Whats the Big Deal Just a Little Bit of Pee Lets Make America Wet Again
When athletes gotta go ... where do they go?
This story appears in ESPN The Mag's Body Result 2017. Subscribe today!
As Hashemite kingdom of jordan GROSS jogged off the field at Bank of America Stadium against the Giants, Panthers fans cheered and high-fived him without knowing exactly where he was headed.
Gross simply couldn't ignore the urge any longer. Maybe it was the humidity or all that sweetness tea, but in 2013, afterward a decade of playing tackle in Carolina, Gross had finally reached his bathroom breaking point. Information technology's simple math, really: Players beverage gallons of h2o but can't leave the field for even 30 seconds for fright of a turnover happening midstream. Over the years, Gross had tried every technique NFL players and other hyper-hydrated athletes use to surreptitiously save themselves during games. He'd experimented with the fourth dimension-honored slow release into his pants, just they were white, for starters, and it only left Gross feeling soggy and slow. He kind of enjoyed the "T-Pee curtain" method, going within a hut of towels or parkas. But worrying that his teammates would prank him by walking away midflow occasionally gave Gross stage fear -- aka paruresis, or what urologists refer to as "ballpark bladder." His tight pants, no-fly spandex and all the tape on his gloved hands and mangled fingers made information technology cumbersome to kneel behind the bench and pee into a cup (a method that was so popular among his teammates that rookies often had a hard time differentiating which cups contained actual Gatorade).
And so, in i of the final home games of his career, during a TV timeout with the defence on the field, the three-time Pro Basin blocker figured he had naught to lose -- he would proudly march off the field toward a small bathroom used mostly by field staff, where for one time he could pee in peace.
Or and so he thought. Inside the bathroom, Gross was almost immediately skid-sliding around the polished physical floor in his cleats and struggling mightily with his gloves and pants. When his sweaty, dirty shoulder pads bumped the temple of a fan in a Cam Newton jersey next to him, Gross realized proper urinal etiquette required him to attempt small talk.
"Heck of a game," Gross blurted with a nod to the dumbfounded fan.
"The guy is staring at me, and I'chiliad fully aware of how weird this situation is, and now it'south all delaying the pee process," says Gross, who, sources say, was in also much of a bustle to wash his hands. "Poor guy probably paid a fortune for a field laissez passer considering he wanted to know what information technology was like behind the scenes at a big-time sporting event. Well, now he knows."
THE SHEER FREQUENCY and powerful pull of the pee interruption makes urine peradventure the well-nigh influential and disruptive liquid in sports. In fact, the most basic of bodily functions is such a stiff force that it causes even the most disciplined, trained bodies in the earth to do some wonderfully weird and occasionally revolting things. "Every single athlete has to deal with this in a dissimilar way, merely one affair is the aforementioned: No one ever talks about information technology," says Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson of the U.S. women's national hockey team. "It's a pretty universal affair we all share, relative to everybody: Anybody has to go."
In 2012, Angels bullpen Jered Weaver was simply three outs from a no-hitter when faced with that familiar conundrum. To everyone's keen daze, Weaver dismissed more than a century of baseball superstition and bolted off the bench and downward into the clubhouse bathroom with his knees pinched. That'south but how ferocious nature's call tin can be: Sports immortality suddenly pales in comparison to the sugariness relief that comes with release. Weaver, though, returned to the mound and, unburdened, put away three more batters to become the 10th pitcher in Angels history to throw a no-hitter.
By taking relief duties into his ain easily, Weaver made a decision that validated a groundbreaking paper published the aforementioned year by Dark-brown University. In it, neurology professor Pete Snyder constitute that the painful need to urinate impairs college-order cognitive functions -- things like rapid decision-making, problem-solving and working retentivity -- on a level analogous with drunken driving.
"Imagine you're an athlete, you've just consumed a ridiculous amount of liquid on a hot mean solar day, you lot can't get off the field and you're in terrible hurting," Snyder says. "When we're in pain, our starting time reaction is to act like whatever other animate being and lessen the pain and go out of harm'due south way no affair what."
Snyder explains that there are centers deep within the brain that maintain homeostasis, or normal bodily functions such as breathing, heartbeat and urination. The pain and disruption caused by holding urine for besides long essentially sets off alarms that dampen cognitive activities in the frontal lobes -- the ones athletes especially rely upon -- in order for the body to manage more proximal bug.
Snyder fed his subjects 250 milliliters of h2o (roughly 8.5 ounces) every 15 minutes until they reached their "breaking point." That intake, though, is but a drop in a bucket compared with what most elite athletes must eat in a never-catastrophe process of keeping their bodies hydrated through daily cycles of perspiration, urination and rehydration. A 300-pound football player needs 192 ounces of water daily to maintain normal hydration. On game solar day in hot climates? He'll demand another 128 ounces to supervene upon the gallon or then of body weight he'll sweat out in the trenches. That means his intake on Sundays alone should exist roughly enough to fill a small fish tank. And Snyder says the pain caused past trying to hold back all that fluid tin create the same level of cognitive harm every bit staying awake for 24 hours straight. All of which led Snyder to a single, deeply scientific conclusion for athletes:
When ya gotta become?
Go for the aureate.
Thanks to Snyder's written report, information technology now makes perfect sense why Michael Phelps, the greatest Olympian of all time, admits he lets loose in the pool. It might even provide a scientific explanation for the Scarlet Sox miracle known as "Manny being Manny." In 2005, during a pitching change in Boston, outfielder Manny Ramirez claims to have stepped into the Green Monster to salve himself -- an urge so bad he about missed a pitch. ("I'm simply glad he came dorsum," said Sox skipper Terry Francona.) Information technology also explains one of the NFL'due south dirty little secrets: At whatever given moment on a sideline, someone probably is relieving himself while hiding in plain sight. Or trying to. Old Dolphins linebacker Channing Crowder's solution was adequately simple: He says he wet his pants ... in every 1 of his 82 games equally a pro. Every bit the Chargers collection toward a late field goal in 2011, kicker Nick Novak got caught kneeling by the bench midact, thanks to a CBS photographic camera that lingered just long plenty for the shot to include a graphic that suggested Novak's "target" was the 34-chiliad line. He fell a little brusque.
He also missed a 53‑yard field goal.
In Detroit final flavor, a Lions fan attending the game with her two children captured Washington special-teams coordinator Ben Kotwica relieving himself adjacent to an equipment crate adorned with the NFL logo. Although the box failed to provide whatsoever actual cover, it did create an exquisite moment of brand marketing with the resulting viral photo, which captured Kotwica fully exposed and in full stream just inches from the revered NFL shield.
Public urination in Detroit anywhere other than the Lions sideline can cost yous up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine. But in that location are no rules against bathroom breaks in Roger Goodell'southward NFL. And then it is that players celebrating besides much after a touchdown can oftentimes await a hefty fine, while coaches and players are free to do the pee-pee trip the light fantastic toe on the AstroTurf.
"Guys are peeing all over the sideline in every game, into cups, on the ground, in towels, behind the bench, in their pants, everywhere," says Panthers center Ryan Kalil, who covered this topic and others in The Rookie Handbook, co-authored by Gross and Geoff Hangartner.
"You'd be surprised, honestly, how many players on the sidelines just go. I guess as athletes we are all desensitized by the whole peeing-everywhere thing."
WHEN It COMES to urination, elite male athletes fall victim to a kind of Superman circuitous. Flying around in a skintight bodysuit and zipperless codpiece, what does Superman do if, god foreclose, he needs to pee in the center of saving Metropolis for the 87th fourth dimension? Our minds don't associate athletes with something as vulnerable or mundane as needing to pee. As a effect, they often perform in billion-dollar facilities that have retractable roofs and moon-sized video screens merely lack a single toilet within attain of the field. "There is this level of invincibility and super-hero-ness to what we practise as athletes," says sometime NFL lineman and ESPN analyst Mark Schlereth, whose infamous in-game toilet habits helped earn him the nickname Stink. "It's like that children's book Anybody Poops. In sports, everybody pees."
Merely the need to stay hydrated, combined with a maze of cultural hang-ups and poorly designed facilities, creates a nightmare for athletes who are but looking for a bathroom break.
Then many runners in the New York Urban center Marathon pee off the sides of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge at Mile 1 that race veterans tin only giggle when they hear first-timers below them on the lower deck talk about the sudden "refreshing" rainstorm they experienced. World-class cyclists nonetheless speak in awe of the adroit way former Tour de French republic racer Dave Zabriskie was able to straighten his right leg, stand tall in the saddle and urinate off the side of his bicycle while whizzing through the French countryside at thirty mph. In 2005, when Zabriskie became simply the 3rd American to wear the appropriately named yellow bailiwick of jersey, it earned him the privilege -- according to the Tour's unwritten rules -- to decide when, where and for how long the peloton was allowed to pee. "That'south when you know you've made it in our sport," says former teammate Christian Vande Velde. "Information technology's like, 'I merely made the whole peloton stop and pee; I'm the man.'"
Because of cultural and anatomical obstacles, female athletes are forced to plan amend and concord longer than their male counterparts. Members of the U.S. women'southward hockey team take even been known to utilize the expulsion of urine to measure the strength of an opponent's checks. After a big hit, says team member Monique Lamoureux-Morando, "you get to the bench and people are joking nigh it, and you just become, 'Yeah, crap, she just fabricated me tinkle a little.'"
Brandi Chastain, a member of the iconic 1999 U.S. women's national soccer team, leaked into her cleats only once -- during ane of her kickoff World Loving cup practices in Republic of haiti. She remembers it fondly. "Absolutely liberating," she says. "Information technology's difficult to feel loose when you have that kind of tension in your bladder."
If a glimpse of Chastain'due south sports bra after her Cup-winning penalty kick in 1999 caused such a ridiculous uproar, she can't fifty-fifty imagine what fans would do if a player today copped a squat by the U.S. bench during a game, as so many of her male counterparts exercise. That single disparity can often leave female person athletes at a significant disadvantage. It'south common for female athletes to drink less -- and therefore perform worse -- but because they're worried about how, or where, they'll get to the bathroom. During a recent U.S. Olympic Committee golf outing in Oregon, when Chastain mentioned this dilemma, a female golfer in her foursome cursed out the male-dominated globe of golf course blueprint, then produced something called P-Mate. The disposable cardboard device, made by a company in Broomfield, Colorado, allows women to pee in public while continuing. "I was a lilliputian embarrassed at outset," Chastain says. "Then I was similar, 'Oh my god, this is awesome!' It'southward very different for the remainder of us. You lot but can't squat in the middle of a Women's Earth Loving cup game. Male athletes can just create their own bathroom."
It's a gift they don't always utilise responsibly. Plagued by blisters on his pitching hand in 2016, the Dodgers' Rich Hill peed on his fingers. It'south an old-school remedy that dates back to former major leaguers Moises Alou and Jorge Posada, who didn't employ batting gloves because they believed trace amounts of urea in their urine toughened their skin. (Urea is a mutual ingredient in commercial moisturizing creams.) Posada used to warn, "You don't want to milk shake my manus during spring training."
Some sports do take a more palatable and humane approach to the act of urination, but proper facilities and protocols are still no match confronting millions of dollars in prize money. At g slam tennis events, men are permitted two potty breaks during five-set matches; women become two for three-fix matches. On the matter of urination, the rules read like a junior high pupil handbook, allowing competitors to "get out the court for a reasonable time for a toilet break," while falling just curt of request Roger Federer to put the seat down when finished.
Since the potty provision's inception, even so, lawn tennis players accept been exploiting the pee-suspension rule for strategic advantage, proving there is no level elite athletes will non stoop, or squat, to in club to proceeds the slightest advantage. In the 2010 Australian Open, later losing the showtime set of his quarterfinal match, Federer killed fourth dimension in the can while allowing the blinding sun to dip below the stands. In 2012, Andy Murray won the first 2 sets of his U.Due south. Open finals match, but when the next ii slipped abroad, he sheepishly signaled to the umpire and tiptoed off the court, disappearing into a one-toilet restroom under Arthur Ashe Stadium. As the oversupply and Novak Djokovic waited, Murray later told The New York Times, he stood solitary in forepart of the mirror screaming at his reflection, "You are non going to let this one sideslip." He was speaking of the friction match (one presumes), which he battled back to win later i of the nearly fortuitous pee breaks in sports history.
Whether information technology's a feint or a full flow, bath breaks such equally Murray's can make all the difference in condign a champion."This happens much more than than fans would always realize," says renowned battle trainer Freddie Roach. "Knowing how an athlete'southward brain works, if all you can think virtually is needing to take a piss, that's gonna become you knocked out, or worse. So if finding a way to have a leak ways helping you win, any trainer or whatsoever athlete in any sport would exercise the same thing."
You might say Roach learned this lesson firsthand while preparation James Toney for his 2003 fight against Evander Holyfield. Battle's gilded rule is clear: Never put the gloves on early earlier a big fight. Once they're secure and the tape is initialed past a battle commission official, they tin't come up off. Later on that, if a fighter is overcome by the combination of prefight hydration and jitters, his entourage has to play a high-stakes game of "not it."
Moments before he was supposed to exist in the band, Toney turned to Roach with a expect on his face up every trainer dreads. (He'due south gotten the same wait from Manny Pacquiao a few times in recent years.) With Holyfield waiting and the Mandalay Bay crowd growing louder and more restless by the second, Roach, out of options, shimmied his hand upward the left side of Toney'southward black silk battle trunks. (Roach went left because the names of Toney'due south children were stitched on the correct side of his trunks.) Why he went up the shorts instead of downwards is simple: He's a damn pro. "Best fashion to practise it," he says, "pull the loving cup out, pull the junk down, look the other way."
When boxer and trainer sheepishly exited the bathroom, Roach figured the incident was mercifully over. Heading to the ring, though, Toney blurted out, "Oh, Fred, that was so good; y'all were so gentle." Loose, unencumbered and fourteen to eighteen ounces lighter, Toney survived a sluggish first and a fell shot to the kidneys at the finish of Round one before pummeling Holyfield into submission in the ninth.
To this day, every fourth dimension Toney sees Roach, he reminds him, loudly, about their Mandalay moment. Roach ever grumbles back the same thing he said that dark equally Toney leaned toward the urinal. "Damn it, James, I don't even like holding my own."
Sooner or later, though, everyone-players, coaches, fifty-fifty trainers-must come to grips with the near unstoppable force in sports. "No 1 has to tell me well-nigh the importance of pee breaks in sports," Roach says. "S---, I haven't heard the end of it yet."
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Source: https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/19769575/what-do-athletes-do-to-pee-games
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