Below you will find several tools that we use on a daily basis to help our clients succeed! Many of these calculators are for you to use while taking our corresponding online courses. We hope you find them as helpful as we do!
Sweat tests are critical for endurance athletes and individuals who are heavy sweaters. They can also be helpful if you do workouts indoors in a heated environment. Losing too much weight during exercise due to sweat loss will impair your recovery, hinder you from performance gains, and cause muscle cramping. This could also be a reason for headaches and GI distress. Sweat rates vary tremendously from person to person, with the exercise being performed, and during different times of the year due to weather shifts and in different climates.
We recommend doing at least two sweat tests for each type of exercise in similar weather conditions to be sure that they match. If they don't match, you should get a third to be sure at least two of your sweat rate tests match before implementing a hydration plan.
You can drink fluids during a sweat test; however, you may not eat. As a matter of fact, we DO NOT recommend exercising for this length of time during hot and humid conditions without fluids.
If you will be racing outdoors, your sweat tests should also be done outdoors. Indoor sweat tests do not apply to outdoor racing.
Sweat test rules:
- Your planned exercise should be approximately one hour long.
- Document temperature and humidity if you are exercising outside.
- Weigh yourself nude prior to the training/exercise session.
- Document type of training: run, swim, bike, tennis, soccer, etc.
- Document the exact amount of time you spent training (in minutes). As previously mentioned, we recommend about one hour.
- Document the exact amount of fluids you consumed.
- Weigh yourself nude after the training/exercise session.
- Use the calculator and the inputs you have collected to calculate your individual sweat rate during these conditions.
Knowing your basal metabolic rate should be the foundation of any nutrition plan. We recommend starting with this amount of calories for any goal: fat loss, performance/wellness or muscle gain. Use this calculator with our corresponding online course to help you understand how many calories you should be consuming each day.
Tracking your fat free mass over time is very important as part of any goal. If you are trying to lose fat, you do not want to lose muscle (which is included in your fat free mass calculation). If you are trying to gain muscle, you want to be able to track if you are only gaining muscle (also included in your fat free mass calculation). If you are focused on performance and wellness, you likely want to remain as lean as your age and genetics will allow. Tracking your fat free mass over time is how you know what changes are happening in the muscle mass department. You will need his calculator as part of our corresponding courses to track over time. It’s imperative that you are using the same technique for checking your body fat percentage to track this input.
The Goal Weight Range calculator is coming soon! This calculator can be used in conjunction with your body fat percentage and the ranges we discuss in our corresponding course that are healthy for your age. This will allow you to lose only fat and gain or maintain muscle for your goal.