Hydration Nous with Head Coach Scotty Farrell

In the southern hemisphere, we are getting into summer, it’s hot, and it’s sweaty… so what’s the G.O. on hydration? And how best should I do this hydration thing to maximise both performance and recovery?
Thanks for asking 😉
 
I was out riding the range this morning with my good man friends, soaking up the morning sunrise and trying to beat the late spring-time sun before it got up too high and started forcing the old sweat glands to fire up. However, before too long, there was sweat dripping everywhere, and the need for water increased. Today (Saturday long ride) was a good reminder that I need to be onto my hydration practices as the weather warms up, or I’ll be hindering the good work done, by jeopardising my performance during the long ride, and taking longer to recover afterwards, and also potentially hindering days to come.
 
If you have done a longer session in the hot weather, and then felt your performance decline later in the ride, chances are, you’ve either gone short on food or fluids. If you get home and you’ve eaten, had a drink, then been chilling on the couch for a while and you go to get up and get all light headed, that’s a sure sign you’ve under hydrated. Or the colour of your pee is a better shade of gold than clear, you’ve under hydrated. Or, you’ve weighed yourself before and after your ride and you’re down a coupla kegs, you’ve (you guessed it) under hydrated. It’s easy to do. But it’s also not hard to stay onto it either, with a little bit of common sense. We like common sense approaches, so let’s roll with a few strategies to help with hydration practices as we head into the scorching summer months (in the southern hemisphere anyway). Rules still very much apply to those of you in the north who are heading into the cooler months and in a lot of cases, training entirely indoors.
 
Righto, let’s dive into some proactive measures to stay hydrated and maximise our performance.

1. Drink to the conditions. Here’s the common sense part… if it’s hot and humid, chances are you’re going to require a bit more fluids going in. So, without drowning yourself, make sure you’re staying with the game, and maybe a little ahead of it. There’s definitely a high risk of over hydrating too, but use your nous, and drink to the conditions.
2. Learn your body and how it reacts to different weather conditions. If you know it’s going to be hot and you’ve got a long or intense, sweaty session coming up, weigh yourself before and after your session, and note the weight difference, if there is a difference. Ideally, you want things to be about the same before and after. But slightly under eg. I’m 72kg… if I got home and I was 71-71.5kg I wouldn’t be too concerned. I’d be making sure I drank a good 150% of that weight lost (1.5litres for 1kg lost) in the ensuing few hours to make sure I replaced that fluid loss. This is also a good lesson I probably need to drink just a little bit more during that session.
3. Electrolytes? Yep. For sure. You’re losing more than just straight fluid out of your body, so common sense says to put some back in i.e. electrolytes. Our body functions using electrical impulses sent from the brain, so to over simply things, if that concentration of fluids throughout the body gets out of whack, it has to rob fluids from Peter to pay Paula, and this doesn’t fair well. Whilst the research on the cramping side of things isn’t directly linked to electrolyte losses, the common sensical side of me says that if those messages aren’t flowing freely through the body because of electrolyte/fluid losses, then we’re not doing ourselves any favours. I’m of the opinion that everything is linked in the body so if something is out of balance, it’ll shut something down in order to stay alive and kicking, rather than let you power on and risk it all. Last time I looked at the research here, a high quality electrolyte mix like hydralite/gastro lite (the stuff designed for when we get gastro and dehydrated) is your best bang for buck. But if you’re onto it, most electrolytes are going to help your cause.

 
Let’s leave it there. Learn your body, and practice the 150% rule to ace your recovery. Use your nous… drink to the conditions (not necessarily to thirst). And yep, have some electrolytes during and after, they’re not going to hurt one iota.
 
Stay safe in the sun, and have fun out there.
 
Coach SF - click HERE to learn more about Head Coach Scotty Farrell