Hydration Reminders and How Your Sweat Should Dictate Your Plan Ep 143

Hydration may seem basic, it's one of the biggest reasons endurance athletes struggle in training and racing (and come to us for help).

In this episode of Find Your Edge, Coach Chris Newport shares essential reminders about sweat rate, sodium loss, fluid needs, dehydration, heat, cramping, bonking, and GI distress.

You’ll learn:

• why sodium matters most in sweat
• why every athlete’s sweat is unique
• how heat and intensity change fluid needs
• why 2% fluid loss can affect performance
• how to estimate your hydration losses
• why guessing is not a race-day strategy

If you are tired of guessing what to drink, how much sodium you need, or why you fade late in races, this episode is for you.

Stop guessing and start using a personalized fueling and hydration system built specifically for your body, your sweat profile, and your performance goals. Get on the Fueling and Hydration Bootcamp waitlist here: https://www.theenduranceedge.com/fuelingbootcamp/

Transcript

Why Fueling Still Gets Missed

Coach Carlie 0:00

Hey friends, and welcome back to the Find Your Edge podcast. I'm your host, Coach Chris. And today I want to talk about something that might seem really basic, but honestly, it's one of the biggest reasons why endurance athletes come to us due to their struggles in training and racing. And that is fueling and really hydration. I think sometimes it's easy to assume that athletes already know this stuff because don't you have to hydrate on a daily basis all the time? Yeah, but just because you've been training for a long time or you know just in general that you need to hydrate well, I found that most athletes are still guessing. They're really still shooting in the dark on how much sodium they need, on how much fluid they need, on how many carbs they need. And they're surprised when things like cramping or bonking or dealing with any sort of GI distress or just generally fading later in races actually happens. And the tricky thing is that how else are you going to learn about this other than searching on the internet or asking your training partners or seeing what the pros are doing? But then we're still just kind of shooting in the dark, right? So today I want to remind you about some of the basics. So a few reminders that are necessary because sometimes we forget as the seasons change, or sometimes maybe we just don't know. So I'm here to give you a couple of reminders. And if you're watching this on YouTube, I've got our hydration guide pulled up. It's one of our original guides. It's amazing, not just because we created it, but also because it's just a genuinely fantastic tool and it's set free. You can download it from our website. I'll put it in the show notes below that you can link to it. But if you're watching, you can kind of follow along to see what it actually entails and what those reminders are. So, number one, I'm gonna scroll down to the sweat science. Sodium is still and always has been the primary electrolyte that is

Sodium First Then Other Electrolytes

Coach Carlie 2:05

lost in sweat. Chloride matters too, potassium does too, and magnesium does too. So, as I've dug so deeply into all of the different products on the market, and trust me, there are more coming out by the day. I swear. Our list of products just continues to grow and grow. But it's really hard when you're, you know, something new and flashy comes on the market and you're like, oh, you just you just grab for it because you're like, well, that must be the magic solution. But when you are thinking of exercise in the heat or just endurance exercise in general, um, or honestly any type of exercise, you want to make sure that sodium is the primary electrolyte in your drink. But then again, it also has those other electrolytes that I mentioned as well. So making sure it has chloride, potassium, and magnesium. So some of them, especially some major brands, are missing some of those. So if you are struggling with cramping, if you are struggling with overall dehydration, that might be your ticket. Another thing that I think a lot of people don't know is that everyone's sweat composition is unique. It's just like your fingerprint. Seriously guys, it's it's it's amazing. So let me give you a little scenario. Let's say you're running alongside a friend. Let's say you sweat a ton. You literally just step outside as in your first few steps of running, and you just start dripping sweat. And by the end of the run, your socks are wet and your shoes are squishy.

Your Sweat Fingerprint Explained

Coach Carlie 3:40

And then the person you're running with is literally like glistening. It's like, what the heck? So not only is your sweat amount, your sweat quantity unique to you, but also your sweat composition, which is why if you consume one product, one certain type of product, it might work fabulously for you, but it might work terribly for a friend or a training partner. The next thing that I want to remind you of, especially as we head into the hotter seasons, is that hotter temperatures and more intense workouts raise your core temperature. Remember, that's the whole reason why you're sweating, is your body wants to cool itself off. So that will increase your total fluid losses, for which sweat and electrolytes go together, y'all. So they cannot necessarily be separated. So anytime that you are exercising in hotter temperatures or doing more intense workouts, again, the sweat loss will be greater. Therefore, the fluid loss will be greater and the electrolyte loss will be greater. So keeping that in mind as it relates to what type of fueling plan or hydration plan that you have across the seasons. They should be ever so slightly different. It doesn't mean that it has to be complicated, it just means that you have to make those little

Heat Raises Losses And Needs

Coach Carlie 5:05

tweaks. Okay, another reminder that I want to make sure you've got in your head as we head into these hotter months is fluid loss will affect you. As little as 2% will decrease potentially your performance. So that's not that much when you really think about it. So this little chart that we have as a percentage of body weight loss, typically around 1%. Perhaps you're experiencing some thirst. If you are a master's athlete, as I so respectfully call you, of course, that differs across sports, but let's just say the older you get, the more your thirst mechanism tends to be reduced. So gotta be one of those things that you remind yourself to drink and drink at frequent intervals that matches your sweat loss. So remember that scenario I was just giving you of the person who's sweating just so terribly, and this person who's barely glistening. Yes, they can drink at smaller intervals, but certainly the one who's drink who's losing more fluid, they need to drink at more frequent intervals. And again, try to limit your losses to less than 2% if possible. Some of my super heavy sweaters, they're really looking at trying to limit it to more like 3%. But as you can see here, as you get into the 4% losses, now we might be experiencing nausea as you get 5% difficulty concentrating, tingling extremities, 6% increasing body temperature, your pulse and your respiration goes up. So if you're wondering why you can't keep your heart rate down in the heat, this is one of those reasons. So things to keep in mind there. How do you know how much fluid

The Performance Cost Of Dehydration

Coach Carlie 6:55

loss you actually are experiencing? Well, you're in luck. We have hydration loss assessment steps here. So I'm going to walk you quickly through this, but again, download this on our free guide as a reminder. So, number one is to check your hydration status. One of the easiest ways to do that, and again, these are all reminders. I know you probably know these already, but you may not be doing them. So let's do them. When you go pee, try to go pee before every workout to check the color of your urine. That is the easiest, fastest, simplest method of checking your hydration status that you have access to without doing something like urine-specific gravity, which, if you're a really heavy sweater, maybe that's another podcast. I walk you through how to use that in addition to your urine color and your sweat losses, or actually doing blood markers. So clearly not very accessible there. But you want to weigh yourself before you work out. You can, you don't have to weigh yourself nude. You can weigh yourself with all your clothes, with all your shoes, and then make sure you've got that 0.02, so that 2% to determine, okay, this is really the maximum amount of weight that I want to lose. Do your workout, do your weigh-in again, and then multiply the number of pounds lost by 20 to determine how many ounces of fluid you need to drink for proper rehydration. And then based on that, review and adjust. So adjust your hydration strategy. Did you drink enough? Do you need more or less next time? What hydration products did you use? Did they taste good?

Simple Sweat Loss Assessment Steps

Coach Carlie 8:35

How do you feel? Noting any energy level or digestive effects. So I wanted to keep it simple today with those brief reminders. And honestly, this is why we built the fueling and hydration boot camp. Not just because athletes need more random nutrition information, but because they need a system. You need to understand what your body specifically needs, how conditions change that hydration and fueling plan, how you can adapt those race plans. And it doesn't necessarily have to be complicated, y'all. We've got a very simple system that we use, and then how to fuel for performance and with your eye on how do I make sure that I'm able to continue to do this for a long time. And then, of course, stop second-guessing yourself and then going into these races that you commit so much time and so much energy and money to training for, to wrapping your head around and to challenging yourself with, and then ending up feeling defeated because something as simple as your hydrational electrolytes were off. When it's something that's easily tracked through sweat testing, through personalization, so that you can be more confident in your training and racing. I know this topic can feel super overwhelming because there's so much conflicting information online. There are so many different products that people want you to try and ingest. So that's exactly why we created the fueling and hydration boot camp. And we walk athletes through your unique sweat testing fingerprints on how much are you losing, how much is actually in your sweat so that you can create an appropriate hydration strategy, make sure you've got your carb needs aligned, make sure you have your race fueling and logistics all set up, troubleshoot any GI issues, make sure that you have a personalized system that actually works. And honestly, one of my favorite things is to see athletes get confident in their fueling and hydration because they're not afraid that they're gonna bonk. They're not afraid they're gonna have some sort of GI issue. So if you want to join the wait list for our next upcoming fueling and hydration boot camp,

Build A Personal System And Next Steps

Coach Carlie 10:45

you can head to the theenduranceedge.com forward slash fueling bootcamp. We will link it in the show notes below. So just a little reminder your training matters, your racing should be fun, and your fueling and hydration strategy matters too, because you deserve to feel strong on race day, not just to survive it. All right, thanks so much to listen to this short episode, and I will see you next time on the Find Your Edge podcast.