Hydration Guidelines For Runners, Cyclists, & Other Endurance Athletes
Good. Better. Best. Oh, God. Don't judge. It's past 9:00 in the morning and my kids are driving me absolutely crazy. Good morning, endurance friends. Matt Mosman, Chief Endurance Officer over at EndurElite, the maker of premium supplements for endurance athletes and endurance training, and supplement expert.
Hydration requirements for endurance athletes
You're probably gonna want to save the beer or liquor for after, and even then, maybe not because it might hamper your recovery a little bit. But, that's a topic for another video. So, today we're gonna talk about hydration requirements for endurance athletes. And if you're like me and you sweat like a whore in church, you're gonna need to hydrate for a few different reasons.
Why Endurance Athletes Need To Stay Hydrated
One, even a 2% reduction in body weight can hamper endurance performance when it comes to being dehydrated.
Two, that can lead to things like heatstroke and heat exhaustion. And three, it just plain sucks being thirsty. So, three good reasons there to, you know, be really hydrated before, during, and after exercise.
What To Drink Before, During, And After Exercise To Stay Hydrated
So, what we're gonna discuss today is again, the hydration before, during, and after endurance exercise. Some supplements that might help with hyperhydrating your body before you go out in, you know, a hot and humid environment to maybe help with cellular hydration a little bit more, and then kind of the best ways to carry hydration with you if you're a runner, cyclist, or obstacle course racing athlete.
How To Hydrate Before Exercise
So, before exercise, you wanna hydrate with about 16 to 20 ounces of water or sports drink, about two to three hours beforehand, and then another 6 to 10 ounces about 10 to 20 minutes before endurance exercise, which, your 6 to 10 ounces can come in the form of drinking some PerformElite.
How To Hydrate During Exercise
Now, that's before exercise just to maintain optimal hydration levels. Now during exercise, you're gonna wanna shoot for 16 to 30 ounces of water or sports drink per hour of exercise. And this is just to maintain hydration and make sure you know you're not losing a lot of bodily water that will hamper endurance performance.
How To Hydrate After Exercise
Now, after exercise, the way you're gonna kind of figure this out is you want to do your pre-exercise weight and take that minus your post-exercise weight. And whatever that amount comes to be, you want to figure out in kilograms. And what you're gonna do is you're gonna drink about 50 ounces of water or sports drink, or some kind of beverage after for every kilogram body weight lost. So, if you lose, you know, two kilograms of body weight, you're gonna want to replenish with a 100 ounces of water or, you know, a carbohydrate sports drink, or a recovery drink, or things of that nature.
So, that's kind of really general hydration guidelines before, during, and after exercise. Now, this is just a general recommendation. It's really gonna depend on, you know, the athlete type, your gender, your body weight, exercise duration, and intensity. A lot of it's really gonna depend on the environment you're exercising in too. So, that may change from winter to summer, you know, how much you're hydrating before, during, and after.
Use A Sweat Rate Calculator To Determine Water Loss
For...to get a little more exact for how much fluid you should be drinking during exercise...endurance exercise, you could go and get a...go online and Google search sweat rate calculator. And this basically takes your pre-exercise weight minus your post-exercise weight. You're gonna figure in things like how much fluid you're drinking during exercise. And oddly enough, if you're urinating during exercise, you calculate that in there which, I don't know how that's possible. You might get a few weird looks if you're out running on the trail and you're peeing in a measuring cup, and you're recording that. That would be a little bit odd. But obviously, well, what you do is you just basically throw all those numbers in a calculator and that will tell you your sweat rate and basically how much fluid you should be replacing during endurance exercise. So, that's kind of, like I said, your hydration guidelines, some more general guidelines, and then more exact with that sweat rate calculator.
Now, I know a lot of people have a hard time hydrating during exercise or drinking the appropriate amounts of fluids. This is especially true for obstacle course racers who, you know, they're swinging on rings, and throwing spears, and jumping through fire. So, you know, they really can't...can't really carry, you know, any kind of hydration pack or handheld hydration unit.
What Supplements Helps With Hydration?
So, there's a few supplements you can take that can hyperhydrate your body before exercise. We won't go in-depth, you know, on the physiological mechanisms behind all these. So, we'll cover that in a different article. But, these ingredients or supplements that can help with hyperhydration is one, taurine, which is found in PerformElite. Two is creatine, which might come as kind of a surprise to some of you. Most people think of creatine as a strength training supplement. And that's true, though. It's very effective, but as an endurance athlete, even if you get two grams of creatine, that will give you a lot of the benefits of creatine without the weight gain. And then, like I said, it can help with intercellular hydration, as well. And then the last one is glycerol. Glycerol causes an influx of fluid into the cell, as well. So those three ingredients can be very beneficial if you have a hard time drinking enough fluid during exercise, or if you're, you know, you just can't really, you know, practically carry any kind of hydration with you when you're running, biking, or doing the whole obstacle course racing thing. So, that kind of leads me to my next point, how are you carrying hydration when you exercise?
How To Carry Your Drink When Exercising
So, you know, for biking, it's pretty easy. You have your water bottle cages. You have your CamelBak. Hydration is, you know, pretty darn easy. You just grab it and you drink it and you put it back. For running, you know, it's a little more difficult. You can have, you know, the handheld bottles that slip over your hand. You can have the CamelBak. And those are probably your two most practical options. And then as an OCR racer, again, it becomes really difficult because you're performing a lot of different functions or, you know, obstacles in addition to running. So, for all three of those types of athletes or other...any other endurance type athletes, you know, utilize those aid stations, you know, if you're racing and then kind of gauge how much water you may need or may not need to carry during endurance exercise. For training, you know, if you're running, or you're doing, you know, obstacle course racing training, you can always stash water bottles along the trail if you don't want to carry any kind of hydration unit.
So, that's about it for the hydration guidelines for endurance athletes. As kind of an added note, EndurElite is going to be releasing a sports drink hydration formula here in the middle of February called SustainElite. And I say this with all sincerity, this sports drink is gonna change the way you fuel and hydrate during exercise. It's a formula like none you've ever seen before. While most sports drinks use really simple and cheap ingredients like maltodextrin as their main sugar, SustainElite is...it's gonna be groundbreaking. It's gonna be fantastic. Check it out on the website. The ingredient profile is up on their now, www.endurelite.com. Navigate to the SustainElite page and you'll kinda see what is really gonna make it a lot different from any other sports drink you have ever tried. So, that is about it for now. Until next time my endurance friends, stay fueled, stay focused, stay fast, and stay hydrated.
