Your Sweat Rate Test

Our awesome customer base is made up of folks all at least “above average” in the sweat rate test. Our kind of people!  Anyway, here’s the nitty gritty on sweat rates. We have what you need to keep sweat from your eyes, regardless :-)  

Eventually we will get to the flip side~hydration.  

Average and Champion Sweat Rates

How much do we sweat? An average person sweats between 0.8 to 1.4 liters (roughly 27.4 to 47.3 oz.) per hour during exercise. To help you with a visual, the smaller bike water bottles typically hold 0.6 liters (20 oz.) of fluid and the larger bottles hold 0.7 liters (24 oz.) of fluid.

The highest recorded sweat rate for an athlete in an exercise situation is 3.7 liters (125 oz.) per hour, recorded by Alberto Salazar while preparing for the 1984 Summer Olympics. The highest human sweat rate recorded is 5 liters (169 oz.) per hour measured on a resting body exposed to a hot environment. At rest, the skin blood flow was maximum and not competing with exercising muscles.

How do you know if you are just an average sweaty person or a truly champion sweater? You need to do some testing.

Your Sweat Rate Test

The easiest way to measure your sweat rate is to weigh your naked self before exercising for one hour. After an hour of exercise, return home, strip down and weigh yourself again. Assuming you did not use the toilet or consume any fluids during exercise, your weight loss is your sweat rate. For each kilogram of lost weight, you lost one liter of fluid. (For each pound lost, you lost 15.4 oz. of fluid.)

If you drink any fluids or use the rest room between the two weight samples, you'll need to include both of these estimated weights in your calculations. Add fluid consumed to the amount of weight lost. Subtract estimated bodily void weight from the total weight lost.

Be sure to record the heat and humidity conditions in your sweat test. Repeat the test in cool and hot conditions. Repeat the test for swimming, running and cycling because sweat rates will vary for each sport and vary with environmental conditions.

Now that you know your sweat rates in each sport, you probably imagine that simply drinking enough fluid will replace what you lose to sweat given the environmental situation. If it were only that easy.

Next HawgBlog: Hydration