Hydration Tip For Competitive Swimmers

Hydration is important to all types of athletes, even competitors who are literally swimming in water. It’s been estimated that losing a little as 2% of your body weight through sweat can negatively impact your performance. A study published in Medicina dello Sport suggests a simple container-specific approach for drinking more water.

On separate occasions during typical practice sessions, 25 adolescent swimmers drank water from clear transparent or white opaque bottles. Typical sweat rate was 2.64 grams per minute, but these athletes were only drinking 1.9 milliliters per minute using see-through bottles. This resulted in a negative net fluid balance. When they drank from white colored bottles, the rate of water consumption increased to 3.1 milliliters per minute.