How to Properly Hydrate for Hockey: Starting 48 Hours Before The Big Game

How to Properly Hydrate for Hockey: Starting 48 Hours Before The Big Game

Water, the next Performance-Enhancing Drug?

Remember all those Tour de France doping scandals? The science behind the doping is that the athletes could inject themselves with extra red blood cells. More blood cells means more oxygen to your muscles and more endurance.

What if you could "dope" your blood to carry more oxygen and gain better endurance, using just water? You can.

SuperHydration

Your blood is 90% water - if you drink less water, then you have less blood. Period. Ever felt tired when you were getting a little dehydrated? Know how you still feel tired when you're hung over in the morning? Proper hydration before a big game, and proper hydration after a raging bender can fix all your problems.

More science: drinking sufficient water over a 24-48 hour period actually increases the pH of your blood (making it more alkaline). At a higher pH, the hemoglobin in your blood can carry more oxygen. It's really that simple:

Plenty of Water = Higher pH. Higher pH = More Oxygen. More Oxygen = More Energy.

Not All At Once

Proper hydration is a long-term effort. Drinking right before or during a game isn't going to help you much if you're already dehydrated. You can't drink a gallon of fluid all at once, it's imperative that you spread your water consumption throughout the day. It's also better for you to skew your water consumption to earlier in the day. Typically, upon waking up, your body is massively dehydrated. Start carrying a bottle of water around with you: at the rink, in your hockey bag, in your backpack, in your car.

Not Juice, Not Gatorade, Not Soda Pop, but Water

It's important to drink water, and keep every other type of beverage to a minimum. Almost every other beverage contains a ton of sugar, which jacks up your baseline insulin level. Unless you want to turn into Wilford Brimley, drop the sugary drinks and stick to water. Even 0-calorie diet fountain drinks have a lot of added chemicals. Artificial sweeteners like Aspartame may have some pretty nasty long-term side effects. Plus, ingesting extra chemicals may actually pull water out of your cells to help restore equilibrium concentrations. Not a good thing.

Note: Low-sugar sports drinks, like G2, are okay. in fact, the contain potassium, which is an important electrolyte and contributes to neurotransmission and muscle fiber recruitment. Within 5 hours of game time, G2 or a gatorade-water mixture is the best choice.

Lay off the Caffeine and the Salt (last 24 hours)

On the night before and game day, what you don't eat/drink is just as important as getting enough water.

Don't consume caffeine and limit your salt intake. Caffeine acts as a diuretic and encourages your body to excrete water. This is not what you want. Your blood has an optimum concentration of sodium (salt). Too much salt offsets the sodium equilibrium in your body and squeezes water from your cells to return sodium concentrations in your blood to normal. This is how too much salt will make you dehydrated. Note: too little sodium and potassium is an even bigger problem, so keep eating lots of bananas, and don't eliminate salt altogether, just don't eat too much.

No more salt for you. The biggest game of the season is coming up (Jerry Maguire)

Cold Water Helps Burn Fat

Every ounce of water you drink must be heated to 98.6 degrees, our body's core temperature. Heating the water takes energy, which encourages your body to burn more fat to provide that energy. Heating each ounce of water burns about 1 calorie. An extra -128 calories a day can't hurt, can it?

Shoot for drinking at least a gallon (8 glasses @ 16 ounces ea.) of water a day. Start each day with a glass of cold water. Taking a hot shower at night also helps with intra-cellular absorption through the skin, and the rapid temperature change signals a melatonin response in your body, triggering sleep.

Drink a Gallon a Day, Plus Any Water You Drink While Working Out

The quoted gallon-of-water-a-day amount was optimized on subjects that did not participate in high-intensity exercise. When you play hockey or do off-ice, dry land, or weight room training - you must drink extra water to compensate for all the sweating. A gallon is approximately double what most people drink per day. It will feel like a lot at first. But it's not hard to do if you carry a water bottle and fill it often. You will have to pee more than usual, that's normal, but come third period, after the other team has sweat out all their water, you'll still be hydrated and running strong.

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