Staying properly hydrated at all times during intense endurance exercise is vital for your health and athletic performance.
To stay hydrated, athletes intake minerals during exercise by consuming energy gels and isotonic sports drinks.
But did you know that you can improve your hydration by ingesting minerals even before exercise? This is called pre-hydration or sometimes also water/sodium loading. Let's look into it.
Why should you pre-hydrate?
Being hydrated means that there is an optimal amount of both water and minerals in your body.
Everyone knows that the amount of water lost with sweat during intense endurance exercise can be very high. In hot weather conditions, sweat rates can easily exceed 1.5 liters per hour.
It is almost impossible to replace such a high quantity of fluid, so a certain level of dehydration is inevitable. But since dehydration is not only posing you at a greater risk for heat stroke, it also impairs your maximal oxygen uptake and thus negatively impacts your athletic performance, among other things, you'd do best to minimize dehydration as much as possible.
This is where pre-hydration comes into play. Pre-hydration allows you to counteract dehydration during exercise by increasing water stores before exercise.
Pre-hydration can help you reduce dehydration during intense endurance exercise.
How can I pre-hydrate?
Pre-hydration is simple. You need to ingest the correct amount of water and minerals hours before exercise.
The reason you need to combine water with minerals is that consuming only water will result in the water simply being excreted from your body, and you might also dilute the concentration of electrolytes in your blood, a condition called hyponatremia.
By consuming a mix of minerals, such as Nduranz Electrolyte Mix, you allow your body to preserve more water, reducing dehydration during exercise, and sustain the correct concentration of electrolytes to preserve optimal hydration levels.
Now that you know why to pre-hydrate, you probably wonder what the most efficient way to go about it is!
Pre-hydration requires the intake of water and minerals before exercise to increase your body's water stores.
Pre-hydrate with Zero Drink
There are many different sources of minerals available, and most of them might get the job done to a certain degree.
But the problem with minerals is that a specific concentration of different minerals is required to sustain optimal hydration, and an incorrect concentration might have unwanted side effects, such as digestive issues or reduced performance.
Zero Drink is based on Nduranz Electrolyte Mix and provides all the minerals you need to pre-hydrate before training or race.
Zero Drink is based on Nduranz Electrolyte Mix, which aims to reflect as closely as possible the concentration of electrolytes in your blood. In other words, Zero Drink gives you all the minerals you need for optimal pre-hydration.
The recommended intake is two effervescent tablets dissolved in 500 ml of water per hour in a period of 2 to 3 hours leading to the event. This means you should consume 2 to 3 portions consisting of 2 tablets each or 4 to 6 tablets in total. If needed, you may increase the amount of water to adjust for taste and/or thirst.
Zero Drink is possibly the most efficient way to pre-hydrate before exercise!
Conclusion
During intense endurance exercise, especially in hot weather condition, a certain level of dehydration is inevitable.
Since dehydration negatively impacts your health and athletic performance, you need to counteract it as much as possible.
A great way to improve hydration during exercise is to pre-hydrate.
Pre-hydration means ingesting water and minerals hours before exercise to increase the amount of water stored in your body.
The most efficient way to pre-hydrate is by using Zero Drink.
