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WATER
The Importance of Water
Everything in your body contains water:
-the muscles that drive your performance are 75% water
-your brain is 76% water
-your blood is 82% water
-your lungs are 90% water
It is therefore not a surprise that your physical performance as well as your
ability to use nutrients to build and repair is totally dependent on your level
of hydration.
The most important nutrient in your body is water. This seems totally logical
and obvious when you understand and appreciate that the majority of your body
is water. The human body has been described by some medical professionals as
a big hairy bag of water. This is of course rather true. You are composed mostly
of water and water is the most vital nutrient for life itself. You can survive
indefinately without carbohydrates, you can live for days without proteins and
fats, but without water on a daily basis and you will die. This is because every
cell of your body is composed of water. Every reaction within those cells is
reaction that is in requirement of water.
Water manipulation can change both the way you feel and perform and the way
you look. Before you even consider your protein and carbohydrate and fat levels
in your diet you should strongly consider your water intake.
Some training experts have gone so far to say as that water is the primary
goal of the athlete to get right before considering any other factor relating
to their diet and training. And indeed, as you will read, this may be very close
to the truth.
Water and the Training Athlete
Your water requirements increase dramatically during training. Again, this is
logical. Light exercise in a temperate climate uses half a gallon of water a
day in breath, sweat and urine. Athletes in heavy training use over two gallons
a day, for example, a 165 lb athlete is mainly composed of 50 quarts of water
and in heavy training, has to replace it all every six days. You will be losing
water throughout the day even when not training - as stated it is used in every
chemical reaction within the body. Water is used to breath and to sweat and
in your bodily waste excretion. It is just that during training and recovery
your body uses up far much more water than that of a sedentary inactive individual.
Dehydrate your muscle by only 3% and you cause about 10% loss of contractile
muscle strength and an 8% loss of speed. This is rather dramatic. Especially
with weight training. Imagine that you could bench press 100kg for ten reps
one workout, consistently, yet one day you train and are 3% dehydrated - you
can only rep out with 90kg. This is a huge difference when you look at this
type of impact dehydration has on performance. That's a possible ten weeks worth
of progress down the drain.
The water level in a muscle cell has been shown to influence the rate of protein
synthesis (the rate at which protein can be made and stored in muscle tissue).
Creatine, a supplement that causes an increase in water storage in muscle cells,
helps to increase the rate at which a muscle can be built through this very
mechanism. Protein synthesis is a reaction that is water based. Water is critical
therefore for muscular recovery and growth to take place. People often underestimate
the importance of muscle hydration in their attempts to create quality gains.
Whenever your body is short of water its performance decreases. The main reasons
for this are: overheating, and dehydration.
Overheating
Your body temperature increases during training in direct proportion to exercise
load. The body's resting temperature is 98.6 degrees F (around 37 degrees C).
You can monitor your body temperature with a basic thermometer on a regular
basis. This can also help with tracking thyroid function. Your body attempts
to maintain this resting temperature by moving the extra heat to the skin via
the blood where it dissipates into the air mainly through the evaporation of
sweat. Of course, your sweat is mostly water.
However, your blood has to also perform another function during exercise. It
must also carry oxygen and nutrients to the muscle and remove the wastes of
muscle metabolism. All of the available blood in your body must be shared between
these two tasks. Problems arise the higher your core temperature rises as, the
higher the temperature, the more blood required for cooling and the less is
available for the muscles. Therefore, the cooler you stay during exercise the
better your muscle function is likely to be.
Severe problems arise when your temperature rises above the narrow range of
98 - 100 degrees F as, in this state, your body will always sacrifice muscle
function for temperature regulation. This is because a decline in muscle function,
even to the point of complete immobility is not a threat to life whereas, if
your core body temperature rises as little as 9 degrees F above normal all biochemistry
ceases and you will die. This is how critical water is to your body in relation
to maintaining your natural resting body temperature. Remember at all times
- your body is a survival machine. It will take its survival as a priority over
the fact that you want to build big biceps in the gym.
During heavy exercise, the heat produced by the muscles can become four times
their resting rate. Even with optimum hydration and a cool environment this
can raise your core temperature to 103 degrees F in just 15 minutes.
Dehydration
If you become dehydrated your temperature will rise as blood is diverted to
the skin for emergency cooling and your muscles and brain are left in short
supply of oxygen. Energy metabolism also changes and begins to deplete your
glycogen stores.
Following a tough endurance event:
-you are dehydrated
-your stomach is in a highly acidic condition and is almost empty
-your muscles are loaded with metabolic waste
-your glycogen reserves are depleted
-you are in electrolyte overload as the percentage of body water loss is in
excess of the percentage of body minerals lost.
You need to rehydrate!
Water is extracted from everything you eat and drink. Nonetheless, it is a
good idea to drink a glass of water every three hours or so as any excess water
simply passes through the body, ridding the kidneys of toxins as it goes.
People on high protein diets also need to ensure that water intake is increased
as high protein diets often result in high ammonia levels. Ammonia is extracted
by the kidneys and high water intake ensures that the urine is diluted, thus
reducing the likelihood of kidney stones.
ReHydration
Drinking water is easy, but getting your body to actually absorb it so it can
use it is quite difficult.
Cold water below 50 degrees F is absorbed much faster than water kept at room
temperature. Cold water also supplies a reservoir of cold in the stomach that
will absorb body heat and aid in the cooling process.
It is important to sip and not gulp water as gulping swallows lots of air which
disturbs stomach function and slows absorption. This leads to unsettled reflux
of air back up through the windpipe. This is not always pleasant in public.
The walls of the small intestine, where water is absorbed, are semi-permeable
membranes which look a little like a sieve. Pure water molecules can pass through
easily whilst other particles have more difficulty. For maximum absorption it
is therefore best to drink pure water.
Does Water Quality Matter?
It is vital that you drink clean water as polluted water pollutes your muscles,
organs and brain. For example, toxic metals, pesticides and industrial chemicals
must be avoided. Research is discovering more and more that we are polluting
our bodies in many, many ways. Toxic levels of certain things are detrimental
to your training and physique goals. Your water quality and quantity should
be placed as a high priority on your lists to bettering your physique.
Bottled distilled waters are the only clean bottled source as virtually everything
is removed from the water through steam distillation.
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