When you start going strong in a workout, one of the first things you might notice is your lack of mental clarity afterward. This is caused by more than the tiredness caused by a workout; it also comes due to the fact that you are so dehydrated. As you go through your workout, it makes sense that you would use up a lot of your hydration reserves.
Sometimes, though, you might start exercising and feel like you can barely get going before you feel exhausted. If that is the case, then there is a good chance that you are dehydrated. That can be just as bad for you as ending a workout dehydrated: in many ways, it’s worse. Your lack of consistency in the workout mixed with the negative impact of dehydration will mean your workout is nowhere near as effective.
Therefore, you should look to do some proper planning to help ensure that you don’t wind up dehydrated. To help you do that, we are going to look at some of the ways that you can learn how to hydrate before, during and after a workout. If you do this, you should start to see some immediate differences.
It makes a lot of sense to do this on the basis that you will be able to get more out of every workout. More importantly, you will feel the benefits of the workout much faster as you don’t spend so long afterward feeling so rough!
Pre-Workout Hydration
When you are about to attack the day and start using up all of that excess energy, you need to be ready for the challenges that it brings. To do that, you need to be ready to make a positive move in the near future. Before any kind of workout, we recommend that you try get a lot more water into the system. Make sure that you keep an eye on your urine colour first and foremost: if your urine is clear, you might be too hydrated.
Typically, a sign of good pre-workout hydration levels is that you have pale yellow coloured urine. How you get to that stage is entirely up to yourself, but we recommend that you try and get used to drinking at least 8oz of water on the build-up to your workout.
This will give your body enough time to work through that liquid and also give you time to make sure you can go and get your bladder emptied prior to beginning. There are few things less enjoyable than doing a workout when you really need to go to the toilet!
About half an hour before you start the workout experience, we recommend that you drink another 5oz or so of water. This should give you a decent amount of water into the system, meaning that you can begin your workout without feeling too drained from the start, and ensuring you can start seeing some meaningful results.
Hydrating yourself during a workout
When you actually kick things into gear, the challenge stems from making sure that you look after your body properly. This means that you need to start paying attention to your hydration needs now, because this is a highly personal point of choice: there is no set in stone amount that you should be drinking at this stage.
We recommend that you try and weigh yourself prior to the exercise beginning, as this gives you a good idea of what kind of changes you need to make to stay in good shape. Some suggest that you try and get around 16oz of water into the system for every pound of weight that you have losing during the workout. Of course, working this out on the go can be tough.
So, we recommend that you try and drink around 6oz for every 15 minutes, for more on what is your ideal intake amount take a look at the hydration calculator from Water Ionizer. If you want to get a much more refined choice of numbers, though, work with a health professional or fitness trainer. It’s important that you avoid excess hydration during a workout, as it will only slow you down and make it harder for you to get the job done.
If your aim is to start seeing positive gains and improvements from your workout, then you should absolutely look to start drinking more water. How much you are going to need, though, will be directly proportionate to how much weight you burn off during the workout experience, so keep that in mind as you go.
Post-workout hydration tips
Now that you know roughly how much you should be drinking before and during workout, how much do you need after a workout? Most of the time, we want to re-fuel the body by eating some food to help make up for our energy deficit. And that does make a lot of sense: but we also recommend that you keep the following in mind.
When you get off that treadmill or whatever it is you do for exercise, weigh yourself. See how much weight you have lost from the start of the exercise program to the end. For every pound that is now missing, you want to take in around 24oz of water. This should help to keep your weight at a consistent level.
However, if you find that you get off the workout regime that you are on and you weigh yourself, and your weigh has gone up, you need to adjust. This means that you have taken in too much water, and you will need to try and reduce the amount of water that you take in during the workout and instead drink it afterwards.
However, it’s kind of like pre-workout testing: simply go to the loo. If your urine is too light again, then you know that you have probably overdone it. This should give you a good idea of what you need to change.
If you keep this in mind, you might find that hydrating your body will become a much more harmonious and easy to control experience.