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Founded in , Oakland joined USL Championship in…. We have several XPS Forms UI Updates available for you! News All Sports. Why is hydration so important in professional sports?

How can coaches improve monitoring and hydration levels? Here are the options for coaches: Urine Specific Gravity USG or Urine Color analysis. Using a simple urine color chart, or a more detailed Urine Specific Gravity USG. Sweat Rate Assessments. Patches, apparel, towels, and other laboratory-grade tools can be used to assess how much fluid a player has lost to sweat during games and training.

Saliva Testing. A simple and effective way to see whether athletes are hydrated enough. Many are less than enthusiastic about samples being taken. Bio-Impedance for Body Composition and Hydration.

For those already using bio-impedance for body composition monitoring, this is another way to assess hydration levels. However, there are some limitations, as is the case with most hydration monitoring tests.

Weigh-Ins for Fluid Loss. Pre and post-activity weigh-ins are an easy-to-implement way to assess fluid consumption and loss. Weigh-ins are such a normal part of sports training that they tie in nicely with other body weight maintenance testing. Ensure its standard practice before, during, and after training and competitive games.

Keep hitting the hydration message home. Make sure players know how important this is. Train them to stay hydrated, before, during, and after any sporting activity. Pull up staff or players who are falling short. Maintain hydration as a constant team-wide best practice.

XPS Network Instagram. Related articles. News Features All Sports. Athletes often wait to drink until they are thirsty. However, thirst is not an accurate indicator of a need for fluids, and athletes who wait to hydrate until thirsty are already dehydrated. By this time, performance may have already begun to decline.

American College of Sports Medicine. American Dietetic Association. National Agricultural Library. Sports, Cardiovascular, and Wellness Nutrition, a dietetic practice group of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Food and Drug Administration.

Sign up for the TrueSport Newsletter and receive a FREE copy of our Sportsmanship Lesson. Team USA wheelchair basketball player, paralympian, and true sport athlete. Today, I want to talk to you about goal setting. And there are three things that I would like you to know.

First, successful athletes set goals and a planned roadmap. Second, goals should be written down, assessed over time, and changed if necessary. And third, goals need to be challenging in order to be worthwhile.

As a freshmen at Edinboro University, I was a part of a team that made the national championship game. And at that time I recognized I was the low man on the totem pole, but I felt in my heart that I knew my dreams were so much bigger than winning a national title.

I wanted to make Team USA. I knew what achieving my lofty goal was not going to be easy and that I would need to work hard every day.

So, as a reminder, I created a pyramid of goals that I kept right above my bed. This pyramid reminded me of the accomplishments that I was working towards and visually represented my need to create a solid foundation underneath me before reaching the top.

The middle row listed winning a national title and playing for a professional team. And at the top row, the most challenging of them all, I listed becoming a gold medalist for Team USA.

By understanding that there are smaller stepping stones to achieving my ultimate goal of being on Team USA, I was able to stay motivated and to stay focused on completing the smaller stepping stones fully before moving onto the next one. Remember, create a clear goal roadmap, assess your goals often, and continue to challenge yourself.

I hope that you never stopped dreaming big or reaching for the stars. And I look forward to seeing where your roadmap takes you. First, healthy thoughts often lead to healthier bodies. And third, true beauty goes deeper than the skin. My coaches and I adapt to my training frequently, all with the goal of supporting my long-term success and health in the sport of javelin.

In the lead up to the Olympic trials, I was told in order to improve my performance on the field, I should try to become a leaner, skinnier version of myself. So I changed my diet. And I believe becoming leaner than my body naturally wanted to be was what caused my ACL to tear.

In the end, it cost me heavily going into the London games. You should do your research and experiment with your diet to find what makes you feel the best, rather than focusing on what you look like.

Today, if I feel like having a chocolate chip cookie, I have one, just not every day. I hydrate and allow myself time to recover. And I listen to and communicate with my body so that I can be the best version of myself. In the end, you are in control of how you see, treat, and respond to your body.

Be a true sport athlete. Love who you are in this moment and get excited for all the places your body will take you. Today, I want to talk to you about being a good sport. First, real winners act the same toward their opponent, whether they win or lose.

Second, follow the rules and be a gracious winner and respectful loser. And third, sportsmanship reveals your true character. I started competing in Modern Pentathlon eight years after my older sister and three-time Olympian, Margaux Isaksen, began competing.

I soon realized that people often compared the two of us. I know that it would have been easy to let our hyper competitive mindset affect our relationship, but instead we decided to support and cheer for each other, regardless of our own performance. My experience of competing against and being compared to my older sister, taught me to focus on how to perform at my best, rather than putting wasted energy into wishing for others to fail.

I believe that sportsmanship reveals true character. Remember, be a fierce competitor, find grace in all your victories and losses.

And I hope to see you out there. Maybe what you want is very simple, for everyone to just run in the right direction, score for their own team, to try and try again and again. Maybe you want your athletes to become all stars.

You want them to earn trophies, medals, win titles. You want them to reach the highest height their sport allows. But as every great coach discovers, developing a great athlete means nurturing, nurturing the even greater person within.

Truth is, you have even more influence than you know. You can be both the coach who provides the skills needed to win the game and the coach who helps them learn and succeed beyond the sport, to become all stars wherever they land in the future, and to enjoy their lives more now, because the confidence and courage they find working with you will stay with them when they need it the most.

There are games to be won, lives to change. Coaches have the power to do both. What kind of coach do you want to be? At first glance, dietary supplements look the same.

Most vitamins, minerals, fish oil, and other supplements containing nutrients are probably just fine, but supplements are not evaluated or approved by FDA before they are sold.

Although it is rare for vitamins or minerals to be contaminated with drugs, there has been at least one case of a vitamin containing an anabolic steroid.

At the other extreme are products that contain drugs, stimulants, anabolic steroids, or other hormones. Even though these are not technically dietary supplements, many of them are labeled as supplements. For example, body-building products sometimes contain anabolic steroids or Selective Androgen Receptor Modulators, known as SARMs, or other hormones.

Some pre-workout or energy products contain illegal stimulants like DMAA, ephedra, or other amphetamine-like stimulants. Weight loss products might contain prescription drugs like sibutramine, or hormones, like human chorionic gonadotropin, also known as hCG.

All natural or herbal sexual enhancement products might contain hormones or Viagra-like drugs.