Chill Out and Perform Better – Keeping Cool In Heat
When we workout, train and compete our body generates heat. This heat is generated due to the energy our body produces to allow us to perform. Obviously though we don’t want to get too hot! As our temperature increases our body has to work harder to maintain our performance and keeping cool. Fatigue then begins to set in and our body forces us to slow down. If we don’t slow down and our temperature continues to climb we can have big problems! To fight this our body works to try and cool itself down but there are things we can do to help it.
Why do we care about keeping cool? Safety
If we get too hot it can become very dangerous. Just like a car will breakdown if it overheats, our body’s respond the same way. A significant increase in our internal body temperature can lead to heat exhaustion and heat strokes. Neither of those are a good time. Unfortunately though many people suffer from over heating every year.
High school football has in particular received a lot of attention due to the number of players who have collapsed from heat exhaustion. This can be attributed to several factors leading it to be a perfect storm. A major reason is simply the equipment that is used with helmets and pads. On top of that two-a-day practices are very common causing increased exposure to the heat outdoors and potential dehydration. But perhaps the biggest factor that applies to much more than just the sport, is the age of these athletes.
Adolescents are at an increased risk for heat related problems due to their body’s not being fully developed yet. Their body’s don’t have the full capability to cool themselves yet which we’ll dive into here shortly. Because they’re still developing, coaches and training staffs need to be very cautious and mindful with youth athletes.
Our body naturally try’s to keep us cool
The human body is incredibly resilient and try’s really hard to keep us up and moving. Which is greatly appreciated! In regards to what our body does specifically to keep us cool, sweat and blood flow distribution are the main methods.
We’ve all been in a hot situation where we are sweating buckets! Sometimes it’s out on the field and other times it’s at that family member’s house who keeps the heat on way too high. We’re ok for a little bit but eventually the sweat inevitably comes. The interesting part though is that simply sweating isn’t what cools our body down. It’s when the sweat evaporates that we cool off.
Think of when you get out of the shower. Even though there’s no wind blowing we feel noticeably more cold. If our sweat isn’t able to evaporate then sweating doesn’t help us and is simply reducing our blood volume due to the volume of liquid being lost. When it’s very humid outside there’s already a lot of moisture in the air and it prevents our sweat from being able to evaporate and cool us off. That’s why extra caution is needed on those hot and humid days especially!
Now for the blood distribution piece, this involves our body pumping blood towards our skin. By having blood closer to the surface of our skin, the wind/air traveling over it will help to cool down the blood. Then the slightly cooled down blood can travel back through the body helping cool the body down internally.
Have you ever notice your veins sticking out a bit more in hot/humid environments? Now you know why! It’s the body directing the blood to the surface more in hopes of cooling down more. When we’re dehydrated though, this becomes very challenging.
Keeping cool means keeping hydrated
If we don’t replace the fluid being lost in sweat, our blood volume decreases. Less blood means it gets hot faster and isn’t able to stay at the surface of the skin long enough to cool down because it has to keep circulating. No rest for the weary!
Think about what takes longer to come to a boil on the stove; a cup of water or a large pot? Spoiler, it’s the cup!
In our body, we want to avoid that boiling point for as long as we can. Like the large pot of water, not being dehydrated and drinking plenty of fluid keeps our blood volume up. Cheers to that.
Having some extra sodium with that fluid though can be very helpful. Sodium will help our body to absorb and hold onto that water a bit better. The main goal of all of this is to increase that blood volume to keep us cool and avoid overheating.
Ways to help chill out
In addition to simply drinking more, there are several ways in which we can help keep our body cool.
Keeping our beverages cold is the low hanging fruit of everything. Pack your water and electrolyte drinks in a cooler with ice packs as a simple and quick solution. Pro tip: freezing a water bottle will allow it to act as an ice pack and then when it melts you have extra fluid to drink. Helps to make the most of limited space and the cold beverages help to cool us internally from the inside out.
In a similar manner slushies and popsicles can be a great way to help drop our core temperature. As an added benefit, making slushies out of sports drinks can help to provide some additional electrolytes as well. Who wouldn’t like a cold lemon lime Gatorade after a hot practice?
Cooling ourselves externally is incredibly helpful as well. Grabbing some cold towels and ice packs to throw on ourselves is great. There are a few specific locations though that can impact our temperature to a great extent though and should be the areas to focus on when possible. These areas are where larger blood vessels are closer to the surface allowing closer direct contact to our blood. Those hot spots (pun intended) are our neck, armpits and groin. If needing to cool down quickly, that is where you need to focus placing ice.
So chill out, stay safe and keep your performance up. The more of these things you can incorporate, the cooler you will be.
