Hydration for Indoor Triathlon Training

Hopefully it goes without saying that staying hydrated, particularly while training on the treadmill or turbo trainer, is important.

But how exactly should you be hydrating yourself in these sessions?

Watch Coach Rob explain below…

In a nutshell, you need to be adding water and electrolytes back into your body at the same rate they’re leaving.

One of the big challenges with indoor training is how hot you get compared to outside. That’s not because it’s so much hotter inside, but because you don’t have the air flowing over your skin to keep you cool, as is the case outside.

When you do have the air flow over your skin, it is carrying water and sweat away from your skin, taking the heat away from your body. And of course you don’t have this effect indoors.

You can see the effect for yourself by doing a relatively easy turbo session and seeing just how great a build up of sweat there is on your skin. Then turn a fan on. You’ll find it’ll help the water evaporate off your skin and cool you down.

So – it’s the heat that’s the problem, not the sweat.

As your body sweats it takes sodium and other electrolytes with it. The amount of electrolytes lost varies person to person. If you find yourself often cramping up after a hard turbo session, the chances are you’re a heavy sweater that loses a lot of electrolytes in your sweat.

The heaviest sweaters, like Coach Rob, can lose up to 1500mg of sodium per hour. For context – most of the ‘standard’ electrolyte tablets available provide around 300mg of sodium per tablet- so a lot less than a heavy sweater would need to replenish what has been lost.

Team Oxygenaddict partners, Precision Hydration offer a free online sweat test to help you assess how much sodium you’re likely to be losing and also offer an in-person test for more accurate results. (Team Oxygenaddict athletes also get 15% off Precision Hydration’s products online).

So in summary: use a fan to keep cool while indoor training, and assess the quantity of electrolytes along with liquids you need to replenish based on the amount you’re losing.