Football is a kind of team sport featuring high-intensity sprints with long time endurance. The standard match duration is 90 minutes, during which players of different playing positions are expected to sweat a lot. The evaporation of sweat from the skin accelerates dehydration, a state of loss of body water that does harm to the body health. In order to maintain the body water balance to fully energize themselves, football players have to get adequate and timely hydration during the match. What’s more, hydration/fluid ingestion is the only efficient and effective way to relieve the magnitude of dehydration.
Effects of Dehydration on Football Performance
Football performance of players during the match can be affected by many physical factors including skill, power, endurance and strength. Unfortunately, dehydration seriously lowers the endurance performance, which later triggers offer lack in strength & power and slight decline in skill performance. And when these symptoms are combined with heat stress, the situation goes worse.
How to Manage Hydration
Dehydration has a negative impact on football players and should thus be avoided. So how to deal with this problem? Here Simple Flask shares with you several approaches.
Proper hydration starts with controlling the hydration status. It is a must for professional football players to figure out how much water they need to consume per day so as to make a regular hydration routine based on this information. There is a very practical and easy way to get a rough number, namely, weighing the weight of players before and after games. The difference between the two weights of the same player can be regarded as a guide for proper hydration. It should be noted that the figure worked out in a real competition is much more accurate than that in daily training because a real match is capable of fully draining players.
In general, a football player is supposed to drink 12 oz of water or energy drinks for every pound that is lost during the match/practice. For example, if a player loses 2 pounds after a competitive game, he or she should consume water of 24 oz within 2 hours. This equation provides a basic guide for athletes to consider. Apart from after-game water hydration and in-game supplement, the pre-activity hydration should also be given due attention. According to football sports scientists, a player is advised to drink 10 to 20 oz of water in 3hours before the game/practice.
Another way to ensure the sufficient hydration is to check the urine color of football players. Often, a transparent and light yellow color is a good signal for adequate hydration, whereas a dark yellow or a darker color indicates the state of dehydration.
Body fluid balance is the ultimate goal of hydration practices. During a tiring game, electrolytes and sodium are also gone with sweat. So it is also recommended that players consume energy drinks such as Gatorade and Red Bull vitamin drinks.
Stainless Steel Drink Bottle: A Good Companion for Hydration
In the past decade, athletes have gradually adopted stainless steel water bottles for hydration despite the fact that single-use plastic bottles are used at the same time.
Yes, plastic drink bottles do offer football players great convenience. But these single-use bottles impose threats to both the environment and us human beings. Plastic drink bottles are not biodegradable, which means their final settlement is quite delicate and annoying. According to an authoritative report released by WHO, about 8 million tons of plastics is eventually discharged into the ocean endangering the existence of marine lives. Some toxins generated by plastics will be swallowed by algae who is later eaten by small fish… Human beings stand right at the top of the food chain, and what insignificant algae have will finally come into our body with higher concentration. As a result, we are actually bearing the torture of plastics indirectly.
Some conscientious organizations and football athletes are devoted to promoting and using stainless steel water bottles for hydration. So what are the strengths of this reusable water bottle?
Stainless steel water bottles are made by food-grade stainless steel SUS304 (18/8) that contains no harmful additions such as BPA and BPS. They are safe to use and offer the authentic flavor of drinks. A quality sustainable stainless steel water bottle (like Simple Flask water bottle) adopts a double-walled insulation structure that is capable of keeping drinks cold for up to 12 hours! Therefore, during the football game, players can enjoy icy-cold drinks without exerting pressure on the environment.
Stainless steel water bottles are a good companion for hydration. As the world approaches to the realization of SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals), sports like football will gradually adopt reusable water containers in place of disposable plastic bottles for players’ health and also for environmental protection.
