Not Just a Man's World

A few weeks ago I finally started cycling after, unusually, taking a three month winter break. 

I was initially surprised by how hard I was being hit by the cycling and the impact that it seemed to be having on my lifting.  I was surprised until I realised that I wasn’t taking a bottle of water out on my rides, I was often forgetting to have a drink when I got back in.

More importantly, I was waking up on Monday morning feeling groggy.  This is not unusual for most people for a Monday morning, but I am usually a good morning person and I found that the grogginess rapidly diminished once I got to the office and drank plenty of water.

I easily get dehydrated when in the outdoors despite the easy availability of water...

Why we should maintain good hydration

Water makes up about two-thirds of the human body and is critical for many of the biological processes that take place in the body.  Something that I feel is particularly important is that osmosis, and subsequently the transfer of minerals and nutrients, can only take place if there is water available to pass through cell membranes. 

Also, thinking about the recent post I wrote on prolapses, if we are dehydrated the body will extract water from less critical areas, including removing water from our gut content.  This makes it much harder to have a bowel movement and can result in severe constipation.  With enough straining you may well cause a prolapse to occur.

A recent review in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, summarised by Dr. Briffa pulled together the role played by water in the human body, discussed dehydration and water consumption recommendations.

Dehydration and resistance training

Another study looked at the impact of dehydration on resistance training performance.  The study found that dehydration impaired resistance exercise performance, reducing the total number of possible repetitions, increasing the perceived exertion and hindering the heart rate recovery.

The conclusion is that adequate hydration is crucial for full body resistance exercise sessions, however the exercises used were bench press, lat pull down, overhead press, barbell curl, triceps press and leg press.  While there is an element of “full body” to some of these, and the exercises taken together do challenge the whole body, I would have preferred to see them using squats, bench press, overhead press and rack pulls.  Exercises that really do use a significant number of muscles in the body at the same time.

Maintaining adequate hydration outdoors as a woman

I started this article by explaining that my recent poor hydration levels came about because of the cycling I was doing.  In the past I have often struggled to maintain sufficient hydration levels when pursuing outdoor sports.  While men can easily stop for a quick leak, life is more complex for women.

There are plenty of different female urination devices available on the market, although so far I have failed to find one that really keeps a good seal when you are trying to pee in a hurry (and I’ve therefore often caused amusing moments for Chris when I get it wrong and leak down one leg…).  Personally I’ve found that the easiest thing to do is find a hedge, wall, tree, or just wait until there is nobody in sight, and then squat down. 

This uncertainty on when you’ll easily be able to find somewhere to take a toilet break causes many women to drink less than optimum amounts while pursuing outdoors activities and can therefore impact on their performance while pursuing their chosen pursuit and also affect their subsequent recovery.  It is of vital importance that we take the risk and ensure we maintain optimal hydration levels.  If it means taking a slight diversion to find a tree or hedge then so be it (although I’m still not sure I could persuade myself to drink enough when I am halfway up a glacier – trees don’t tend to exist on glaciers).

If you are interested in solutions to the hydration and outdoor pursuits conundrum, in particular the problem of having to crawl out of your tent and find your boots in the middle of the night, then WinterCampers did a brief post recently about women using pee bottles.  I must admit that I need to try the GoGirl urination device that they recommend.  It looks like it could create a better seal than most.

Do you struggle with hydration when spending time outdoors?  Do you have a urination device you would swear by?  If so, I’d love to hear from you.

Related posts:

1. Lessons learned: office survival
2. Lessons learned: training outside the box
3. Lessons learned this week: water retention
4. Lessons learned: thoracic spine mobility (part 2)