willgetyoufit

Sweating is a release of water and sodium from the body’s sweat glands in an attempt by the body to regulate your body temperature. Sweat is typically found on your head, feet, the palms of your hands, and under your arms. The purpose of sweat is to cool the body by sitting on the surface of the skin and removing heat from the body as the sweat evaporates. The amount you sweat is directly dependent on how many sweat glands you possess with the average person being born with about 4 million. Women, on average, have more sweat glands than men but men’s’ sweat glands are typically more active. For both sexes, sweat glands can be activated by nervousness, anger, embarrassment, fear and physical exertion.

Sweating is most effective when it forms a glistening coat atop the skin allowing for even evaporation across the surface of the body. When sweat gets to the point that is starts dripping, that’s the body struggling to effectively control its own temperature and becoming less effective at cooling itself down. Contrary to popular belief however, the rate of sweating you are undergoing isn’t necessarily an indicator of how hard you are working. Your rate of sweating merely signifies how effective your body is at cooling itself down. This process can have several determining factors including humidity, environmental temperature, clothing and physical fitness.

Sweating and exertion especially do not correlate if you are returning to exercise after a long period of inactivity. When initially returning to an active state, especially when cardio is involved, you can sweat rather easily due to the fact it takes time for your sweat glands to adapt to the activity. The longer and the more consistently you do cardio the more efficiently you will start to sweat and the less you will “drip” at each level of intensity of exercise.

Instead of using rate of sweat as an indicator of your intensity of exercise, you should try using a “Borg Scale” to gauge your intensity. Since fatigue is highly correlated with your heart rate, the Borg Scale of Perceived Exertion (RPE) gives a much more subjective marker of your effort. Perceived exertion is how hard you feel like your body is working; it is based on physiological sensations experienced during physical activity (i.e. increased heart rate, increased rate of breathing, muscle fatigue, etc.). “Although this is a subjective measure, a person’s exertion rating may provide a fairly good estimate of the actual heart rate during physical activity” (Borg, 1998).

To use the Borg Scale, when exercising, rate your exertion between 6 and 20. According to the scale, each number represents a level of exertion:

BORG SCALE:

6, 7 – very, very light exertion

8, 9 – very light exertion

10, 11 – fairly light exertion

12, 13 – fairly hard exertion

14, 15 – hard exertion

16, 17 – very hard exertion

18, 19, 20 – very, very hard exertion

This is just one of the many ways to measure intensity that is more telling than rate of sweating. Just remember that some individuals can be extremely fit and still sweat profusely, regardless of the intensity of their exercise. This is more related to the number and effectiveness of their sweat glands than their physical prowess.