Some tips on hydration when exercising

If you fail in keeping yourself hydrated you can suffer from fatigue, lower your performance, lessen your endurance, etc. We all have heard that we should drink at least 8 glasses of water every day but when we exercise or practice sports we should drink water even more not to get dehydration, to help our body to function properly and to compensate the water we lost through sweating.

To know how much extra water you should drink, you should weight yourself before and after your workout. For every pound lost during exercising you should drink 500 ml of fluid. You should also drink water before (250 to 500ml 1 hour before exercise), during and after working out.

You can also have sports drinks but you will only really benefit from those if you do intense workouts for longer hours such as running for more than 1 hour. Sports drinks can help in that case cause they also have carbohydrates that will give you energy and also sodium which will help to absorb fluids. For the regular people on a light to moderate exercise routine water is better cause it is quickly absorbed by the body and has zero calories.

Remember to keep yourself hydrated throughout the day. In case you have any alcohol or drinks with caffeine (hopefully you will avoid them), try to drink at least one glass of water for every drink you have.