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Hydration is a key element of all exercise, and it is particularly important to keep your body hydrated before, during and after swimming.
During intense training, your body can lose as much as one or two litres of fluid per hour through sweating and breathing.
With around 60% of your body made up of water, keeping these levels topped up during exercise is crucial for maintaining your performance, recovery after training and your general wellbeing.
Unlike land-based sports, it can be easier for swimmers to overlook hydration when in the pool. Because you’re in the water, you don’t notice if you’re sweating as much as if you were running, cycling or working out in the gym.
If you get dehydrated, it will affect your energy levels and performance and will leave you feeling unwell. Among other things, dehydration is a common cause of swimmer’s headache.
When you sweat, the body loses vital electrolytes including:
- Sodium
- Potassium
- Magnesium
- Calcium
There are a lot of drinks on the market which claim to help with energy boosts, but first it’s important to understand the difference between an energy drink and a sports drink.
What’s the difference between sports drinks and energy drinks for swimmers?
It is a mistake to assume that the ‘energy’ in energy drinks comes from carbohydrates or electrolytes.
Energy drinks are designed to act as a stimulant, and many contain high levels of substances such as caffeine or guarana — a stimulant that further increases caffeine content.
Caffeine has long been used as a stamina-enhancing ingredient because it delays fatigue. However it also has a lot of negative effects such as increased nervous system activity, insomnia, headaches, increased heart rate and dehydration.
For swimmers in particular, these symptoms could all combine to compromise the reaction time that is so vital when competing in the pool.
Sports drinks, meanwhile, are generally caffeine-free and are flavoured water drinks that contain carbohydrates and electrolytes.
These types of drinks can play a far healthier role for swimmers, particularly during longer and prolonged swim sessions when your body’s electrolyte levels will become depleted.
With that in mind, we pick our five top recommendations for caffeine-free and healthy sports drinks for swimmers.
5 Best Sports Drinks for Swimmers
Beet It Sport Nitrate 3000
Beet It is made from concentrated beetroot juice, which is high in dietary nitrate.
When consumed, your body decomposes dietary nitrate into nitric oxide. These increased levels of nitric oxide are known to increase blood flow, improve lung performance and strengthen muscle contraction.
Beet It advise taking one or two shots around one to three hours before swimming. The effects of nitric oxide in the body usually peak in one to three hours, and last for around six hours.
It is not a stimulant like caffeine-based energy drinks, so you won’t feel a high after ingesting. But you will notice the benefits throughout your swim, particularly at points when you would expect to become fatigued.
Beet It is a juice concentrate rather than a sports drink for swimmers so, if you don’t like the taste of betroot shots, there is the option of adding it to a smoothie, yoghurt or muesli.
GU Hydration Drink Tabs
GU Hydration Drink Tabs have been designed to help swimmers to hydrate and replenish electrolyte levels before, during and after exercise.
There is no caffeine in GU sports drinks. Instead, each serving contains 320mg of sodium which is the main electrolyte lost via sweat during training.
GU recommend adding one tablet to 16oz of water prior to swimming to pre-hydrate. During activity, they suggest drinking 20 to 30oz per hour.
There are loads of great and unique flavours to choose from including tri berry, lemon and lime and orange.
Nuun Active Hydration Drink
Each electrolyte tablet in the Nuun Active Hydration Drink range contains doses of the four main electrolytes for hydration and performance.
A Nuun tab contains 360mg of sodium, 100mg of potassium, 25mg of magnesium and 13mg of calcium.
These tabs can be added to your water bottle before, during or after swimming. They taste great too, with a range of flavours available including strawberry and lemonade, lemon and lime, orange, tri berry, citrus fruit or tropical fruit.
Nuun also produce the Nuun Plus Hydration Tablets and the NUUN All Day Vitamin Tablets in various flavours, giving you an even greater range of nutrition options.
TORQ Energy Drink
TORQ Energy Drinks can provide swimmers with a tasty and naturally flavoured isotonic sports drink without any artificial sweeteners, colours or preservatives.
Adding two scoops from a TORQ Energy pouch or tub to your water will supply your body with a combination of carbohydrates and electrolytes. For each 500ml drink, your body will gain 30 grams of carbohydrates along with fluid and electrolytes to maintain hydration levels.
TORQ’s 1.5kg pouches will make 50 energy drinks when added to the recommended 500ml of water, while the 500g tub can make 17 drinks.
Among the flavours available are orange, lemon, lemon and lime, blackcurrant, pink grapefruit and vanilla.
CherryActive
CherryActive is a juice concentrate that harnesses the natural benefits of Montmorency cherries, without containing any sweeteners, preservatives, flavourings or added sugar.
It is an easy way of increasing antioxidants into your diet, which will help reduce recovery times and muscle soreness following exercise.
CherryActive recommend mixing 30ml of concentrate into half a pint of water to create a fantastic sports drink for swimmers. Alternatively, it can be added into a natural yoghurt or smoothie.
