Hydration breaks: Why they are essential for athletes, even without training

Hydration breaks, or cooling breaks, implemented during the World Cup, offer players a crucial pause to consume fluids and highlight the importance of staying hydrated. These pauses, though sometimes controversial, serve as a vital reminder of liquid intake's significance.

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Establishing a single, ideal figure for daily water consumption is complex, due to differences in body weight, level of physical activity, and each person's health status.

Juan Ignacio Ruiz, head of Clinical Medicine at Hospital Alemán, explains that water is a fundamental component of the human body and an indispensable nutrient, as metabolic processes cannot generate it sufficiently. While public health often suggests about two liters daily, Ruiz notes that a single ideal figure is complex due to variations in body weight, physical activity, and individual health.

Adequate hydration is particularly critical for athletes, especially during summer sports. Ruiz warns that playing soccer in hot weather significantly increases the risk of hyperthermia. Even if players can momentarily withstand thermal stress without obvious performance decline, elevated internal heat dramatically raises the danger of acute exertional illnesses.

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Although players can momentarily withstand thermal stress without their performance declining obviously, these levels of internal heat exponentially increase the danger of suffering acute pathologies due to exertion.

These conditions can range from mild issues like headaches, muscle cramps, and nausea to severe medical emergencies such as heatstroke, a leading cause of sudden death in competitive sports. FIFA's policy of implementing three-minute cooling breaks with cold hydration and ice towels, along with extended halftime for cooling, has proven effective in mitigating thermal, cardiovascular, and perceptual stress in footballers under extreme heat simulations.

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The current FIFA policy of implementing three-minute cooling breaks with cold hydration and ice towels, as well as the alternative of extending halftime with cooling, have proven highly effective in mitigating thermal stress, cardiovascular and perceptual in footballers in situations that simulated extreme heat conditions.