Summer training and racing is in full swing. Training in heat and humidity places extra strain on your body whenever you are exercising. Not only does effort feel harder, but your body has to work harder to regulate your core temperature, meaning that your performance can be hindered by various factors. With the warmer months coming up, not to mention the current triple-digit heat in California, please see below the things you can do before, during, and post-training to help you perform and recover better when exercising in the heat.
Before Exercise:
- If you know it’s going to be a hot training session, you can preemptively cool by sipping on some electrolytes blended with ice. By having little ice chips melt to liquid in your stomach, you’ll be able to better absorb heat energy than just plain ice water.
- Prepping your hydration and fueling products before long bike rides/runs or before a race is a key part of calming race nerves and can benefit your performance. If you choose a liquid fuel option, we recommend monitoring the concentration of your carb mix drink. Normally, we want your drink concentration to be within 5-15%, however, on hot days, we want to bring that range down closer to 6-8% concentration so that your gut can better tolerate the liquid carbs. When choosing carb options for either liquid or solid fuel options, be sure to choose high glycemic or fast digesting carbs so that your gut has to do less work to break down those fuel sources.
During Exercise:
- You can freeze the electrolytes you plan to consume. Create a hydration slushy for your biking/running bottle, or you can mix up electrolytes the night before and pour the mix into your ice cube tray. The next morning, place the ice cubes into your bottle for your exercise. Consider wrapping your bottles in tin foil to improve the reflection of heat off your bottle. Most gels are freezable as well, BUT be sure to try this before race day to ensure that you’re still able to squeeze the gel out and eat it while training or racing!
- While on course, you can help your body cool down externally by pouring water on yourself. Do NOT use ice water because this can cause vasoconstriction, thereby causing warm blood to get pushed back into the core, rather than to your skin surface to help cool you down. Instead, you should bring along plain water for this. You ideally want to place the water on your head, neck, hands, forearms, and shins/feet if you’re able. These areas are where your blood vessels are closest to the surface of the skin, thereby allowing your body to pull heat off your body via evaporation.
After Exercise:
- Whether it’s an easy training day, a hard one, or race day, post-workout recovery is essential for both your health and your longevity in sport. Training stress on your body can often reduce your appetite and with high heat and/or high humidity conditions, this may exacerbate your lack of appetite. Although you may not want a full meal, we recommend at least trying to take in an easy recovery shake with a good mix of carbs and protein.
- Try making your recovery shake smoothie or slushy by including a bunch of ice cubes into your blender.
We hope these tips help. Happy summer training and racing.