Are you busting your butt in the gym, yet not making improvements?
Fitness doesn’t have to be rocket science. We want to help you start doing the really easy stuff, really well so you can get the most out of your hard work in the gym. Whether you are new to fitness, or have been training for years, applying these habits consistently will improve your return on time invested in your most irreplaceable asset, your body.
Do this:
How much water should I drink? Rather than loading you up with a million reasons why you should drink more water, let’s get right to it. Here’s the plan for those of you who are action-oriented. Divide your bodyweight (in lbs) by 2. Then, drink that many ounces of water per day. That means, as a 185lb athlete, I’m going aim to drink at least 92.5 oz of H20 in a day.
Treat this as a baseline, or a minimum and you’ll be doing better than most people. Try to do it every day. There are several other factors that can affect this number. For example a healthy diet may contain more water. Other beverages consumed will obviously contain water. However, I suggest that if it comes down to it, you consider replacing other beverages with water. Don’t forget you may need MORE water based on how active you are, temperature, etc.
How will I drink that much water?
While some of you may already be drinking at least 1/2 your bodyweight in ounces of water per day, based on my experience coaching hundreds of athletes for over twenty years, I’ll venture to say there’s a good chance you aren’t, or at least you aren’t doing it daily.
Here are a few strategies I’ve seen work really well:
- The Body-Builder method. Just drink a gallon a day. If you are close, drinking a gallon (128oz) a day can work well for some people. The sheer simplicity of having a gallon jug and toting it around until it’s empty works well for those who want to keep things as simple as possible. It also makes it easy and cheap if you ever need to just grab a jug at the supermarket or gas station.
- Divide and Conquer. This is the one I recommend for most of our clients at HybridX Fitness. Take your daily total intake and divide it by 20. That’s 8 oz for a 160lb person. Now have 10 servings that size. Why? Because 10X is simple to remember, and the serving size is scaled to you. This is still 50% BW in ounces by the end of day.
- The hair-tie method. This can be combined with the previous method or you can use it to just count how many times you go through your favorite water bottle to get to your total ounces . I had a client who found she did really well with hydration when she used a water bottle that she really liked. But initially, she struggled to keep track of how many times she drank it, and thus, how many ounces of water she actually drank. She devised a simple solution that worked great. She slid a few hair ties (rubber bands work too) around her water bottle. Every time she finished it, she’d slide one from the bottom to the top. She knew she needed 5 bottles per day. So once the fifth one was slid, she hit her goal. Simple!
Why should I drink more water. Is it really that big of a deal?
OK, if you’re reading this part, you might not be convinced quite yet or perhaps you just need to load the cannons for some motivation. Cool.
Your body is more than 60% water. We’ve performed thousands of InBody 570 body composition scans for clients. Nearly all of our clients that are within their healthy body fat range have a body composition near or above 60% water. The leanest athletes and top-performers in the gym, tend to be the highest in water content as a percentage of bodyweight. Part of the reason why is lean mass and water content tend to go up together while body fat and percentage water content tend to have an inverse relationship.
But there’s more to the story than just what they are made of. Calories from beverages can be easier to absorb. So, if you are drinking sugary beverages like soda, juices and fancy coffees with added sugars, syrups, creams etc., there’s a good chance you are ingesting a lot of added sugar. Simply replacing some of these fluids with pure clean water can be a simple way to decrease caloric intake and let your body move toward better health.
There are several more reasons and health based and scientific articles on the importance of hydration. Whether you use our method or find another that works for you and gets results, the point is, start drinking a little more water consistently and see what happens.
For more info, here’s a CDC Article: About Water and Healthier Drinks
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