Physical activity, such as bodybuilding, exposes people to a variety of influences that can lead to water loss. Everything from the duration and intensity of the workout, the environmental conditions in which it was performed, and the type of clothing worn all greatly affect water loss (Sawka et al. 2007). Additionally, the individual's physical characteristics such as body weight, gender, age, and metabolic efficiency also influence water loss.

In bodybuilding, the contracting of muscles during weightlifting produces metabolic heat. Since the body prefers to maintain a certain core temperature, this excess heat must be dissipated to the external environment. Hence exercise is always accompanied by sweating.

The loss of water through sweating can lead to changes in plasma volume resulting in the impaired ability to evacuate heat, increases in body temperature, and decreased cardiac output (ritz et al. 2003) In terms of the workout, dehydration results in a decrease in aerobic power and physical work capacity (sawka and montain 2000).

Calculate Your Recommended Water Intake

Water is very important for many reasons. It has many health and performance benefits. These include:

• Keeping your organs functioning properly
• Clearing Toxins
• Reduces excess sodium from your body
• Hydrates your muscle cells
• It even liberates fat stores on your body so they are burned off as an energy source
• Increased immune system function
• Lowered blood pressure
• Better muscle contractions
• Lowered chance of headaches
• Can help prevent the loss of memory also as we age.

As you can see there are plenty of benefits that come along with consuming enough water, meaning that Dehydration will cause a major decrement in performance. Water also plays a major role in cell volumisation. This is where nutrients are pulled inside of the muscle cell causing a multitude of reactions that leads to muscle growth. Water is very important in many processes including digestion, transportation, and the absorption of nutrients.

Contained within your blood is around 82% water, 85% in brain cells, and even your bones are made up of around 25% water too! I am sure these figures show you the importance of getting enough water each day. Surprisingly, through daily function even the average person will lose around 64 ounces of water per day. This amount of loss does not include if you are exercising or living in warmer climates. Therefore, as a rule of thumb, everyone should strive for eight cups of water each day, which amounts to around two quarts but everyone is individual.

You can also figure out how much water you need to drink by taking your body weight in pounds and dividing it by 2. This number is the amount of FL Ounces that you need. E.g. if you are a 150lb male then you need to consume a minimum of 75 FL ounces of water per day. Obviously, if you are an athlete or avid exerciser, you will need more water so you can replace what you lost during a workout.