This is in response to a aussieluke at Davedraper.com in regards to training in hot, dry climates (and it will be that soon enough here in AZ) :
I feel your pain.
Training in hot dry weather is not always fun. I apologize for this being so long. Hopefully there is some information here that can help someone or even save their life. Don’t take everything I say for granted or as gospel truth. It is merely what I have learned from others. Be sure to read more on this subject and use good judgement.
Some days are just too hot to train on.
It regularly hits 105-110°F here in Tucson, AZ in the summer. Depending on where you live here it can hit 115°F or 120. Even going out into the desert you can feel the temperature drop of climb depending on elevation and whether you’re in a lower, flat area or on a hillside or near large rocks or a wall that reflects heat back at you.
Once the monsoons hit around the beginning of July the humidity starts to climb also. Though it is nowhere near as bad as back east in the US.
In a dryer climate you loose more moisture without realizing it because the sweat evaporates so fast you don’t think you are sweating. Also every breath you take in a dryer climate wicks more moisture out of the body than a more humid climate.
Thus, even while you sleep you are using more water through regular respiration than someone in a more humid climate. This will be the same where you live if it’s hot and dry.
Also, in more humid, hot weather, once the humidity reaches around 70% or higher, the evaporation process of losing body heat is severely restricted. People die every year in the northeastern and eastern parts of the US because of this and lack of knowledge concerning it.
Little side note:
Interestingly enough, in a cold, dry environment, the process of respiration can suck as much as 2 quarts (about 2 liters) of water out of you daily. That is why we get so thirsty even in the winter here in AZ. Same in Australia?
Objects and ground surfaces can heat up to 150°F in the summer. Sometimes people have egg frying contests on the hood of vehicles here in AZ.
So, even later in the day or evening the objects around you can radiate heat back onto your body. Wind heated by such objects in the middle of the day will suck water out of your body at an insane rate. Add some work, which creates metabolic heat on top of it and you have a ticket to dehydration, hyperthermia and death.
Once you become dehydrated the blood thickens, the heart works harder to pump the blood and thus hinders the body’s ability to lose excess heat. A vicious cycle has started.
Current studies suggest 75% of people are in a state of mild dehydration. Start your day like that and you are already in the hole as you start training. In high heat conditions, coupled with strenuous physical activity, it is possible to lose a gallon of fluid in an hour or so.
Next time you train in hot weather, weigh yourself before you begin training. Write it down. Weigh yourself after you are done training. You may lose 2-6 pounds of body-weight. That is all water lose. A gallon of water weighs close to 8 pounds. So a 2 pound drop (which is very typical) would mean you lost a full quart or almost a liter of fluid. Not good.
Same between your evening body-weight and your morning body-weight. If you check it you will find you probably weigh several pounds less in the morning. It is largely due to water lose. If you weigh yourself evening and morning, weigh yourself in the morning after you have done the morning duty (that fluid wasn’t being used for hydration anyway, otherwise you wouldn’t be peeing it out) and before you drink your first glass of the day.
This can let you know how much water you are losing during a night of sleep. You may need to drink water during the night whenever you wake up.
At just a 2% loss of hydration your overall judgement is compromised by 25%. You will not perform as well and could make critical mistakes. All of this information is available with a little research.
So, imagine some person out running or training somewhere away from others and they get dehydrated just by 2%. Should they stop training? What sort of judgement call do you think they would make? “I feel fine, I’m gonna push harder!” Then they drop with no one around to help them. Hopefully those around us know the symptoms of dehydration. If not, educate them. Any trainer should be fully aware of such things.
Train smart. Be aware of the effects of dehydration on yourself and others. Be prepared.
There is no way to adapt or acclimatize to dehydration. The military learned this the hard way. You can, however, become more acclimated to hot weather (same as you can to cold weather) by intelligent training, manipulating you internal and external environments and hydration.
Be aware:
Thirst is not a good indicator of when to drink water. It has been noted in several studies that if a person feels real thirsty they are already a quart and a half low on water in their body.
This is not meant to scare people, it is meant to educate. Knowledge is power only when applied.
How I cope with training in hot weather:
In a hot, dry climate you will be slightly dehydrated upon awakening in the morning. Don’t start your day that way. So:
First thing upon arising, even before you eat food, drink a couple of large glasses of water. You’ll want to slam down about a quart or liter of water.
From:
Cody Lundin’s book: “98.6° The Art of Keeping Your Ass Alive!”
{I cannot recommend this book enough for those who hike, bike, run, play, train, hunt or work or travel in the great outdoors. Best book I’ve ever read on the subject. His other book on preparing for an urban disaster (think hurricane Katrina or earthquake) is great too.}
There are four factors to faster hydration:
I’ll summarize this:
1.) Adequate volume. Drinking a quart or so pushes the water past the stomach (the stomach does not absorb water) through the pyloric sphincter and into the small intestine (which does absorb water).
2.) Drinking cool water in a hot environment helps the body absorb the water faster and also has a cooling effect on the body. However, drinking very cold water too fast can cause stomach cramps or barfing, so be careful.
3.) Electrolyte replacement can help you absorb water, but too much is not good. A sports drink may help but too much sugar delays absorption.
4.) Carbonation can help force the water into the small intestine faster. A sparkling water drink works good (non-alcoholic, of course). Look for something with no added sugar. Even an Alka-Seltzer tablet (non-aspirin type) can be used in a pinch.
End of summary.
Be aware that chugging too much water can cause hyponatremia, a condition where the fluid volume has created a low sodium volume in the blood. This is usually more the problem with ultra-endurance runners.
But if you don’t use table salt, avoid salty foods, never drink sports drinks or use electrolyte enhancers and train in extreme heat or work in such, it is a possibility. It can kill you as dead as dehydration and symptoms are similar to dehydration. So, eating salty foods can help or using an electrolyte replacement drink with some sodium and potassium in it can help, but be sure to stay hydrated with that extra salt intake.
So, with this in mind:
Train earlier in the morning.
Train in the shade. Be aware of the angle of the sun: a wall can reflect heat back onto you even if you are in the shade. Maybe set up a tarp in a open area away from walls and such if you don’t have shady trees to train under.
Avoid direct UV radiation from the sun while training. Wear loose cotton clothing. It absorbs sweat and evaporates at a slower rate so your sweat doesn’t evaporate too fast. Drops of sweat that hit the ground as they roll of you are not cooling the body. Remember, in dry, high heat conditions the sweat evaporates so fast it doesn’t have as much of a cooling effect.
If I train later in the evening, best to wait for the sun to go down, but that means training after 9 at night. May be too late for some. Of course, earlier in the day is the coolest part of the day.
Stay hydrated! Use water and a sports drink or electrolyte replacement drink. About 15 minutes before you begin training drink a quart or so of water. Weigh yourself (you need an accurate scale for this) Write it down.
Weigh yourself when done training. That poundage is how much water you lost. Be sure to have on the same clothes you were wearing when you first weighed yourself. If you lost several pounds or a kilogram or more of body-weight, be careful not to try to chug that much weight in water all at once. Drink a large glass of water and then over the next hour or so continue to hydrate. You may need electrolytes at this point, especially if you did not drink any while training.
A bottle of water that you can spray yourself with can help cool you down. It helps replace the sweat that is evaporating too fast in a hot, dry climate. Spray it on your neck, head and face, on the arms and other hot areas of the body.
Having a fan blowing can help if the air movement is still. However, this will evaporate sweat even faster, so having a spray bottle handy can help wet the body and the fan can help cool you down a little faster as the water evaporates. If you try this, be sure to keep yourself fairly moist with the spray bottle.
If you experience cramps at night (or during the day)in the legs, calves, forearms, stomach, etc. you are probably not hydrated enough and are probably low on electrolytes too. I have found staying well hydrated and taking a a cal-mag-zinc tablet along with a potassium tablet with a large glass of water shortly before going to bed can help a great deal.
If you stay inside where it is cooler and drink some cool or cold water before you train, you have a jump start on keeping the body cooler at the beginning of your training.
If you feel any signs of dehydration while training:
STOP TRAINING!
Cool down and hydrate. Build up to training in hot weather gradually.
Hot weather is a good time to do endurance type training earlier in the morning. Endurance type training is usually done for a longer period of time and raises the metabolic output and thus, body heat fast and for far longer than quick bouts of strength training.
It might be good to knock back the amount of endurance type training you do in the summer. Just strive to maintain and not improve on it. Perhaps training endurance at a lower rate of overall exertion would be good.
Hot dry weather is the perfect time to do strength training and to practice block training. Pavel Tsatsouline mentions block training in his book “Return of The Kettlebell” (excellent book!). It is a form of alternating conditioning vs strength in two week blocks.
However, we can do block training throughout the day. Break your training down into one lift or time segment of 10 minutes. In warm weather use warm-up sets for just that: to warm up. Your body is already warm from the heat of higher temperatures so why spend a lot of time warming up. Use the lift you are going to train as the warm-up, thus, conditioning the groove or pattern of movement with the lift.
So, 10 minutes in the morning doing a strength move, 10 minutes late afternoon and maybe 10 minutes in the evening gives you three 10 minute blocks to play with. This forces a person to really focus on one lift or movement and get it done. And it doesn’t raise the body’s temperature up as much since the work done is in a short time period. You recover quicker. You could experiment with various time blocks of 10-20 minutes to see what works best for you.
So, maybe a press in the morning, a pull in the late afternoon and a loaded carry in the evening.
You get the picture, break your hour long session up into shorter training sessions spread throughout the day. Training becomes more fun because you are not dreading training for an hour or so in the heat.
You can also take longer breaks between sets if you must train once a day. This longer break gives the body more time to cool down slightly before the next set.
You can use a nasal wetting spray to help hydrate the nasal passages in the dry summer. Or try hanging a wet bandana over the nose and mouth. AS you breath in air through the wet bandana it hydrates the dry air so you lose less moisture from breathing dry air. Try breathing out the nose also while training, it helps reduce moisture lose.
Don’t push as hard. Pay close attention to how you feel. Drink water and stay hydrated DURING the training session. A gulp or two is far better than little sips.
You might try training for 10 minutes, taking a break as you chug a large glass of water, stand before your fan to cool down some for 10 minutes and then train for another block of 10-15 minutes. Repeat several times. This has the benefit of streamlining how much you do and forcing a person to focus on the bigger bang-for-your-buck exercises. So in a hour long session you might only be training for 30 minutes or so, but you might find you lift more productively.
Also, a nice cool shower after the workout can help a great deal to lower the body temperature. Although, if it is anything like Tucson, AZ, the water does not get cool at all in the summer!
So, just a few, well maybe a lot, of thoughts for those training in hot dry climates.
Be safe and train hard!