How Much Water Should Athletes Drink Every Day?
Game-day drinking is the easy part. A 2026 paper found about 58% of the athletes it looked at drank under 35 mL per kilogram a day. Here is how to check your own number.
How much water should athletes drink every day? Start with a simple check: multiply your body weight in kilograms by 35. That gives you a daily figure in millilitres. A 70 kg athlete lands at 2,450 mL, about 2.5 L. A recent Sports Medicine paper reports that about 58% of the athletes studied drank less than that. Here is how to check your own number, spread it across your day, and place an electrolyte drink around the sessions that need one.
Hydration doesn't start on game day.
You pack the bottle for the game. You sip between shifts. You drink after the final whistle. That part is covered.
The other 20 hours of the day are where intake quietly drifts. A busy school day. A long drive to the rink. A desk job before an evening session. Lunch comes and goes with no water in sight.
Your daily habit is part of the same plan as your pre-game one. It is the base the game-day routine sits on.
What the new research shows about everyday intake.
The paper is "Athlete Hydration: Beyond Performance Toward Long-Term Health", a short communication published in Sports Medicine in April 2026. It points out that research on athlete hydration has mostly focused on short-term performance, while many athletes regularly drink little water through the day.
It uses 35 mL per kilogram of body weight per day as its low-intake threshold, and reports that about 58% of the athletes studied fell under it.
How to read it. This is a short paper that argues for more research. The 58% describes a group of athletes, not what any one of them should do. The paper's framing is long-term health, and it states that whether habitual low intake poses long-term health risks for athletes remains unknown. We're staying on what you can control: training days and daily habits.
It also looked at water intake, not any BioSteel product.
How much water should athletes drink every day? Start with 35 mL per kilogram.
The threshold is relative to body size, so it adjusts for you. Multiply your weight in kilograms by 35. Divide by 1,000 for litres. Divide the millilitres by 29.6 for US fluid ounces.
1,750 mL, about 1.75 L or 59 oz.
2,450 mL, about 2.5 L or 83 oz.
2,975 mL, about 3 L or 100 oz.
35 mL/kg is the line the paper uses to flag low intake. It is a benchmark, not a prescription. Your sweat rate, the weather and your training load all move your real needs.
For one week, log what you drink. A bottle count is enough. If you land well under your number on rest days and training days alike, you have a clear place to start.
Build the daily routine around training.
Don't try to drink 2.5 L in one evening. Spread it out and tie it to things you already do.
Drink one before breakfast, before you look at your phone. You begin the day with fluid already in.
For a 70 kg athlete, five 500 mL bottles gets you to about 2,500 mL. Finish one by breakfast, one by lunch, one around training, one after, one in the evening.
Put a bottle in the gym bag, the car and the school locker. If it's in reach, you drink it. If it's in the kitchen, you don't.
On training days, your sweat adds to the total. Cold rinks don't cancel that out, as we cover in Do Hockey Players Sweat in a Cold Rink?. Double days add more, so see How to Recover Between Two Sessions in One Day for what to do between them.
Where an electrolyte drink fits.
Sweat is more than water. It carries sodium and other electrolytes out with it, and those losses differ from one athlete to the next.
That is where an electrolyte drink earns its place: around the sessions where you sweat a lot. Long practices. Hot gyms. Tournament days with several games. Plain water still does the everyday work, the glass at breakfast, the bottle at your desk.
The simple split: water for the base of your day, an electrolyte drink around the harder, sweatier sessions. Check the label for serving size and what's in it, and for competitive athletes, look for NSF Certified for Sport, which means a third party has tested the product for banned substances. Most BioSteel products carry it.
Athlete daily water intake, answered.
How much water should an athlete drink a day?
A benchmark used in recent research is 35 mL per kilogram of body weight, which is 2,450 mL for a 70 kg athlete. It is a threshold used to flag low intake, not an exact target. Training load, heat and sweat rate all change what you need.
Does that 35 mL/kg include my training fluids?
Think of it as a whole-day figure, so the bottle at practice counts toward it. If you sweat heavily, you may need more on training days.
Do I need an electrolyte drink every day?
Not necessarily. Water covers most of an ordinary day. An electrolyte drink fits best around long, hot or heavy-sweat sessions, when you are losing sodium as well as fluid.
Is this the same as game-day hydration?
No. Game-day hydration is about the hours around the event. The daily habit is the base it sits on. Both belong in the plan.
Make hydration part of the plan.
Work out your number: weight in kilograms times 35. Log a week. Then spread your fluid across the day and add an electrolyte drink where the session calls for it.
Read: Do Hockey Players Sweat in a Cold Rink?References & further reading
Athlete Hydration: Beyond Performance Toward Long-Term Health. Sports Medicine, 2026;56:2083-2087
Disclaimer: This article is for general information about training and hydration habits. It is not medical advice. Fluid needs vary by person, so speak with a qualified professional about your own situation.
