Don't sweat it!


If you're competing in a sport which requires you to hit a certain weight at a specific date to avoid having to face a guy with 20 lbs more muscle than yourself (ouch!), you're probably familiar with the concept of "sweating out" that last pound or two of bodyweight that will make you squeeze into the right weight class. I have heard about the craziest stuff, which might sound hilarious to others, but could actually carry some serious health hazards to the athlete. For example, how about dressing in a rubber suit, dragging an exercise bike into the sauna, and then spend half an hour there steam-cooking yourself?
Sure, the job gets done - the weight comes off - but at the price of severe dehydration.

Dehydration is no laughing matter. For starters, it severely cuts into your athletic capabilities right off the bat. Muscles need to be hydrated to work properly, just like a car needs oil. No water (or oil), and the machine is not working optimally. It's that simple.
In fact, dehydration will make the odds of you cramping up skyrocket. Regardless of the sport, getting carried off on a stretcher is surely not what you had in mind all the time when preparing for three months before the competition.

Secondly, it puts tremendous strain on your internal organs, the kidneys in particular. You have a lot of salts, urea, and stuff you'd rather not even think about in your body, pal. Your kidneys are a pair of trusty friends who'll help you clean the mess up, but they need the water to function properly. If they don't get it, there's a buildup (since the junk simply doesn't get flushed out), with increased strain on them as a result. Make it a habit to make life harder for the kidneys, and the favor will be returned soon enough.

Thirdly, when dehydrated, your mental capacity takes a dip. This may sound silly, but let me tell you a real-life example. When I was in the army, we - of course - had to run around all the time, doing various strenuous things that made us sweat. Now, in the heat of late August I ran out of water an hour or so before we'd go back to camp. We had those little purifying-pills that'd kill the bacteria and germs in any kind of dirty water, but I figured I could make it (those pills make the water taste like pool-water, only 5 times worse. No, make that 10 times worse.)

The copyright of the article Don't sweat it! in Weight Training is owned by Matt Danielson. Permission to republish Don't sweat it! in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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