We are still working on the formatting we want to use for the meal planning section, and I do not want to lose my streak achievement the little jetpack addon gives me for posting each day so I decided to talk about something today that has been a huge problem not only with me but my children, and other children athletes in general.

Water is by far my mortal enemy as I always remember drinking warm, sitting in the desert sun for months, pallets of water that I had to chug because it tasted like plastic. If I didn’t chug them, I was going to die from the heat, and I had little choice in the world, but to drink that water. To this day, I hate drinking water because it reminds me of war and all-day patrols and lots of pain. I have learned of late that this might be a major issue for me as I recently had a bout with kidney stones. This was made worse with my not wanting to drink water.

I have tried different ways to get myself to drink more like the Cirkle bottles, which I liked, but I kept losing the bottle. I tried Mio drops for the water, but then I lost the little Mio containers, or if I kept it in my pocket, I got squirted every once in a while. Honestly, I personally just have to suck it up and drink water more.

Which gets me to my actual point here, which is children and water. Having been coaching, I did not realize that water was not a pushed thing across most families. My children have a mother who forces them to drink water and somehow knows when they don’t and pours it down their throats. I have had many kids show up to practices and even games dehydrated already. I have, on more than one occasion, sent a kid running to the car to get my backup supply of water in the cooler to give to kids.

Water is essential to any child athlete even if they are swimming in it. They have to drink water or else they will not operate at peak performance. Ensuring your child has enough water in the during sports season is essential to ensure they do not one go down with a heat injury and two perform for their team. This is the easiest of all nutrition rules for a child athlete or even an adult one. Drink water all day every day.