How to choose the right 💧hydration…
Hydration is the most important part of “performance nutrition”. No Gel, Chew, or Bar is going to help you if you fall behind on your hydration during your workout.
Here is how I think about “what” hydration I’m going to use in my workout.
When I say “proper hydration” that really means electrolytes- not just plain water. I realize there are a lot of choices, so here’s how I decide what hydration to use each day:
- How long is my workout?
- How hard am I going to be going?
- How much am I sweating OR is this an indoor workout?
Shorter Workouts (Under 30 to 75 minutes)
Here you just want the basics. If you’re also trying to burn calories (lose weight), then go with SOS Hydration or Nuun Sport, or Skratch Wellness Hydration. All three are low calorie, but if you don’t care about weight loss and your intensity is high, then go with Skratch Sport Hydration (the new Strawberry Lemonade flavor is great).
💧Drink 21oz in a one-hour workout
Indoor Workouts (45 to 75 minutes)
If you are training indoors Zwift, then you need to double your hydration and consider higher sodium (more electrolyte) style of hydration. I’m really partial these days to LMNT for indoor workouts, it has almost double the sodium/electrolytes as other drinks, which is great when you are sweating a lot. That said, some athletes find it tastes really salty.
If you want something a little less salty, then Skratch Sport Hydration also works great for indoor training.
💧💧Drink 2x 21oz per hour when training indoors, anything you have leftover, use to kick-start your post-workout rehydration.
The 2 Hour Workout (75 minutes to 120 minutes)
This is the sweet spot workout for many people. It’s also the trickiest to plan for as your hydration plan is much more tied to the intensity of the workout.
If your pace is what you would consider easy to a fast endurance pace, then you can stick with the hydration plan of a shorter workout for the full two hours. Personally, I’m mostly trying to burn calories (i.e. lose weight) on these workouts, so I stick with SOS or Nuun Sport. Occasionally, I’ll mix it up with one of these low-calorie options in one bottle and Skratch or Untapped Lemon MapleAid in the other.
If your pace is faster than an endurance pace, then you need to up your game with Skratch Superfuel or Maurten 160. Both will provide you the carbs to maintain your best effort throughout your workout.
💧💧My perfect formula is one 21 oz bottle of Skratch and one 16 oz bottle of Maurten 160. I’ll switch between the two: A sip of Skratch, wait 10 minutes, a sip of Maurten.
Long Workouts (more than 2.5 hours)
On longer workouts, I like to think of one bottle as an “energy” source (i.e. Maurten 160) and your other bottle as your hydration source (i.e. Nuun, Skratch, SOS, Untapped). That’s not to say that Maurten isn’t also hydration… it is, but this is just a simpler way to think about it.
I start with my hydration bottle with any of the options I’ve mentioned above and aim to definitely finish this in the first 60 minutes. Then, for the 2nd hour, I’m on to my “energy bottle”. After the first 2 hours, you can alternate between sips of energy and hydration.
For your energy bottle, Maurten 160 or Skratch’s Superfuel is great for these longer workouts.
💧Aim for one 21oz bottle per hour and double it to 2 bottles if you are training indoors or if it is hot outside.
🥵Post Workout Rehydration
You have finished your workout and now you need to get on the rehydration game. Here is my recipe:
- 1x Quintessential Salt Water Packet. These things are magical for post-workout rehydration.
- 1x 32 oz of SOS Hydration (low calorie) or Skratch Wellness (use 2 packets per 32 oz) consumed over the next 2 hours.
- If I’m in a really bad way, consider using Skratch Hyper Hydration (also great for hangovers).
Let’s Hydrate!
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Article written by: Matt – The Feed.