Mike Gittleson was the Director of Strength & Conditioning at the University of Michigan for 30 years and was a part of 15 Football Championships in that time. He explains, why it is important to hydrate.
How much water should you drink per day? I grew up with the '8 x 8 rule' or eight, 8 ounces glasses of water or about 2 liters daily.
The Institute of Medicine recommends that healthy men consume roughly 3 liters (about 13 cups) of total beverages a day and women consume 2.2 liters (about 9 cups) of total beverages a day.
Certainly a 300 pound athlete and 160 pound athlete vary in fluid intake. We are also faced with varying daily activity, weather, and a sundry of other issues that affect intake.
There are charts, formulas, position stands, urine checking devices, monitoring urine color and volume and they all have to do with proper hydration.
I hired a Registered Dietitian to help me with the preciseness of the issue.
Most involved in athletics will agree that taking a 10-16 fluid bolus 20 - 30 minutes prior to activity can be safe and effective.
The bottom line is that dehydration as little as 2-3% of your body mass will reduce your strength performance, it will decrease the number of repetitions you can do in your workout, it will effect your perceived exertion (that is the way you view how hard the workout is), as well as hinder your heart rate recovery.
It all means that athletes are not making the gains they could if they do not have adequate fluid intake.
This has always been a concern for me, so I would periodically present to the team the issue of not being properly hydrated and hydration's effect upon performance.
The truth was that very few of the student athletes ever drank enough water without constant education.
When you educate you athletes about water and how remaining hydrated makes them stronger you must also be careful. There are those that get results by learning how to hydrate and then think more water is better especially on game day. To much water can reduce muscular endurance by up to 15%.
Also, athletes should learn that hyperhydration, that is trying to hydrate to quickly leads to quick elimination of water through the kidneys. This minimizes the time the body can maintain an increased level of water and becomes exactly the opposite of what you are trying to accomplish. Hydration should be thought of as a perpetual systematic sensible process.
We dehydrate during our sleep and need to rehydrate every morning. This is one of several reasons I have never liked early morning workouts. Another is sleep. I have three college aged children who rarely if ever, are asleep by midnight. We receive text messages at 1AM & 2AM as if all adults are up at these hours.
Hydration and sleep are part of strength and conditioning development. Proper hydration in the morning takes time and lack of sleep effects numerous bodily functions. Sleep and proper hydration effect how you grow. Working out hydrated during normal hours will Get you Strong.
