A recent post by Erik Magraken on the Combat Sports Law blog highlighted a recent study examining the effects of the dehydration on mixed martial arts athletes after various periods of rehydration. I dug into the data and spoke with one of the authors to find out what the study can actually tell us about the short-term effects of moderate weight-cuts.
Results
The study found that following dehydration of 5% of body weight via sweating, most physiological measures of hydration had returned to normal after three hours of rehydration. Despite these normal tests, the ability to carry out high intensity exercise for a sustained period of time was significantly compromised.