Role of Hydration in Your Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Game

You may have often heard about the role of physical fitness in the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu game. When you start in BJJ, you start going to the gym and trying to be physically fit. You will just focus on training; in that training, you will lift weights, do push-ups and squats, and do everything else just to be physically fit. But BJJ fighters at the start of their journey forget the role of hydration in developing physical fitness.

Hydration plays a significant role in physical fitness, and it is the first thing that most BJJ fighters ignore. You all know the role of physical fitness in your BJJ game, but you don't know that lack of hydration is coming your way for being on top of the BJJ game. We will explain the role of hydration in physical fitness, which ultimately affects your BJJ game.

• Most people think that hydration means drinking water when you are thirsty. This is the wrong notion. This is not hydration. Hydration means that your body has adequate water to fulfill the needs of all the tissues in the body and its standard daily water intake needs.
• Your muscles, organs, tissues, and cells depend on the water to function correctly. If they are not getting water, how will they function properly? So, you must take water to fulfill all your body's needs and ensure that your cells, tissues, organs, and muscles function correctly. This is what hydration means.
• This will have a positive impact on your physical fitness. Ultimately, you will be physically fit, giving you an advantage over your opponent in winning BJJ matches. All this just because of what? Yes. Hydration.

• As a BJJ athlete, you know the role of being physically healthy. But did you know that the lack of hydration is getting in your way of performance on the mats? Not only does water help regulate body temperature, but it also aids in transporting nutrients to your muscles and it helps remove waste products.
• However, not just water is essential; sodium also plays a crucial role. Exercise performance can be significantly impaired when just 2% or more of body weight is lost through sweat. For example, if a 70-kilogram athlete loses more than 1.4 kilograms of body weight during exercise, their performance capacity is often significantly decreased.
• Athletes should consume sufficient water and or sports drinks during exercise to maintain proper hydration. The regular sweat rate for BJJ athletes ranges between 0.5 to 2 liters per hour, which depends on the temperature, the humidity, the exercise, and the intensity.
• Athletes should ingest 0.2 to 2 liters per hour of fluid to offset weight loss. In the context of BJJ, when you sweat heavily, you lose both water and salt. If you are trying to rehydrate with pure water, you replace the fluids last. Still, you are not replacing the electrolytes, which ultimately affects how the water moves through your body from one compartment to the other.
• The recommended sodium ingestion guidelines are 300 to 600 milligrams per hour or 1.7 to 2.9 grams of salt during prolonged exercise. It's essential to include sodium in your diet, whether through food or sports drinks.

You need to know when you can use sports drinks. Sports drinks provide extra sodium but contain added sugars and calories. For example, if you are training for BJJ for about an hour or two and getting adequate amounts of sodium in your diet, water is generally all you need. But suppose you are training for prolonged periods, such as during a competition, a long session of rolling, or just typically hard sparring in a hot environment. In that case, a sports drink can be a great way to replenish your electrolytes. Always check the label of your chosen sports drink to ensure it has an adequate balance between sodium and potassium.

As a BJJ athlete, you may be tempted to cut water weight to compete at a lower weight class. But you must know that cutting weight in saunas using a sauna suit or even taking diuretics can also be very dangerous. Not only will it lead to dehydration, but it can also cause kidney damage and heatstroke. Dehydration will severely impact your performance. This is very much unlike MMA or other combat sports where BJJ has the same-day weigh-in as same-day competition, which means that if you go into your weigh-in dehydrated, you're going to be dehydrated, which is not a good thing.

Dehydration causes a lot of effects on your body, hindering your performance as a BJJ athlete. The following are some outcomes of dehydration;

• When you are properly hydrated, drinking water during the day, and fulfilling your body's daily water intake needs, your muscles build up with each training session. Your muscles get stronger and bigger. But once you lose your daily water intake goals, you become prone to dehydration. Once you become dehydrated, your muscles start losing strength.
• They become weak with each passing day of dehydration. Your muscles won't give you the same benefits as they were given before. Your muscles will not be able to carry your daily workload. You will notice the changes in the work capacity of your muscles. So hydration is pivotal for increasing your muscle strength and their work capacity.

• The second outcome of dehydration is sinus tachycardia. Tachycardia refers to the increase in the heart rate without any specific reason. Sinus tachycardia means the increase in your heart rate due to exercise such as BJJ training/sparring or due to mental stress. You may be wondering why it is harmful to your body.
• The answer is that when your heart rate increases from the normal range, the heart chambers cannot fill appropriately with blood. During each contraction, blood fills in all four chambers of the heart. But when the heart rate increases or the time for contraction decreases, then blood fills incompletely. This results in insufficient blood in the body.
• Insufficient blood towards body tissues, organs, cells, and muscles means they will be deprived of nutrients and oxygen. The cells, tissues, or organs will become weak and no longer function properly. All this is the outcome of a single mistake, i.e., dehydration.

Water plays a more significant part in maintaining the strength and flexibility of joints. When you are dehydrated, your joints can't get water. This reduces their ability to bend and move. The result is diminished flexibility, movement, and overall strength of the joints.

This is an unpopular opinion, but dehydration also reduces your speed. The concept is that when you are dehydrated, your muscles and joints are nourished. Your heart chambers are not filling. Thus, adequate blood supply to the whole body is impaired. This reduces oxygen and nutrients supply to the entire body, particularly muscles and the joints. They become weak. Your aerobic respiration is also not working correctly. You need more strength and effort to make any movement. The result is increased workload, reduced speed, and decreased work capacity.

Another outcome of dehydration is kidney failure or failure of the kidneys to function correctly. When your water intake is low, and you are dehydrated, your kidneys have to do a lot of work to filter blood and remove waste from the body. Your kidney cannot survive this increased workload for a longer time. Ultimately, it produces urine with much more concentration of waste matter and minerals and much less water. This forms kidney stones. Eventually, it results in kidney failure.

The last outcome that dehydration causes is the suppression of the immune system. The system that protects you from diseases. Due to dehydration, it becomes tough for immune cells to transport across the body. Because lymph fluid becomes very thick due to dehydration, your body can also not absorb certain nutrients necessary for the functioning of the immune system, such as vitamin C, vitamin D, and zinc. Dehydration also results in reduced energy. This all contributes to the suppression of the immune system.

Hydration plays a much more significant role in your BJJ game. Following are some points that highlight the role of hydration in the context of the BJJ game;

With hydration, your body temperature is regulated, which aids in performing well in BJJ game. Moreover, hydration has a lot of benefits that play a role in your BJJ performance, such as improving your physical fitness, making your joints strong, increasing the flexibility of your joints, saves you from a lot of diseases, all of which have a direct impact on your performance in BJJ.

Muscle repair is one of BJJ athletes' most significant difficulties, particularly at their start in BJJ. They get muscle soreness after the training, which they must bear for days. This hinders their ability to train effectively for the BJJ game. The result is losing the game. That is where hydration has a benefit. Hydration aids in muscle repair and recovery of the BJJ athletes if they follow a specific hydration protocol, particularly during their training days.

With proper hydration, your heart delivers blood to all organs and tissues of your body. This means all your organs, muscles, tissues, and cells get adequate oxygen and nutrients. This aids in increasing the strength of your muscles and bones. Hydration also helps improve your speed because aerobic respiration properly functions in your body. You don't need to put much effort into making small movements. That’s how hydration increases your strength and speed.

You may get injured when training, sparring, or rolling hard for BJJ. The more hard training you try to do, the more you are at risk for injuries. This risk can be reduced to a greater extent with proper hydration. Because with hydration, all your body organs are working fine. Your bones are strong. Your joints are flexible. Your muscles get repaired and recover quickly. You don't get cramps. You don't get strains. This all prevents you from getting injured.

• So, how can you ensure that you are staying hydrated? A good rule of thumb is to drink about half a liter of water every hour while training for BJJ. But to be sure, you can use a simple rehydration protocol. First, weigh yourself before and after training. Then, based on this difference in your weight, you can calculate your fluid loss.
• Next, replenish 1.25 times your fluid loss over three to four hours. And don't forget to include sodium in your diet. You can even add sports drinks to replenish electrolytes. But only in those cases are you training for a longer time. 

Hydration plays a significant role in your BJJ game by making your joints strong and bones, increasing speed, flexibility, muscle repair, and BJJ recovery. Not only does water help regulate body temperature, but it also aids in transporting nutrients to your muscles and helps remove waste products.

Hydration plays a significant role in your BJJ game by making your joints and bones strong, increasing speed, flexibility, muscle repair, and BJJ recovery. Water regulates body temperature, aids in transporting nutrients for your muscles, and helps remove waste products. That is why hydration is important for you as a BJJ athlete.

• Hydration has a lot of benefits that play a role in your BJJ performance, such as improving your physical fitness, making your joints strong, increasing the flexibility of your joints, saves you from a lot of diseases, all of which have a direct impact on your performance in BJJ.

• Hydration aids in muscle repair and recovery of the BJJ athletes.

• Hydration also helps improve your speed because aerobic respiration properly functions in your body.

• This risk of getting injured can be reduced to a greater extent with proper hydration. 

Sports drinks provide extra sodium but contain added sugars and calories. Water is generally all you need if you are training for BJJ for about an hour or two and getting adequate amounts of sodium in your diet. But if you are training for prolonged periods, a sports drink can be a great way to replenish your electrolytes. 

• First, weigh yourself before and after training. Then, based on this difference in your weight, you can calculate your fluid loss.
• Next, replenish 1.25 times your fluid loss over three to four hours. And don't forget to include sodium in your diet. You can even add sports drinks to replenish electrolytes. But only in those cases are you training for a longer time.