessions.

Combating Dehydration

So, whats the best way to combat dehydration?..

Fucking drink something!.. You thought I was going to say water didn’t you.

Waters fine, I’m not saying don’t drink water when you train… like, seriously drink water when you train.

But if you want something more optimal and you’re training for longer than an hour, orange juice, or isotonic sports drinks performed better due to the inclusion of carbs.

If you’re training for longer than 3 hours, you’re a little mad, but on top of that you’re probably going to need some sort of electrolytes in there too…

Conclusion

Ultimately, what you drink when training isn’t important as long as you find it palatable and you’re drinking something.

And while beer performed similarly, water will suffice for 99% of the population…

A great recommendation is to replace all fluids lost in your session by 150%, so if you lose 1kg during training, try to drink 1.5L of water in the following hours after training.

I’m not saying to get weighed before and after every single session, but if you find you’re generally not hydrated well, do it a couple of times and get a feel for how much fluid you lose on average per session and go from there.

I know all this seems simple, but its the simple things that often make the biggest difference… it’s also the stuff people forget about the easiest.

If you’re still not convinced…

In tests, athletes in a dehydrated state had higher cortisol levels than those who were hydrated…

Not exactly ideal for getting jacked and building muscle… and ultimately regardless of sport, everyone wants to be jacked.

I’ll leave you with some fun facts about the body and water: