Research Features

Andrea Braakhuis

Going for Gold in Beijing

Andrea Braakhuis, a senior academic staff member at Wintec, and nutritionist for the New Zealand Academy of Sport and Rowing's elite rowers, has come up with a way to help prepare our top rowers for the Olympic Games in Beijing this year. She has proposed that rowers be tested for fluid and electrolyte losses in a training setting, under time trial conditions. The testing would allow Andrea to determine which individuals sweat a large amount and enable her to provide advice for the dietary requirements of individual athletes to minimise cramping and poor recovery. In turn, this would better equip the rowers in their quest for a gold medal at the Games.

Rowing New Zealand approved the project and Wintec provided the funding and resources for the research to be undertaken. Originally Andrea had planned on replicating Beijing conditions and testing the rowers in Wintec's facility, where artificial heat and humidity can be created. Unfortunately this was not practical for the elite rowers so they decided to use ergometers located at Lake Karapiro instead.

Andrea and two students carried out the testing of 30 elite rowers on 22 December 2007. The group could not predict the results as testing of this nature had in the past focused on athletes in other sports. Rowing is unique in that it relies on training both aerobic and anaerobic energy systems and requires many hours of moderate to high intensity training. To test the fluid and electrolyte losses, Andrea first took urine specific gravity and body weight samples from each rower to produce a hydration assessment and then got them to row for one hour while wearing sweat patches. On completion of rowing, Andrea was able to collect the sweat and analyse it by testing for six sweat electrolytes. The key three were sodium, magnesium and potassium; the others were calcium, zinc and phosphorus.

Research Features 2007

From this detailed information, Andrea produced statistics and compared her findings to previous literature, also comparing male athletes to female athletes. She then provided each rower with a sweat testing report, outlining their specific numbers for hydration assessment, sweat rate and sweat electrolyte loss. Individual recommendations were made to athletes as to how they should keep themselves hydrated.

An example of an athlete's report is:

• Your sweat losses are below average in potassium and zinc.
• Your sweat losses are above average in sodium, calcium and magnesium.
• The sodium and calcium losses will naturally be replaced in the next meal, however the magnesium losses are considerable and I might suggest you try a magnesium-containing sports drink or food while training.

A consistent finding that came out of the testing was that the normal recommendation of no salty foods would not be appropriate in Beijing and the rowers will be encouraged to include plenty of salt in their diet.

With the successful completion of this project, Andrea is now going to use the same technology for her third year Wintec students' projects.