Dehydration is Killing Your Performance

Dehydration is not something to take lightly, it truly does hurt your sport performance. Studies show that dehydration of just 2% body weight during exercise, which is actually quite easy to do, will cause negative effects on your endurance and sport performance. Another study found that being dehydrated (hypohydration) going into exercise decreased endurance performance by 10%, again showing that hydration needs to be a serious consideration for anyone performing endurance exercise.

Hydration Made Simple

Research shows that many athletes, including collegiate athletes, generally lack the knowledge and understanding to properly hydrate. Even after becoming aware of the detrimental effect that dehydration has on their performance many of these athletes still do not take the time or put in the effort to learn and implement a hydration plan. Here is going to be a shameless plug on why you should use our app, the app takes a lot of the guesswork and learning out of creating and following your hydration plan. It was our goal to provide an easy solution to this common problem by making an app and electrolyte supplement with the correct ratio to replenish those lost during exercise, end of shameless plug.

Thirst Isn’t Enough

Many people just drink when they feel thirsty, but unfortunately by the time this comes it is already too late. A large portion of high level athletes say that they do not and cannot rely on the feeling of thirst to determine their fluid consumption, doing so led to them having worse performance and they did not feel as good or recover as well when the exercise was over. Most of these athletes also stated that they did better when they drank before and during exercise to prevent dehydration and the associated risks, most notably increased risk of musculoskeletal injury.

Basic Hydration Plan

Now that you are hopefully sold on the importance of hydration for improving sport performance and preventing injury, here is a very broad outline of easy steps you can take to prevent dehydration. This plan by no means is for everyone, sweat rates, climate, temperature, exercise proficiency, acclimatization, and many more factors affect the hydration of any given athlete. Hydration needs to be individual so do what works best for you, also try our app for some more individualized recommendations on given workouts.

General Hydration Plan (via National Athletic Trainer’s Association):

• Before:

  • Drink 500-600 mL of water 2-3 hours before exercise
  • Drink another 200-300 mL of water 10-20 min before exercise

• During:

  • Try and balance sweat and urine loss (rough estimate is 200-300 mL every 10-20 min of intense exercise)

• After:

  • Post exercise try and recover fluid loss from exercise
  • Do not try and over hydrate after exercise, just aim to reach balance again especially if 2% or more of body weight was lost in fluid

Sources

1. Cheuvront, S. N., & Kenefick, R. W. (2014). Dehydration: physiology, assessment, and performance effects. Comprehensive Physiology, 4(1), 257–285. 10.1002/cphy.c130017
2. Judelson, D. A., Maresh, C. M., Anderson, J. M., Armstrong, L. E., Casa, D. J., Kraemer, W. J., & Volek, J. S. (2007). Hydration and muscular performance: does fluid balance affect strength, power and high-intensity endurance? Sports Medicine (Auckland, N.Z.), 37(10), 907–921. 10.2165/00007256-200737100-00006
3. Judge, L. W., Bellar, D. M., Popp, J. K., Craig, B. W., Schoeff, M. A., Hoover, D. L., Fox, B., Kistler, B. M., & Al-Nawaiseh, A. M. (2021). Hydration to Maximize Performance and Recovery: Knowledge, Attitudes, and Behaviors among Collegiate Track and Field Throwers. Journal of Human Kinetics, 79(1), 111–122. 10.2478/hukin-2021-0065