Picture one of your clients. You’ll have made training plans with them, isolated weaknesses for them and motivated them, but have you considered how helping them get hydration right can make a significant difference to their progress?
Replacing the sodium lost in your sweat is crucial to staying hydrated when sweating for long periods, but it’s not just your sweat rate that determines your sodium losses. It’s also about how salty your sweat is.
How much sodium you lose is largely genetically determined, and the amount tends to remain stable after infancy.
However, it can be influenced by:
- diet
- acclimatisation to heat
- severe dehydration.
The average person loses about 950mg of sodium per litre of sweat. Importantly, some of the people you coach will be losing as little as 200mg/l, while for others that figure will be much closer to 2,000mg/l.