Hydration is a key component for maintaining health and performance, especially during exercise. Hydration before, during, and after training/competition has a massive impact on performance as well as recovery. As such, it is imperative that athletes and fitness enthusiasts alike understand how to balance hydration with exercise so they can perform at their peak. In this article, we discuss the way hydration impacts your performance in exercise, and recovery post-workout and give you a few tips to make sure that you are always well-fed!
Importance of Hydration for Exercise Performance
Your body relies on water to perform a multitude of vital functions, from regulating temperature to transporting nutrients and lubricating your joints. Working out, especially in hot or humid weather conditions will result in water loss due to sweat and respiration. However, if that water is not refilled dehydration can set in diminishing exercise performance and increasing the risk of heat-related illness.
1. Temperature Regulation
Regulating Body Temperature This is one of the primary functions water fulfills during exercise. Your muscles use the same glucose for energy as do your brain, but unlike at rest when they generate a lot of heat from their caloric burning or metabolism spamming umm, I mean magic. Sweating is your body’s normal reaction to excess heat; it helps cool the body. Sweat evaporates off your skin essentially cooling you down. But it also causes fluid loss from sweating. Dehydration decreases the volume of these fluids just when you need them to cool down, which can cause a spike in your core temperature. This can lead to heat exhaustion or even in serious cases, a heat stroke.
2. Muscle Function and Endurance
Muscle Function Is Directly Related To Hydration Section of this before exertion is at least 75 percent water that muscles are made up and when it uses the consequent contractility, they turn overall easily. Dehydration can decrease blood volume which reduces the supply of oxygen and nutrition to your muscles. This leads to faster fatigue of the muscles and lower endurance. If you become dehydrated, electrolyte imbalances can also occur which lead to muscle cramps and spasms: which affect your performance and are linked with an increased injury rate.
3. Cardiovascular Efficiency
As you exercise your heart rate speeds up in order to circulate more oxygen-rich blood throughout the body, especially to those muscles being used. The blood becomes more viscous (sticky) and harder to pump through the heart when its volume is reduced by dehydration. This puts a greater burden on the cardiovascular system and accelerates heart rate while simultaneously reducing blood pressure. This makes your body work extra hard to supply the same amount of oxygen that goes to muscles and hence causes quick fatigue, thus resulting in punching some show-offs a few tenths slower.
How Hydration Affects Post-Workout Recovery
One of the most important things a good recovery drink can do is help you rehydrate after your workout. Recovery is when muscles that have been stressed or damaged during exercise start the process of healing, growing, and rebuilding. Hydration supports recovery, providing the body with nutrients to recover and remove waste as well as aiding in muscle soreness reduction.
1. Distribution of Nutrients and Elimination of Wastes
Post-workout, your muscles require a consistent flow of nutrients to repair muscle tissues and replenish glycogen stores. Water is needed to carry these nutrients through the blood and other fluids and to remove wastes such as lactic acid, which becomes high in muscles during intense exercise. When you are dehydrated, your body struggles to make nutrient-rich blood; the lack of hydration leaves it sapped and oxygen-poor.. so not only will recovery be slow but increased risks for muscle fatigue and soreness.
2. Reducing Muscle Soreness
It is important to remember that hydration can play a significant role in mitigating DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness). After unfamiliar or notably intense workouts, one often experiences Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS), a condition marked by muscle pain and stiffness. Keeping properly hydrated sustains the elasticity of muscle tissues and joints, so you are less likely to form microscopic incisions that add a bit more soreness. Ensuring proper hydration before, during, and after an exercise session is crucial to minimize the degree of DOMS experienced by a person post-workout as well as accelerate recovery time.
3. The Immune System and Inflammation
Physical activity can also slightly weaken the immune system, which means that your body is able to resist disease and infection. Adequate hydration also contributes to immune health because fluids support the structural components of mucous membranes (the first line of defense against pathogens). Moreover, water helps to control inflammation — a key component of recovery and the body’s response it tissues being damaged due to exercise. Adequate hydration has been shown to assist in the modulation of the inflammatory response, thus decreasing large amounts of inflammation and improving healing.
So How Do You Stay Hydrated?
One of the best ways to help your body recover is staying hydrated, this goes for out on the trail and at home. Based on that research, here are several better hydration tips just about anyone could use:
1. Keep Drinking during the day: you should be drinking water continuously throughout the whole day, do not wait until you are thirsty. Did you know thirst is a sign that your body is really dehydrated? Try to stagger the water you drink, and have a steady supply throughout the day.
2. Check Your Pee Colour: Another simple way to measure and tell if you are hydrated, is the color of your pee. If your urine is light, and pale yellow lightly cancels out on the other side of dark/amber which indicates dehydration.
3. Pre-Exercise Hydration: Here you hydrate two to three hours before your workout with 16–20 ounces, and then another 8–10 about twenty or thirty minutes prior to starting. This will keep you properly hydrated before starting to exercise.
4. Stay Hydrated While Exercising: During exercise, drink 7-10 ounces of water every 10 to 20 minutes. In this case, the intake of a sports drink with electrolytes can help to replace those lost due to sweat.
5. Post-Workout Hydrate: Rehydrate following your workout by drinking 16 to 24 ounces of water per pound lost during exercise. This assists with refueling and fluid replenishing to replace those that your body has lost through sweat, as well as aid in recovery.
6. Your Body: Listen to your body you may feel dizzy, lightheaded, or have a dry mouth when dehydrated. If you have any of these symptoms stop exercising and re-hydrate immediately.
Conclusion
Hydration is fundamental to effective performance and recovery in exercise. Supports temperature regulation, muscle function, cardiovascular health & wellness support, nutrient delivery, and waste removal (helping you to feel lean, but also protection against illness Taking action to drink enough water and ensuring that you are hydrated can optimize your training, improve performance, and increase the rate of recovery.
Think of it this way: If fuel and oil are the lifeblood for a tractor to run at its most efficiently, hydration is essential if your body wants to operate period. Luckily, all it takes is to drink enough water and you are halfway there in achieving your fitness dreams.
