Water is an essential component of your daily intake. 60% of your body is made up of it. It helps to rid of waste, regulate body temperature and lubricates joints.
As a side note, here’s a handy calculator to help guide you towards how much you should be drinking to stay healthy whilst taking into account your bodyweight, activity level and the climate you live in.
Try this water intake calculator and see how close you can get to the number of litres recommended.
Everyone knows that not drinking enough can lead to pretty serious problems, but fewer people appreciate that drinking too much can also lead to problems.
We know that the daily recommended amount of water varies according to a number of factors, including, but not limited to, age, size, weight, activity level and climate. So doesn’t it make logical sense that exercise recommendations should also be customised according to things like personal goals, training age and anthropometrics.
It’d be pointless to give a small child a whole litre bottle of water to drink all at once as it’s more than they probably need at one moment in time and more than they can physically handle. It’ll probably just lead to them getting frustrated at not being able to handle the bottle and their parent having to deal with a very wet child.
A Tour de France rider immediately after finishing a day’s riding in the height of summer is probably going to need at least a litre of fluid and can probably handle the bottle size as well.
So, if one thing can be applied totally appropriately or totally inappropriately depending on context, how does this relate to training?
If you’re training for a powerlifting competition then testing your one rep max squat a few weeks beforehand (after following a build up cycle of well programmemed submaximal lifts) is probably a smart move as you’ll then be able to choose an opening weight for the competition and develop a plan for other eventualities depending on how that lift goes.
If you’re new to lifting weights and are interested in health and fitness so you can have a better quality of life then it’s more important to try and develop all the components of your fitness.
You wouldn’t want to drink from a firehose, and you’d definitely have issue with someone who only gave you a tiny glass of water to last you all day in the middle of summer.