Is Water Better Than Sport Drinks?

In some cases yes. For exercise lasting one hour or less, water is still the best sport drink around. The nutrient you most need to replace during and after a workout is water.

“Sports drinks” do have their place, mostly for exercise lasting more than an hour, and especially for use by endurance and ultra-endurance athletes. These products are a mixture of water, carbohydrate, and electrolytes. Electrolytes are dissolved minerals that form a salty soup in and around cells. Electrolytes carry electrical charges that let them react with other minerals to relay nerve impulses, make muscles contract or relax, and regulate the fluid balance inside and outside cells.

In hard workouts or athletic competitions lasting an hour or longer, electrolytes can be lost through sweat. Sports drinks do two things: replace water and electrolytes lost through sweat, and supply a small amount of carbohydrate to the working muscles. The best time to swill one of these drinks is during an aerobic workout or during any period of exertion, especially if you're exercising or working in hot weather. That's when fluid loss is greater than any other time of the year.

 Where sports drink may have an edge over water is in their flavor. A lot of people just don't drink much water because it doesn't taste good. If you are an avid water drinker and really like water, you will benefit just as much from water as you will from using a sports drink unless you are exercising more than an hour.

Refueling Your Muscles after a Workout

After working out, you want your muscles to recover. Recovery is essentially the process of replenishing muscle glycogen. The better your recovery, the harder you'll be able to train during your next workout. There are three critical periods in which to feed your muscles with carbs. These three periods are explained in the following discussion.

1. Immediately Following Your Workout

Your muscles are most receptive to producing new glycogen within the first few hours following your workout. That's when blood flow to muscles is much greater, a condition that makes muscle cells practically sop up glucose like a sponge. Muscle cells are also more sensitive to the effects of insulin during this time, and insulin promotes glycogen synthesis. You should therefore take in some carbs immediately after you work out.

 The question is: What's the best type of carb for refueling?

 Answer: carbs with a high glycemic index.

The glycemic index is a scale describing how fast a food is converted to glucose in the blood. Foods on the index are rated numerically, with glucose at 100. The higher the number assigned to a food, the faster it converts to glucose. A sport drink containing glucose, sucrose, or a glucose polymer (all high on the glycemic index) is a rapid and efficient restorer of glycogen. Some of these drinks may also contain fructose, which isn't as fast at replenishing muscle glycogen as either glucose or sucrose. That being so, try to avoid fructose, including fruit, as the sole source of carbohydrate in the period immediately following your workout. Stick to high glycemic index choices containing glucose and sucrose.

2. Every Two Hours Following Your Workout

Continue to take in a mixture of low and high-glycemic carbs every two hours following your workout. A word of caution: There is a drawback to high glycemic index foods. They may produce a fast, undesirable surge of blood sugar, and you can feel weak or dizzy.

3. Throughout the Week

To keep carbohydrate replenishment on track, stay on a high-carbohydrate diet from week to week. An excellent study of hockey players, whose sport requires both muscular strength and aerobic endurance, found that during a three-day period between games, a high-carb diet caused a 45 percent higher glycogen refill than a diet lower in carbs. By consistently fueling yourself with carbs, you can keep your muscles well stocked with glycogen.

 Giving careful thought to what you eat and making sure you get plenty of carbohydrates will provide a solid foundation for optimizing both your performance and your health.