India celebrates its National Sports Day (Rashtriya Khel Divas) on 29 August, on the birth anniversary of hockey legend Major Dhyan Chand.
Born on August 29 in the year 1905, Major Dhyan Chand was probably the best hockey player and one of the greatest sportsmen in India.
He was the pioneer of India’s several hockey gold medals in the Olympics in the years 1928, 1932, and 1936.
On this National Sports Day let’s look at the importance of Water in sports.
Studies show that loss of fluid equal to 4% of body weight can degrade an athlete’s performance by up to 30%.
Whether you are a serious athlete or exercise to keep your body fit, you should know the importance of drinking the right quantity of water at the right time.
Why Water is Important?
Ever thought of what you need to survive, yes just survive? Food? Air? Water? Smartphone?
You may be addicted to PUBG and consider it difficult to survive without a smartphone but the truth is something else.
You can survive for more than three weeks without food but you can hardly survive for a week without water. 60% of the human adult body is water and every single living cell in your body needs water.
So, without offending your love for PUBG, let’s concentrate on water over here.
Water is by far the most important component of all living organisms and serves a number of essential functions in the human body. Water acts as a vital nutrient for our body, regulates body temperature, lubricates joints, assists in flushing out waste, and allows muscle contractions.
Check out this useful infographic about important water facts you must know and follow.
During any sports activity or exercise, our body produces excessive sweat to maintain the required body temperature. Sweating regulates body temperature by removing excess body heat when sweat on the skin evaporates. This results in a loss of water from your body.
Sweating increases with a rise in temperature and humidity, and with an increase in physical activity. Higher sweating results in an increase in the water requirement of your body.
So in order to maintain the required level of water in your body, you need to drink water before, during (if possible), and after the exercise or sporting activity.
Maintaining an optimum level of water in the body will reduce the risk of cramps, heat exhaustion and heatstroke.
Also Read: Benefits of Drinking Right Amount of Water
How Dehydration Affects Performance
Sweating leads to dehydration and dehydration impacts both physical and mental performance. Low levels of water in your body result in an increase in body temperature and heart rate.
Ever thought about why exercising under the sun is more difficult than exercising in an air-conditioned gym?
The answer is dehydration.
Dehydration increases the perception of how hard the exercise feels. Dehydration also contributes to muscle fatigue, one of the biggest causes of sports injuries.
DO YOU KNOW?
You can train your body to be stronger, flexible, have more power and stamina, but it is impossible to train your body to handle dehydration.
Studies show that loss of fluid equal to 3% of body weight (that’s a 2.1 kg loss in a 70 kg athlete) is sufficient to decrease your sporting abilities by up to 20%.
Fluid loss equal to 6% of body weight can lead to severe headaches, disorientation, and even heat stroke.
You must now be thinking that you don’t sweat that much and you do not have to worry about dehydration.
Wait before you leave this page here as we are about to disclose how much sweat is produced by your body.
How Much Do You Sweat During Exercise or Training?
According to this report, an average person produces around 0.8 to 1.4 litres of sweat per hour during exercise.
The highest recorded sweat rate for an athlete in an exercise situation is 3.7 litres per hour, recorded by Alberto Salazar while preparing for the 1984 Summer Olympics. The highest ever human sweat rate recorded is 5 litres per hour measured on a resting body exposed to a hot environment. At rest, the skin blood flow was maximum and not competing with exercising muscles.
How You Can Find Your Sweat Rate?
If you are a professional athlete or a serious gym enthusiast then it is important that you know your sweat rate. Knowing your sweat rate gives you an idea of what should be your fluid intake during exercise or training.
Finding your sweat rate may sound like using some advanced machines and techniques but it actually is a lot easier.
Let us tell you how you can easily find your sweat rate yourself.
Follow the easy steps given below.
- The easiest way to measure your sweat rate is to weigh yourself without clothes (or in minimal clothing) just before the start of your exercise routine. Ideally, you should pass urine before weighing.
- Start your exercise or training routine.
- Weigh yourself (either without clothes or in the same/similar minimal clothing as earlier) after finishing your exercise. Make sure you wipe off any excess sweat from your body with a dry towel.
- Assuming you did not urinate or consume any fluids during exercise, your weight loss is your sweat rate. For each kilogram of lost weight, you lost one litre of fluid. e.g. if your body weight was 70 Kg before exercise and after exercising for an hour the weight was 69 Kg, then your sweat rate is 1 litre per hour.
Note: If you drink any fluids or urinate between the two weight samples, you’ll need to take both of these estimated weights into account while calculating the weight difference. If you consumed any fluid, add its weight to the amount of weight lost. If you urinated, you need to subtract the estimated weight of the urine from the amount of weight lost.
How Much Water to Drink & When?
Sweating while exercising causes dehydration and dehydration results in a drop in performance. Drinking fluid during exercise will re-hydrate you and prevent the performance drop.
However, there are no set rules regarding how much water to drink while exercising, because it varies based on activity, intensity, sweat rate, and the heat and humidity in your environment.
Also read: What is the Best Time to Drink Water?
The American Council on Exercise has recommended the following general guidelines for drinking water before, during, and after exercise:
- Drink 500 to 600 ml of water 2 to 3 hours before you start exercising.
- Drink 235 ml of water 20 to 30 minutes before you start exercising or during your warm-up.
- Drink 200 to 300 ml of water every 10 to 20 minutes during exercise.
- Drink 235 ml of water no more than 30 minutes after you exercise.
You may follow the above guidelines to avoid dehydration and performance loss during exercising.
But if you are a professional athlete, you may want to measure your sweat rate first to understand your fluid requirement during and after the exercise.
If you are a professional athlete then you may want to follow a more scientific approach, customized to your needs. Follow the below tips if that is the case.
- Make sure your body is well hydrated before you start your exercise or sports routine; this will reduce the chances of dehydration during exercise/sport. But please make sure you do not drink an excessive quantity of fluids before you start your routine because it will increase the urge for urination and leave you feeling bloated.
- Based on your sweat rates, develop a specialized plan for fluid intake during exercise.
- Depending upon the kind of sport you are playing you can devise a strategy for rehydration during play. For team and racquet sports, like football, cricket, and tennis, there are formal breaks between play, which offer you ample opportunities to rehydrate. Some individual sports, like cycling and marathon, require you to drink on the move. Try sports squeeze bottles if your sport requires you to drink on the move.
- Weigh yourself immediately after exercise or play to estimate your final fluid deficit. After exercise, the fluid level will further go down because of sweating and urination, so you will have to replace 125-150% of this final fluid loss in the next 2-6 hours after exercising/playing. For example, if you lost 1 kg (1000mL), you will need to drink 1250-1500 ml to fully re-hydrate.
Is Plain Water Sufficient?
If you are playing any low-intensity and short-duration sport then plain water is sufficient to rehydrate your body. Make sure the water is cold (not excessively chilled) as your body absorbs cold water faster as compared to the water at room temperature. Cold water will also quickly regulate your body temperature.
But always make sure that the water you are drinking is clean and purified. Drinking contaminated water can be as dangerous as dehydration.
What About Sports Drinks?
You must have seen professional athletes on TV drinking specialized sports drinks instead of plain water. They do so because plain water can’t meet the hydration, energy, and performance demands of high-intensity and endurance sports.
The carbohydrate, sodium, potassium, and other nutrients in sports drinks provide the required energy to boost your performance levels.
But it would be best if you always chose your sports energy drinks wisely and never take more than the recommended quantity because doing so may potentially cause more harm than good.
