written by Morgan Rosin
In football, sweat loss varies widely by athlete, with position playing a central role. Larger players generate and retain more heat, resulting in higher sweat rates and greater risk of dehydration, cramping, and performance decline when fluid needs aren’t met. This article analyzes sweat rate differences by position across both collegiate and professional teams and discusses why the game’s biggest athletes face the heaviest hydration demands.
American football is not only the most popular sport in the United States—it’s also one of the largest businesses in global sports. At the professional level, player contracts, media rights, and franchise valuations drive billions in annual revenue. In 2025, the 10 highest-paid NFL players—all quarterbacks—each earned more than $50 million in on-field contracts, while league-wide media deals generate around $10 billion annually. College football also delivers massive returns, with the Big Ten alone approaching $1 billion in yearly revenue.
This financial strength is fueled by fan demand. A record 22.3 million viewers tuned into NFL Week 1 games in 2025, and growing audiences have driven franchise values to unprecedented levels. The average NFL team is now worth $7.1 billion, a 25% jump from the prior year, with the Dallas Cowboys, Los Angeles Rams, and New York Giants leading the pack. College programs also rank among the most valuable assets in sports, with Ohio State valued at nearly $2 billion.
Meanwhile, the Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) era is reshaping college football. Players are now able to capitalize on sponsorships and endorsements, altering recruiting, transfers, and career decisions. With money, prestige, and performance all at stake, football programs at every level are seeking competitive advantages that extend beyond playbooks and training regimens.
That pursuit increasingly centers on player health and performance management. From injury prevention to hydration strategy, teams recognize that even marginal gains can influence outcomes and protect investments. Because of this, understanding sweat loss and hydration demands by position isn’t just a matter of sports science. It’s a business imperative.
Many collegiate and professional football teams now use Nix Pro, the group hydration monitoring platform, throughout preseason and during in-season practices. By integrating Nix into training sessions, teams can collect baseline sweat data, analyze fluid and electrolyte needs by position, and create personalized hydration strategies for each individual athlete.
For performance staff—especially Directors of Performance and Sports Dietitians—balancing player safety with peak performance is critical. Many begin the season with a list of “high-risk players”—athletes prone to post-practice IVs, frequent cramping, or poor day-to-day recovery. Knowing how much and what these players lose in sweat enables staff to proactively manage hydration and better prepare athletes for the demands of the gridiron.
Each team that utilized Nix Pro chose a slightly different implementation strategy. While some focused on just a handful of players, others outfitted an entire Offensive Line. Within the dataset, hundreds of workouts were collected across professional and collegiate football players, reflecting 17 unique positions. Nearly all of the workouts were practice sessions, averaging just over three hours in length—with some lasting as long as six hours—often in the relentless August heat. Equipment varied from light gear (shorts and a t-shirt) to full pads, further influencing sweat output.
On average, football players lost 35.2 ounces of fluid and 1,749 milligrams of electrolytes per hour. That’s 75% more fluid, and 117% more electrolytes lost versus MLB counterparts during their spring training. These losses are far from uniform with position, size, and role driving significant differences, and the highest losses coming from the Offensive and Defensive Lines.
Lineman carry some of the highest sweat burdens on the field. Offensive Linemen (Centers, Guards, and Tackles) are the massive protectors of the quarterback, averaging 312 pounds and 6’5” in height. Outfitted in heavy pads, they spend practices absorbing and delivering force in the trenches. Their Defensive Line counterparts (Inside Linebackers, Outside Linebackers, Defensive Ends, and Defensive Tackles) are slightly smaller on average, around 276 pounds and 6’3”, but face similar thermal challenges as they fight to collapse the pocket or stop the run. Linebackers, positioned just behind them, blend size and mobility (averaging 231 lbs, 6’2”) to deliver hard hits and provide coverage, making them another group with elevated sweat demands.
On the other end of the spectrum are speed-focused positions. Defensive Backs (Safeties and Cornerbacks) are often the fastest athletes on the field, averaging 191 pounds and 6 feet tall. Wide Receivers and Running Backs—typically around 200–225 pounds—rely on speed, agility, and quick bursts of energy, producing fluid losses of a different profile than the heavier linemen. Tight Ends, who combine blocking with receiving, fall somewhere in between, averaging 250 pounds and just under 6’4”. Quarterbacks, meanwhile, may not be the heaviest or fastest, but their ability to stay sharp under pressure makes hydration equally critical; the average QB in this dataset measured 216 pounds and 6’1”.
Across positions, the data show clear patterns: larger athletes not only lose more fluid per hour but also shed significantly higher electrolyte loads. Offensive Linemen, for example, lost 46.3 ounces of fluid loss per hour—nearly three pounds of sweat—and lost 17% more than their Defensive Line counterparts. When compared to all non-linemen combined, linemen lost 54% more fluid (43.7 vs. 28.4 oz/hr). These are not marginal differences; they reflect the physiological burden carried by the game’s largest athletes.
Scientifically speaking there are multiple reasons why larger players sweat more including body mass, body composition, and thermoregulatory demands. As body mass increases, so does their surface area. However, it isn’t always proportional. As detailed in the International Journal of Biometeorology, “Individuals with smaller body surface area-to-mass ratios (i.e., larger body size) rely more on heat loss through sweating for thermoregulation”. When looking at body composition, body fat acts as an insulator. More body fat means that heat generated internally is harder to dissipate via conduction and convection. During a football practice or game, larger athletes will have increased heat storage which promotes a greater sweating response in order to cool down the body. It should be noted that football players, and in particular professional football players, are elite athletes who also possess a significant amount of lean muscle mass in addition to body fat. That lean muscle mass generates more heat than fat alone, and similarly, sweat rates must rise to disperse heat. Other thermoregularly demands placed on players impacting their sweat rates include the environment (heat, humidity, solar load) and their gear. Often saddled with heavy equipment, football pads further insulate lineman, increasing their thermal load. Their skin tight uniform, which prevents the opposing line from being able to get a grip on them, further traps heat within the body.
In other words: Linemen often have a large body mass, high fat/lean mass mix, and they wear heavy protective gear which insulates the body and increases their heat load. Their body’s natural physiology, in conjunction with large pads, restricts the body’s ability to cool down from convection, making sweat critical and explaining the large losses we see in this group of players.
Offensive and Defensive linemen lose 2,000–2,300 mg of electrolytes per hour on average through sweat. Even when players and coaches stay vigilant about hydration, it’s easy for deficits to build quickly.
Take an Offensive lineman needing 46.3 oz of fluid per hour as an example: if all of that fluid came from Gatorade Endurance (a typical beverage available on football sidelines), they’d still be 544 mg short on electrolytes each hour leading to a 24% deficit. Over a three-hour practice, this shortfall compounds, raising the risk for muscle cramps, cognitive decline, performance drop-offs, and even injury.
Dehydration becomes performance-limiting at just 2% body weight loss from fluids. Within the dataset, 65% of football players lost at least 2% body mass. Without adequate hydration at this level players can experience fatigue, reduced endurance, slower reaction times, impaired decision-making, and early signs of heat stress.
More troubling is that 5.1% of workouts showed severe dehydration levels, which occurs at 5% or greater body mass loss. As dehydration progresses to higher levels, symptoms escalate to dizziness, confusion, severe cramping, risk of heat exhaustion, heatstroke, and other life-threatening conditions, including death if fluid and electrolytes are not rapidly restored. In recent years, each summer, the media is littered with stories of players and athletes who die from heat related illnesses. The work at the Korey Stringer Institute continues to raise awareness and prevent sudden death with athletes, laborers and military personal.
During training camp in August 2024, under the brutal Louisiana sun, Louisiana State Football (LSU) keenly identified the need to better monitor the sweat and electrolyte losses of football players to ensure athlete safety and performance. “Our team is training and competing in high heat and oppressive humidity for a good portion of each season. We got to a point where the threat of increasingly warmer temperatures affecting the safety and performance of our athletes was becoming a real concern,” said Matt Frakes, Director of Performance Nutrition, New York Giants Football (previously Assistant Athletic Director of Sports Nutrition at LSU). By partnering with Nix Biosensors, LSU was able to monitor players throughout camp, intervene to administer fluids and electrolytes, and reduce the number of IV fluids administered by 90%.
While IV fluids are effective in delivering hydration and minerals rapidly to the body, teams do not want to be in the habit of overusing IV replacement for players. Dr. Brett Bauer of the Mayo clinic says “High doses of certain vitamins and minerals have been linked to kidney damage, heart rhythm abnormalities, blood pressure changes, gastrointestinal symptoms and damage of the peripheral nerve”.
Instead, football players, coaches and support staff should aim to stay educated about the dangers of dehydration. Identifying the appropriate baseline sweat and electrolyte losses by position, and more importantly by each individual player, is the quintessential first step in developing a targeted hydration strategy.
In a sport where the smallest advantage can determine outcomes and influence everything from alumni support to media contracts—player care is essential. By accurately measuring fluid and electrolyte losses, teams no longer have to choose between safeguarding athletes’ health and maximizing performance. They can do both: protect player well-being while ensuring the conditions for effective recovery and peak output on the field.
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Data for this article was compiled based on athlete position, workout length and activity type (football) for workouts from August 2024 through September 2025. Data reflects collegiate and professional football workouts, indoor and outdoor sessions. Workouts were pulled from Nix Pro, the group-monitoring app from Nix Biosensors.