Are sports drinks better at hydrating you than water?
There are a lot of attractively packaged, expensive sports drinks out there on the market but are sports drinks better at hydrating you than water when you’re working out?
‘When you exercise you burn calories and expel minerals in your sweat, and sports drinks aim to replenish these, helping you to work out for longer. Sports drinks have been shown to increase endurance when consumed during exercise, but may only exert any beneficial effect when exercising continuously for over an hour.
Since the body has lots of stored energy and can reduce the amount of minerals in sweat, a lesser benefit is seen during a shorter bout of exercise’ – Kristoph Thompson – Houston Rockets Basketball Coach
I have designed a simple chart to give you a clear guide to choosing the right sports drinks:
| Exercise Conditions | Sports Drink |
| Exercise lasting <30 minutes | Nothing, water |
| Low-moderate intensity exercise lasting < 1 hour | Water or hypotonic sports drink (if you prefer) |
| Strenuous exercise, lasting 1-2 hours | Hypotonic or isotonic sports drink |
| Strenuous exercise lasting > 90 min or > 1 hour under cool conditions | Hypotonic, isotonic, hypertonic sports drink |
See my article on how to make your own sports drink to find out about hypotonic, isotonic and hypertonic drinks.
