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How Much Do You Sweat? A Sweat Rate Prediction For Football

How Much Do You Sweat? A Sweat Rate Prediction For FootballHow Much Do You Sweat? A Sweat Rate Prediction For FootballHow much do you sweat? A practical and easy individual sweat rate prediction to stay on top of your hydration

Simple yeah, just drink a lot of water…and you’ll be good-to-go, ready to run all day no problem and you’re not going to notice any deterioration in performance. Right?

However, hydration is one of the basics that gets over looked consistently by many players within football. Even if players see the importance of their nutrition for their performance (this is still problematic for some), so often than not they disregard the hydration side for fuelling their performance. Either due to neglect and/or unaware of the significant importance that basic of hydration has on their performance.

The football pre-season is back under way for many clubs around the world, with the start of those pre-season friendly matches played in the summer heat. I thought this would be a perfect time to dish out some information to players/clubs to assist during this pre-season period and throughout the season.

If I was to say to you as a player…..What if I could give you something that will give you a 10% increase on your performance….what would your response be?…

No brainer right, you would bite my hand off before I even finish the sentence…I mean who wouldn’t want to increase their performance by 10% no matter what level or sport they play.

So, what is it then I’m sure you’re wondering?

No magic potions here…all it is….is being hydrated OPTIMALLY for yourself, for every training session and every match…. That’s it, simple. BUT, with many of the basic, simple things in life, they usually get overlooked. Why, because they are not sexy or they’re not the new trendy thing everybody is talking about that is all the rage right now.

Being around 1-2% dehydrated going into a game and/or a training session can reduce your performance capabilities. Subsequently, with dehydration levels of >2% body water lost, can decrease football-specific performance actions and your overall performance by up to 10%.

You’ll experience:

  • Impaired cognitive function in your simple decision-making capabilities, (i.e. poor pass selection, 1-on-1 defending decisions, dribbling selection etc.)
  • Increased perception of tiredness (i.e. that long tracking back as a winger, chasing your opposition full back will seem A LOT harder)
  • Decreased alertness (i.e. quick ability to react to the ball or oppositions movements)
  • Compromised physical performance (i.e. endurance and intermittent high-intensity sprinting, and dribbling skill capabilities)

Thus, the easiest way is it stay on track of your hydration status, BEFORE, DURING and AFTER your trainings/games.

Unlike individual sports, as a player if you’re under fuelled or inadequately hydrated for a game, your decline in performance may not stand out drastically as you have 10 team mates to pull your weight.

However, if several players on the same team are in the same boat as you, then a major problem really does arise, and the team’s performance on that day will severally be compromised.

The old saying that many people may have heard is drink ‘8 glasses of water a day’ this roughly equates to ~2-2.5 L of fluid over the course of a day. On average, this is adequate for the general population who are sedentary. Therefore, players and individuals who are very active and exercising NEED to consume more fluid than the ~2-2.5 L. With figures even as high as ~6 L of fluid daily in warmer climates.

Note, these recommendations aren’t solely for water. It includes other beverages you consume throughout the day (i.e. coffee & tea) but also the water found within food that we consume on a daily basis.

How much do you need? Well that depends, it can vary significantly given the:

  • Exercise duration
  • Exercise intensity
  • Environmental conditions (altitude, humidity, temperature)
  • Body weight
  • Genetic predisposition
  • Heat acclimatisation state
  • Metabolic efficiency
  • Personal sweat rates, considering the players position and playing style

You get the picture, you can’t just offer a blanket number and prescribe it do all players within the same and/or different team. As the plethora of varying factors mentioned above can alter the amount needed ‘optimally’ for each player.

Do you know how much you sweat?

As a professional footballer or even a high level athlete you SHOULD have a guesstimate of the amount of fluids that you typically loose for an average training session….If not, then how do you know how much to rehydrate after training in order to prepare for the subsequent training session?

Within a team setting, some players may produce significantly more sweat than others. Some players may have a sweat rate of 0.5 L up to 2 L per hour of training. This results in a weight loss of ~0.5 kg to 2 kg / per hour. So, during longer training sessions if a player doesn’t hydrate during the training/game they could see a drastic reduction in total body weight lost.

A Quick & Simple, Basic Sweat Test

Body mass changes during exercise. This is a quick, very easy and a cost-effective strategy to implement yourself. It additionally offers as a reliable/precision strategy, that is invasive and presents a low skill component in order to obtain the data needed.

All you need is:How Much Do You Sweat? A Sweat Rate Prediction For Football

  • Bathroom scales
  • Kitchen scales.

The procedure:

  1. With minimal clothing, weigh yourself BEFORE training and record the weight.
  2. AFTER training, with the same clothing, record the weight again.
  3. Subtract the weight AFTER training from BEFORE.
  4. Record how much water you drank during training, if you drank a full 500 ml bottle, then this would equate to 0.5 kg.
  5. Add the amount you drank during training, to the weight lost from training. This will give you your sweat rate.

Example:

  1. Weight before = 78 kg
  2. Weight after = 75.5 kg
  3. 78 kg – 75.5 kg = 2.5 kg
  4. 500 ml = 0.5 kg
  5. 2.5 kg – 0.5 kg = 3 kg

For this example, the player lost about ~3 kg during the training session.

NOTE: If you do need to go to the toilet, this should be incorporated into the amount lost….But, let’s be honest, you’re not wanting to hold onto a warm bottle of wee on a hot summers day are you….or neither are members of the Sport Science department for that matter.

As a basic rule of thumb for every 1 kg of weight lost, for rapid and complete recovery from the training session, consume 1.5 L of fluid e.g. 3 x 1.5 = 4.5 L

This caters in for any loss of water that you consume, via the excretion of urine whilst you’re rehydrating.

Otherwise, your body will not retain the sufficient fluids and electrolytes needed. You will find yourself just heading straight to the toilet regularly via diuresis, i.e. pissing out what you’ve just put into your body.

One of my favourite ways to increase sodium consumption, one that I suggest to players that I work with and one that I incorporate myself, is to eat salted foods whilst drinking. My go-to choice is salted sticks a form of pretzel whilst drinking.

The sodium found in the pretzel & other salted snacks in the food can help to stimulate thirst and also retain the fluids you’re consuming simultaneously. Furthermore, the salted sticks will assist in increasing your carbohydrate intake the day before (Match Day -1) or game day. Thus, ‘killing two birds with stone’.

Another simple tip post training/game is to add some table salt to your drink, and also to sprinkle on salt to your post-training meal.

Given the logistical considerations with the game-play of football, players can’t consume beverages at any point during the game. Unlike say an Ironman Triathlete who would be drinking to a plan and can be consumed at any time (although challenging during the swim portion of the race, better to not drink the sea/lake water).

Therefore, during a game it is paramount even if you’re not ‘thirsty’ if there are any stoppages during the game, you should use this opportunity to re-hydrate. Please, don’t be ‘that player’ who says they aren’t thirsty, as by relying on thirst, you’re already slightly dehydrated. So, if a player is receiving treatment, jog over to the side-line and sip on your team’s beverage of choice, be that water or sports drink.

One myth, or thoughts by many players, is that they don’t need to consume ‘as much fluid’ because its cold outside, as opposed to during a hotter day. A significant amount of fluid lost via sweating can still occur even in colder environments.

So, even if you don’t feel sweat dripping off your head or on your clothes, during a cold training session, you STILL need to think to hydrate accordingly.

To Summarise

If you’re a professional athlete and you don’t have a hydration plan, then in my opinion you’re already a few steps behind players who are fine-tuning their hydration strategies.

Subsequently you’re always playing catch up to those players when you don’t have to. Since this is an EASY and SIMPLE strategy to implement there shouldn’t be any concerns.

So, go and grab yourself a drink and start optimising your hydration now, your performance and team mates will thank you.

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