Water intake is essential for athletes and they may need to do this more often. It is essential for them to maintain a constant level of fluid intake. However, athletes should drink water in small amounts and they must not drink water quickly, although they are dehydrated. We should remember to drink small and often. During a normal game, athletes could drink between 6 to 8 ounces of water every 15 minutes. We can add more if we think that we need more water.
We should increase the amount of water slightly until we are feeling comfortable about it. In general, we shouldn’t choose ice water and the water should be close to our body temperature. If the condition is cold, we should keep water with temperature slightly lower than our body temperature in a thermos. It isn’t necessary to drink warm water even in winter conditions, if we are already physically active.
With cool water, we should be able to get rid of excess heat in our body. Our body can absorb cool water more easily and this could rehydrate our body much more easily. It is a good idea to weigh ourselves before the competition, so we could find out how much water that we have lost. We should make this a habit to make sure that our body could stay hydrated. For athletes who seek to lose weight due to specific purposes, they shouldn’t dehydrate themselves to make themselves lighter. It is actually possible for a dehydrated person to lose one or two pounds of weight, but this could also reduce their performance significantly. In any case, we should skip the caffeine, because it is a diuretic substance.
If our body is loaded with caffeine, we will urinate more and this will cause an opposite effect. By drinking coffee, it is easier for our body to get dehydrated. We may need to avoid drinking sports drinking that contain plenty of caffeine. Urine is a good indication to see if our body is dehydrated or not. If our urine is dark yellow, it is possible that we are actually dehydrated.
It means that we should know what to drink. It is also important to know that there are various brands of sports drinks that falsely claim that they can help us, which is not always true. Most of the time, we only need water and sports drinks are needed only if our physical activity is more than 90 minutes. If we choose sports drinks, it is important to choose the one that contain only carbohydrates and electrolytes. Our body really need them during a stressful condition.
Alternatively, we could make our own sports drinks by mixing organic honey, good quality sea salt and some water. This could help us to avoid sports drinks that are loaded with added chemicals, such as taurine and caffeine. Branded sports drinks could also contain more solids than necessary, making them harder to absorb. It is a good idea to choose simple glucose, instead of more complex one like fructose. We should look at the label and make sure that the sports drinks don’t contain primarily of fructose as the form of carbohydrates. More complex carbs can be longer to absorb and it needs to be diluted with more water.
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