Have you ever had those days where you just aren’t feeling it, you just don’t feel like you have the energy to get into the gym and smash out your best sets. Sometimes you make your way to the gym and you just don’t have the power you had the previous week on the bench.
Often this is caused by dehydration, a study found that your muscular power is decreased by up to 20% at a very low level of dehydration! This is going to radically decrease your chances of building muscle naturally!
I’ve definitely had those days, I feel like without a massive cup of coffee or a red bull I was going to slump over. When I get into the gym and begin my sets I just don’t have the strength to crank out the same weighted sets that I know I can. After the first set I feel like I have way over exerted myself and I’m not even pushing to my full potential.
A catch 22 here is that people feel this lack of energy and march off to get a cup of coffee that your spoon could stand up in. Caffeine actually compounds your dehydration because caffeine is a diuretic.
You can feel the dryness in your mouth on these days so off you go to the water fountain and start loading up on water but it’s to late. The damage has been done! Your body will need some time to rehydrate itself.
If you’ve had a bad nights sleep and wake up feeling weak then start drinking some water, don’t start on the red bulls and coffee’s, they aren’t going to help you and you will have a sub standard workout that day.
There are other benefits to us as muscle builders to keeping hydrated. When you are on a cutting cycle water can be your best friend, it will keep the hunger at bay. Water is acts as an appetite suppressant and will help you to feeling less like you are starving and reduce the need for you to nibble on something.
Your kidneys need plenty of water to operate in the way they are supposed to, if the kidneys are starved of water the liver has to help out. Since the liver is responsible for converting stored fat to energy you are actually slow down the rate at which your body can complete this task.
Keeping your muscle hydrated is equally important, hydrated muscles are strong muscles and strong muscles are better for building muscle. If you are using creatine as one of your supplements then you will know that you have to drink even more water. Creatine helps your muscles to store water and if you don’t drink enough water then you will impair this process.
If you are just weight training you should be drinking about 3-4 litres of water depending on your size. If you weight train and include cardio into your program you should be drinking about 4-6 litres of water to keep your body sufficiently hydrated for building muscle and loosing fat.
Stay strong
Richard
Tags: Build Muscle Naturally, Gym, Performance, Weight Lifting
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