Degree of hydration conferred by different protocols of nutritional intervention in high performance rugby athletes

Abstract

The stress caused by the exercise is accentuated by dehydration and can harm physical and physiological responses leading to decreased performance. Experimental analytical study in high performance rugby athletes, with the objective of identifying the degree of hydration conferred by different nutritional intervention protocols. The nutritional intervention was carried out through three different hydration offer protocols during training at different days. In addition, a training observation with no intervention was made prior to protocols applications. Dehydration was assessed by body mass (BM) measurement before and after training, urine staining and a subjective thirst questionnaire. The level of significance utilized was 5% (p <0.05). Whe analyzing the BM before and after training, no difference was observed between protocols 1, 2 and 3 (-0.12 ± 0.73kg, -0.19 ± 0.70kg and +0.24 ± 1.02kg respectively; p>0.05). Evaluating these oscillations in percentage of dehydration we have, respectively, -0.12%, -0.20%, + 0.25%. In contrast, a significative difference was observed when compared BM measurements on observation with no intervention at all (-0.33 ± 0.44kg), with a difference of -0.35% of dehydration, p=0.008. Urine staining compatible with dehydration was observed in 88.9%, 42.9% and 77.8% of athletes in the protocols 1, 2 and 3 respectively (p=0.135). The questionnaire demonstrated a higher, but not significant, percentage of athletes with dehydration (25%) during the observation period when compared to protocols 1, 2 and 3 (18.8%, 6.3% and 12.5% respectively), p=0.392. We consider that all protocols aided in hydration by the fact that BM oscillations do not achieve values higher than 2%.