Whether it is the middle of the Summer or at periods of the year where the weather is not quite as sweltering, water intake is extremely important throughout sports.
Although it is critical to stay hydrated during practice for competitive cheerleading and its associated skill-building classes as well, proper hydration should really be a priority no matter which sport your athlete is participating in.
The essentialness of water obviously cascades to folks in everyday life, with the majority of people not drinking anywhere near as much water as they should.
Recently I had the pleasure of spending some time with world renown health and wellness expert Dan Miller.
When asked how much water we adults should be taking in per day, Mr. Miller quickly replied, “3 liters per day.”
Within 24 hours, I pressed myself into conducting some “super scientific” math as I calculated what this meant in layperson’s terms.
I took a bottle of the case of drinking water I normally pull my bottled water out of and looked on the label – 16.9 ounces.
The next logical question, how many ounces are in a liter?
After quickly Googling, the answer is 33.814 ounces.
Divide this by 2 and the answer is 16.9 ounces.
AHA!!
So, if 2 bottles of my normal drinking water equal one liter, then it would take 6 bottles of my drinking water to equal 3 liters.
Each day I would to need to drink 6 of the bottles of water I normally buy in order to fulfill the recommended 3 liter per day goal.
To my dismay, Mr. Miller informed me that coffee does not count towards the daily total (dangnabit!!).
This all assumes I am an “average” adult.
How much water then would a hardworking athlete need to drink in order to satisfy their body’s need for hydration?
The answer to this question becomes even more complicated when including into the calculation that every athlete has different hydration needs and loses water at their own unique rates.
If you would like to get even more confused, try Googling this question.
You will ultimately find answers all over the place with some articles doing a deep dive into the subject and others providing a more simplistic answer, but added together, all making it very challenging to come out with a clear cut determination.
In an effort to compound the research that was done, my analysis seems to indicate that best practice for any active athlete is to aim for between 0.5 * weight in pounds and 1 * weight in pounds to help provide the estimated number of ounces per day of water that this active athlete in question should be drinking.
Although this may seem confusing, here is how it gets simple, assume the athlete weighs 102 pounds:
– 102 * 0.5 = 51 ounces
– 102 * 1 = 102 ounces
Taken a step further…
– 51 / 16.9 = 3.02
– 102 / 16.9 = 6.04
With this magical equation, I can say with confidence (all while imagining Mr. Miller peering over my shoulder) that for a 102-pound active athlete, the daily water consumption should be the equivalent to between 3 and 6 bottles of water (assuming 16.9 ounces/bottle) per day.
While prefacing these recommendations by stating that I am far from a nutritionist, after consulting with a prominent health and wellness expert and extensively researching the topic, I can say with good degree of conviction that the formula relayed should provide solid guidance as to how much water the athlete in your life should be taking in each day in order to stay properly hydrated.
