"Optimize your sports performance: Discover why adequate hydration is essential to your success!" (Read especially tip 3)
During exercise, you sweat and lose fluids as a result. However, how much you sweat varies from person to person, which means the amount of fluid you need to drink also varies. While it may seem difficult to calculate this, it is actually quite simple. You can use a scale to do this.
Follow these steps:
- Get on the scale and record your weight before exercise.
- Go exercise
- Weigh yourself immediately after exercise and record this weight.
- Subtract the weight after exercise from the weight before exercise. This reflects weight loss due to sweating.
- Add to that what you drank during exercise.
- The total is the amount of fluid you lost during exercise.
Below is a picture and formula for clarification:
Weight before exercise - weight after exercise + liters of drink you took in = total sweat.
You can even calculate this by after sweat loss per hour by adding the number of hours here also see the picture.
In addition, you can also use this to calculate if you had a fluid deficit that is done with the formula below
Weight after exercise - weight before exercise- liters of drink you absorbed = fluid deficit in liters
But how does this affect your performance?
Fluid deficiency has a significant impact on your performance. Fluid deficiency can be disastrous for your performance. Below are the effects of different percentages of fluid deficiency relative to your body weight:
- 1% fluid deficiency already has a negative effect on your metabolism
- 2% reduced heat regulation and endurance capacity
- 3% gives a strong decrease in endurance capacity.
- 4% reduction in strength
- 5% often worse consequences up to coma.
See also table below what effect fluid deficiency has on your performance
But how do we counter this and supercharge your performance!
Let's give an example using the calculation above to show how to determine how much fluid you lose during an activity.
Suppose a cyclist weighs 70 kg before exercise. During a 3-hour bike ride, the cyclist weighs only 68 kg after exercise and has drunk 1 liter of sports drink.
70 – 68 + 1 = 3
Based on this calculation, the cyclist has lost 1 liter of fluid per hour, making a total of 3 liters of fluid over the 3 hours. This means that the cyclist must take in 1 liter of fluid every hour to compensate for the loss. This can be a significant amount but below are some tips on how to improve this!
Tip #1: Drink extra fluids in the last 2 hours before exercise so that you start the activity with a larger fluid supply. For example, if you have already drunk half a liter of fluid before exercise, you can usually count this toward the amount of fluid you need to take in during exercise
Tip #2: Build up drinking the right amount gradually! If you greatly increase your fluid intake all at once, you will probably need to urinate more often.
Tip 3: Drink an isotonic sports drink, as this drink is better absorbed than just fluids and replenishes carbohydrates at the same time. Read more about it in this blog.
Tip #4: Our ambassadors have noted that increasing their fluid intake as early as the day before exercise actually helps during activity.
Tip 5: Test every few weeks to see if your sweat loss is still the same, so you can stay up-to-date with any changes in your body over the months.
If you realize afterwards that you did not drink enough, try to drink 1.5 times the amount of fluid you lost in the following hours. This way, your body can recover quickly and you improve the recovery process.
