Homemade Sports Drink Recipe for Runners

Sports drinks are a very effective hydration option for higher intensity and longer training. They contain saccharides and minerals that improve the ability of your stomach to absorb water and nutrients from it. Sports drinks such as Gatorade may cost a lot of money. Therefore we bring you a very simple recipe for a homemade sports drink that will give you some results and save you some funds.

Before we get to the recipe itself, let’s see 3 kinds of sports drinks you should know about. It will help you to better understand how and when to use them.

Hypertonic sports drinks

Hypertonic drinks are drinks with a higher saccharides and minerals concentration than blood. They are ideal for recovery after very intensive training. They are usually used by professional athletes. If you are a beginner or intermediate runner, you will hardly need these.

Isotonic sports drinks

Isotonic sports drinks contain a similar amount of saccharides and minerals as blood. They are a great option for runners who want to maintain their sugar levels during and post activity. If you are going to use them during training, it will be long and intense training. They contain a solid amount of sugar, sodium, and potassium that will help you with energy production. A lot of runners prefer to take them in the form of a gel. They can be very useful in the later stages of your marathon run.

Hypotonic sports drinks

Hypotonic drinks have a lower concentration of saccharides and minerals than blood but higher than water. Most of the runners should use these. They are ideal for recovery after more difficult training when you sweat a lot. Also, you should consider using them during runs that take more than 1 hour. Remember that you do not need to use any sports drinks when running for less than 1 hour. In the case of these short runs, you do not use a high amount of sugars and minerals stored in your body. Therefore drinking water does exactly the same job to refill them as sports drinks. More information about hydration during running can be found in my previous article.

Homemade hypotonic sports drink recipe

To prepare a simple but very effective homemade hypotonic sports drink, you will need the following ingredients:

• 1 liter of filtered water
• fresh juice from 1 whole grapefruit
• 2 big (soup) spoons of sugar
• half small (tea) spoon of salt

Grapefruit is a rich source of potassium, salt is sodium and sugar is a saccharide. Together with water, this is all your body needs for quality long performance.

Mix all of the ingredients together and there you go!