Ever wondered why you sweat more or less than your training buddy?

Sweating is your body’s way of regulating your body temperature. By sweating your body is actually cooling itself down. The human body contains between two and five million sweat glands embedded in one’s skin and are located all over the body. The amount one sweats however is determined by physiological characteristics, the air temperature around you, and your weight as well as how hard you are training.

Women tend to have more sweat glands than men, but men’s glands are more active. How active your glands are will determine how much you sweat. What’s interesting to note is that fit men will sweat more than fit women, simply because women produce less sweat from each of their glands.

So are you fitter if you sweat more?

Your training buddy isn’t necessarily fitter if they sweat more, however fitter people will sweat sooner in their workout than a less fit person as they are able to run faster and harder and thus create more body heat which results in more sweat. At the same time an unfit person may also heat up quicker and sweat a lot more. An overweight person may also sweat more because the fat acts as an insulator that increases internal temperature.

So, basically, the more you sweat the more your body is attempting to regulate your internal temperature.

Since fit people sweat more efficiently, they are able to exercise at a higher intensity for longer. There is also a relationship between your VO2 max and how much you sweat: the higher your VO2 max (the maximum or optimum rate at which the heart, lungs, and muscles can effectively use oxygen during exercise) the sooner you will sweat. If you have a high VO2 max it also means you are fitter.

However an unfit person may reach his VO2 max quicker than a fit person which can result in the unfit person sweating more and sooner into the workout. The fitter person will sweat more efficiently than the unfit person as the fit person may be at a lower VO2 max at that part of the exercise.

So at the end of the day it becomes evident that different people sweat in different volumes and at different times, but at the same time sweat doesn’t necessarily mean that one is fitter than the other.