Hydration in beach tennis practitioners

Abstract

Introduction: Dehydration is a physiological condition that occurs after a long loss of hydration, this loss affects our physiological functions bringing some damage during and after working out. Beach tennis is a racket sport, played in couples on a sand court, players are generally people of different ages and physical conditions. Purpose: The objective is to evaluate the dehydration of beach tennis players during a 60-minute game. This testing consisted of eight women between 18 and 59 years old. Materials and methods: Collecting was made indoors without any solar exposition. Participant's data were taken from a quantitative hydration questionnaire and physical exercise forms, a collection of anthropometric variables such as weight and height for BMI classification, and admeasurement weight taken before and after playing in addition to monitoring hydration with water throughout the exercise. Results: Sweating rate ranged from 100ml/hour to 950ml/hour. In this way, 87.5% (n=7) of the athletes had water loss > 1% and only 12.5% (n=1) had water loss between 1 and 2%. Conclusion: Playing beach tennis can contribute to a dehydration process through water loss caused by sweating. It is crucial to have a hydration plan during the practice of team sports, thus being able to guarantee excellent physical performance and that health problems are avoided.