How To Stay Hydrated In Hockey

In hockey, what's the thing you do the most? Sweat. And in hockey that means dehydration, so to avoid this you need to know exactly how to replenish your bodys water levels, that involves knowing how much difference in weight there is before and after a match.


 You also need to be aware of the scandals in the food/drink industry, for instance the marketing from Powerade, suggesting that its ION4 system will help you perform better is a very misleading as they say that the four electrolytes sodium, magnesium, calcium and potassium in the drink are necessary for maximum performance as once the levels of these electrolytes go down, so does your performance, how ever in the study that they provide as evidence suggests that these levels are affected by periods of exercise over 90 minutes long, much longer than the amount of time you will be spending on the Ice.

They also claim that you need carbohydrates to replenish their glycogen stores and prevent loss of performance, however this is not true over a single hockey game, as in scientific studies it has been shown that glycogen stores in the muscles last between 70-90 minutes at a time, without replenishment.

BUT, if you intend to use powerade or any other sports drinks over a long duration like a 2-3 hour training session this actually might actually be of use, in my experience isotonic drinks have a MASSIVE impact over a 3 hour duration and you can definitely maintain that high intensity throughout the whole session, however you might want to use a stronger, more potent blend of carbohydrates and electrolytes available in powders such as maxifuel or lucozade sport, they will have upto to three times as many carbohydrates when compared to the powerade/lucozade sports drinks.



Now, moving on to just the fluid issue, to maximise hydration during exercise, you must first measure how much water you are losing after exercise, you can do this simply by weighing yourself before and after exercise and then take away the value of "after exercise" from the value of "before exercise" and multiply it by 1.5 times, now to avoid dehydration you must consume this much water over the period of time exercising,  consuming the water steadily and not in random peaks and then the weight levels should match up before and after exercise.

If you have any questions about this topic, feel free to ask me in the comments section below or at email me at powerskater3@gmail.com.