Thirst is not a dehydration barometer. This is particularly true during long athletic events, where your fluid loss through sweat may outpace your body's response to flag for thirst. Water is an excellent drink for rehydration, but you don't just lose water as you sweat—you lose electrolytes, too.

And when you've participated in a particularly sweaty workout, or an extended workout in hot weather, you may end up with an electrolyte imbalance. This imbalance needs to be restored to ensure your body recovers appropriately. In the following instances listed below, you should consider using fluids with electrolytes mixed in to help rehydrate.

When you exercise for longer than 90 minutes, you're placing additional stress on your systems, and you're losing a significant amount of water and electrolytes through sweat.

For shorter workouts, the electrolyte loss is unlikely to be significant enough to impact performance. You can restore the losses more easily following your workout by consuming water and a normal diet.

But when you start logging those extra-long workouts, your body is likely to need a boost of electrolytes in addition to water alone. When you exercise in heat , your body uses it's natural cooling system—sweat—to keep your body temperature from rising.

That means the workouts you do on hot days result in greater fluid and electrolyte loss. If you're exercising in the heat, particularly if you're exercising for longer than 60 to 90 minutes, it is best to add some carbohydrates and electrolytes to your fluid consumption to prevent dehydration and immunosuppressive effects of intense exercise.

Doing so, will ensure you keep your system hydrated and balanced. You may not have ever thought about it, but exercising at higher altitudes results in more fluid loss, not only through sweat loss which remains similar to the loss you might experience at sea level , but through increased loss of respiratory water.

This loss occurs because the air is thinner at higher altitudes and you have to breath at a faster rate to intake the same level of oxygen as you would at lower altitudes. The result is that you expire more water into the air. Plus, the physiological changes that take place when exposed to high altitudes for a brief period of time when you haven't acclimated to the environment , also affect how your body responds to exercise.

All of these factors combined add up to a situation where you might benefit from electrolyte intake as you rehydrate. Finally, any athlete who is experiencing greater fluid losses for any other reason should also consider using an electrolyte-enhanced fluid as part of the rehydration plan.

This includes athletes with injuries, medical conditions, or illnesses—particularly if diarrhea or vomiting are involved. It is particularly important to pay attention to electrolyte balance in any situation where dehydration is more likely to occur with exercise. To help you decide which drinks to use, Dr.

Modabber ranked some of the most popular options based on "which get the job done, without including too much of what you don't necessarily need—especially sugars.

Athletes need to be particularly conscientious about water intake levels, as well as electrolyte balance in order to help prevent dehydration. By paying attention to the color and concentration of your urine, and doing pre- and post-workout weigh-ins, you can develop a pretty good idea of your personal water intake needs.

But, if you're concerned about dehydration or you're unsure whether you're drinking enough water, consult with a sports dietitian or a healthcare provider that specializes in sports medicine to discuss whether you can get a more personalized assessment. How much water an athlete needs depends greatly on the type of athlete in question, as well as the age, sex, and body composition of the athlete, intensity of the workout performed, and the environmental conditions where the exercise is taking place.

That said, in addition to a baseline requirement of roughly 8 to 12 cups of water per day, athletes should consume an additional 3 cups of water for each pound of weight lost during the course of an exercise routine. Athletes should drink water consistently with the goal of urinating frequently with clear or almost-clear urine.

Any water consumption above and beyond this barometer for euhydration could set an athlete up for hyponatremia —a condition associated with excess water intake without a simultaneous increase in electrolyte intake, resulting in a potentially life-threatening electrolyte imbalance.

An athlete shouldn't continue to force water consumption beyond what has been deemed appropriate for their personal needs. In addition to consistently drinking water throughout the day, athletes can also turn to other foods and liquids to help ensure they're staying hydrated.

Fruit juices, smoothies, electrolyte drinks, and even fruits, vegetables, and water-based soups all contribute to total fluid intake. Geological Survey. The water in you: water and the human body. Exercise and fluid replacement. Kerksick, C. et al. J Int Soc Sports Nutr 15, 38 National Academies Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Dietary Reference Intakes for Water, Potassium, Sodium, Chloride, and Sulfate. Sawka MN, Cheuvront SN, Kenefick RW. Hypohydration and human performance: impact of environment and physiological mechanisms. Sports Med. Bushman, B. Exercise in the Heat and Adequate Hydration.

ACSM Health Fitness J. DOI: Lopez, R. Exercise and Hydration: Individualizing Fluid Replacement Guidelines. Strength Conditioning J. Shirreffs, S. Hydration in Sport and Exercise: Water, Sports Drinks and Other Drinks. Nutrition Bulletin. By Laura Williams Laura Williams is a fitness expert and advocate with certifications from the American Council on Exercise and the American College of Sports Medicine.

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Measure advertising performance. Measure content performance. Understand audiences through statistics or combinations of data from different sources. Develop and improve services. Use limited data to select content. List of Partners vendors. Sports Nutrition. Hydration Guide Hydration Guide. Hydration Hydration for Athletes Dehydration Health Benefits of Hydration Water vs.

Sports Drink How to Boost Flavor. By Laura Williams. Laura Williams. Laura Williams is a fitness expert and advocate with certifications from the American Council on Exercise and the American College of Sports Medicine. Learn about our editorial process. Learn more. Medical Reviewers confirm the content is thorough and accurate, reflecting the latest evidence-based research.

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Hydration Guidelines for Athletes. Calculating Recommended Water Intake. When to Hydrate. When Should You Drink Water vs. Frequently Asked Questions. Next in Hydration Guide. Ramin Modabber, MD There is no formula for what an ideal amount of fluid consumption is.

Ramin Modabber, MD. In amongst the data there were strong indications that this was very likely to be compromising their performance. Who in their right mind would want to start exercising hard in a dehydrated state if they're trying to perform at their best?

This study certainly backs up previous work I've read on the subject and the kind of things we've seen over many years working with athletes in different scenarios. It's certainly not uncommon to see people only really thinking about hydration once they turn up to a session rather than preparing in advance.

That's just life. This blog addresses how to optimise your recovery by hydrating properly. Although athletes turning up to training a bit low on fluids is relatively common, it's generally less of an issue before major competitions.

But, because most athletes care a lot about their performance in big events, there's a tendency to increase fluid intake before the big day because extra priority is placed on all aspects of last minute preparation. The irony of this extra emphasis on pre-event hydration is that quite a lot of athletes can go from slightly under-drinking before training to significantly over- drinking pre-competition and this can lead to a different set of problems!

low blood sodium levels caused by inadequately replacing the sodium lost when sweating and further dilution by drinking plain water or weak sports drinks , something that can be pretty catastrophic for health and performance if it goes unchecked.

The idea of carb loading - i. maximising the amount of glycogen you have stored in your muscles and liver before a strenuous activity - is one that's well researched and essentially universally accepted as a performance-enhancing tactic.

OK, so sports scientists love to argue over exactly what and how much you should eat, and when exactly to shove it in your cake hole, but few sane athletes would argue with the principle that consuming additional carbohydrate calories often combined with a tapering off in training load in the final days before an event is a good idea.

That's because you can store up and subsequently use a lot of this energy later on when you need to dig deep and burn through large amounts of fuel during a long or hard effort. With hydration things are less clear cut than with carbs. As we've seen, many athletes do tend to increase fluid intake prior to important events or hard training sessions, with the vague notion that having more in the tank should result in better performance.

But many unfortunately over do it in the process and this is harming their performance. But, can you actually store fluid over and above being normally hydrated and, if so, does it help to do so? For more on why sodium is crucial to staying hydrated and maintaining your performance, you may want to read this blog.

In a nutshell though, without the right amount of sodium in your pre-exercise drinks, drinking lots of water will do you a fat lot of good. The importance of sodium to hydration and maintaining your performance was further proven by research conducted at NASA at the end of the 20th century.

It was causing them to feel weak, light headed and even to black out on re-entry or once they landed back on terra firma. To combat this, NASA tested lots of drinks containing different carbohydrates and electrolyte mixtures and found that the more sodium you put in a drink, the more effective the drink would be at being retained in the body and bloodstream and correcting dehydration.

This review article essentially came to the same conclusion as NASA that sodium preloading with a drink strong enough to stimulate fluid retention in the blood stream, but not so strong that it caused other knock on issues, does seem to improve endurance performance.

At the other extreme, most of the scientific studies that have been conducted in this area have looked at using extremely strong electrolyte drinks containing ~3,mg of sodium per litre.

That's like drinking a bag of saline solution that would normally be put into you via an IV! The athletes drank a set amount 17ml per kg of body weight, so about 1. If you have any questions about how to preload effectively or need help optimising your approach, drop us an email.

Andy Blow is a Sports Scientist with a BSc Honours degree in Sports and Exercise Science from the University of Bath. An expert in hydration, he has co-authored a number of scientific studies and books.

He was once the Team Sports Scientist for the Benetton and Renault Formula 1 teams and remains an adviser to the Porsche Human Performance Centre at Silverstone. Andy has finished in the top 10 of IRONMAN and IRONMAN Subscribe Get performance advice emails.

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