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Not as crazy as I thought!
Sometimes a falsehood is not destructive. Sometimes it’s just goofy. As someone who used to walk around with a gallon of water, I can tell you that the “8 glasses of water” a day thing is a road to nowhere. It’s just not sustainable. If you train here, then you know that real training is about the sustainable minimums (base standards) that have the greatest compounded benefit over time rather than chasing those PRs and peaks. Example: The first time I squatted 360 (twice my “fighting weight”), I was really happy. Six years later, I am still squatting 360 and I’m still happy. Could I chase 500? Sure. Will I? Nope.
Diet and supplementation are largely the same. There are certainly times—i.e., contest prep or getting tight for the beach—where you will be chugging two gallons of distilled water a day and getting your 4 ounces of fish out of Tupperware every 2 hours and taking your Animal Paks by the handful and peeing orange, but that is the very “tip of the spear” when it comes to strength/physique training. Eventually, the show is over, vacation ends, you come home and get back to everyday life, and your training becomes normal and sustainable again. The good news is that the “off-season” is where most of your gains come from anyway. That’s the part no one tells you on TikTok.
So where did 8 glasses a day come from? This is actually rather fun, as it has roots in our “Classical” style of training here, and until recently, I didn’t know this myself. The original recommendation came from a 1945 study that claimed that an “average” man needed about 64 ounces of fluid a day. What was mentioned in this recommendation was that most of that hydration came from moisture that was already in food. Somehow, as is often the case, the nuance of an idea gets lost, the “truthy” slogan parts get remembered, and years later, instead of our 64 ounces of fluid being taken in spread out in the course of a day with our breakfasts, lunch, dinner, drinks, tea, and coffee, with a glass of water here and there, it became: “Drink 8 glasses of ion-filtered water a day on the hour, or you will get Ebola and you will deserve it because of reasons.” Fitness hippies ruin everything….
So where did the 64 ounces even come from? It’s hard to tell, but what I can say for almost certain is that their test subjects were most likely military men. It was 1945, after all. Doing a little backwards reasoning, I applied my own formula for water (one ounce per half of ideal bodyweight: 180 lbs = 90 ounces) to the average military man at the time. People were smaller then. Your average GI Joe was about 5’8” and was in the neighborhood of 145 lbs. The bro math points in about the same direction for their needs. 145 multiplied by 50% gives us 72 ounces. Not much more than the 64 recommended. When you take into consideration that your average recruit in basic training from that time took in about 3000 to 4500 calories a day, it’s easy to assume that those passive moisture needs were being more than handled. Throw in a canteen or two during field exercises, and you are probably in a little excess but definitely not an issue if you are training. I suspect that your modern gym-goer can be in the same position with just a few tweaks.
For clarity, my water prescription is not so much for athletic performance but for physical changes. The hormonal processes for both fat loss and muscle gain, of course, require a more-or-less alkaline environment, and a good state of hydration is what keeps us there. It’s really no more complicated than that. Since our goals are physique-based rather than performing military training in 1945, I think it’s a good idea to go a little over to be sure that the very metabolically demanding process of muscle gain has a better chance. Our 1–2 hours of weightlifting a day is much easier than a soldier’s life in boot camp, but our metabolic demands are more demanding and a hell of a lot more specific. Go figure.
For us, as mentioned earlier, I suggest one ounce of actual water for every half pound of ideal body weight or actual body weight if you are where you want to be. My ideal body weight is 180. I currently sit at 198 (newlywed life is too easy!). So my actual water need is 90 ounces. It’s really not that crazy. A standard bottle of water is 16.9 ounces, so let’s call it 17 ’cause ‘Merica. A modern blender bottle can get as large as 45 ounces. See where we are going with this? If all I do is have a regular bottle of water (not the big ones) and chug my blender bottle of water during training and the rest with my post-training meal, I am already working with 96 ounces alone. You factor in “moisture” from my foods, protein drinks, tea, and coffee, and I am more than handled. The same applies to you! I love this because the weight/ounce formula correlates so closely to that 1945 study. It’s just so much fun to see the same principles showing up time and time again in slightly different ways. Speaking for myself, there is nothing like doing a certain exercise or habit or food preparation that has a long-proven lineage.
Okay, ready for the Ronin Fitness prescription? Here goes:
- Drink one bottle of water with breakfast, lunch, dinner.
- Fill up your big blender bottle with water and take a drink between sets.
- Finish the rest of your bottle with your post-training meal.
- Have your coffee whenever you want. It won’t dehydrate you. Fitness hippies lie.
- You are now hydrated.
- STFU about water and let’s move on….
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