Sports drinks were first created to help top level athletes improve performance. As with most things in the world of fitness, the things that top level athletes do to get a competitive edge often filters down to the recreational gym user. Does this mean though, that just because top level competitive athletes use ‘something’ that the average gym goer should automatically use them, or indeed are they likely to have the same benefits or actually have potential drawbacks?
Before we get on to the advantages and disadvantages of sports drinks and in what contexts that they might be useful, it is probably a good idea to outline what a sports drink ‘is’. Although some people may classify sports drinks as anything associated with sports or fitness, such as protein shakes and pre-workouts, in the original meaning of the term ‘sports’ drink, these were created to support hydration, including electrolytes and also energy in the form of fast digesting and absorbing carbohydrates in the form of glucose, dextrose, maltodextrin and other forms of simple sugar.
On the sports drink market today there are a wide range of sports drinks that come in powder form, where you can make up your own drink specific to your own needs or as a ready to drink formula already made up with water, with the correct amounts of ingredients. In fact, you can now purchase all the different components of a sports drink so that you can truly customise them to your own exercise needs.
The combinations of these ingredients can be categorised as hypotonic (containing water, electrolytes and a small amount of carbohydrate), isotonic (water, electrolytes and 6-8% carbohydrate) and hypertonic (very high carbohydrate >8% carbohydrate). The majority of leading sports drinks that are available in your supermarket or gym vending machines would fall into the hypertonic category, but the real question is do we actually need them?
Under a normal gym environment or in moderate outdoor temperatures, where we are not sweating profusely and not exercising for long durations of over an hour, then for most people water is enough to keep the body hydrated and functioning effectively. In this situation the body will have enough energy stored as glycogen assuming the body is being properly fed with carbohydrates through our normal diet to maintain our muscle and liver glycogen stores. It is only when exercising with moderate to high intensity, in periods of longer than around one hour, when we need to consider feeding with carbohydrate and possibly electrolytes to maintain performance. In this situation it would most likely be isotonic drinks would be an advantage.
In hot or humid environments where perhaps we are losing a lot of water, but not using much energy at lower intensities, hypotonic solutions could be an advantage to hydrate the body, whilst providing a small amount of exercise fuel.
It is also important to keep sports drink usage in line with your own goals. They may be useful for maintaining performance or boosting recovery but they also come at a calorie cost. For those looking to lose weight it is probably better to give them a miss, as this could slow down progress whilst not actually providing any exercise benefit for a ‘normal’ weight and/or cardio training session.
Very high carbohydrate, hypertonic, sports drinks are something that that average gym goer does not often require. High intakes of fast digesting, sugary, carbohydrates can also cause digestive discomfort if not accompanied with plenty of water.
There are however some situations where consuming large amounts of carbohydrates might have an advantage, such as people who might be performing repeated bouts of high demand exercise on the same day when refuelling quickly is of utmost importance. For people looking to build muscle increasing calorie intake in and around training can be an important tool to use and using high amounts of carbohydrates at this time is a great way to boost performance, recovery and provide the body with enough fuel to support recovery and muscle growth.
In summary, sports drinks can have advantages when used in the correct way, however the inclusion of sports drinks needs to be balanced with both an individual’s goals and the actual need to consume them for a specific type of exercise or activity when perhaps just consuming water would be sufficient alongside a balanced diet that supports our energy and electrolyte needs.
