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Electrolytes in Sports: 7 Tips on When & How to Use Them for Maximum Performance
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Table of Contents
- What are Electrolytes
- When to take Electrolytes
- Taking them before exercise
- Taking them during exercise
- Taking them after exercise
- Recognizing electrolyte deficiency
- 7 Tips for Maximum Performance
- 1. Use electrolytes knowledgeably
- 2. Adjust timing to intensity
- 3. Replenish mineral losses
- 4. Combine electrolytes with carbohydrates
- 5. Train your gastrointestinal tract
- 6. Create an individual hydration plan
- 7. Correct composition
- Electrolytes & Muscle Building
- Electrolytes & Overdosing
- Electrolytes & Muscle Soreness
- Electrolytes, Concentration & Mental Performance
- Conclusion
- Sources & Bibliography
A little refresher: What are electrolytes?
Electrolytes are important minerals that are always on hand when it comes to the regulation of fluid or energy balance. They also participate in nerve functions or muscle contraction and support the acid-base balance.
Electrolytes include magnesium, calcium, potassium, and sodium. In the body, they occur in dissolved form in bodily fluids such as blood, sweat, and urine – as positively charged cations or negatively charged anions. Outside the body, you can find electrolytes in various foods: calcium, for example, is found in green vegetables, and nuts contain potassium and copper.
Do I need to take electrolytes?
For a balanced electrolyte household, it is usually sufficient to have a balanced diet. However, especially for active athletes, it can be useful to give a little extra help during phases of high strain.
Tip: In the blog, you can find out why electrolytes are crucial in sports and what significance they have for energy, muscles, and hydration.
Intake: Should electrolytes be taken before or after exercise?
For peak athletic performance, your body needs energy and efficient fluid transport. This is because hydration is key in sports. Electrolytes play an important role in this.
Are you thinking about incorporating electrolytes into your training plan? Then it's important to properly plan the use of electrolytes before, during, and after training, in addition to fluid intake.
How electrolytes work before exercise
Intensive training sessions quickly become a sweaty affair, especially in summer. Therefore, it is important to drink enough water before exercising. Electrolytes can help you with this: They stimulate thirst and facilitate fluid absorption.
It is recommended to drink about five to ten milliliters of water or sports drink per kilogram of body weight in the two to four hours before training. For a body weight of 65 kilograms, 325 to 650 milliliters of water is a good guideline. If your urine is light yellow, this is a good sign that you are adequately hydrated.¹
What do electrolytes do during sports?
In summer, during intense, prolonged exertion, you should take short drinking breaks when you're thirsty. This ensures continuous hydration. However, targeted electrolyte intake during exercise is only useful if you train for longer than 60 minutes. In this case, the body needs about 400 to 800 milliliters of fluid per hour. The exact amount depends on factors such as body size, exertion, temperature, and your feeling of thirst.
If you train for longer than 90 minutes, your drink should contain carbohydrates, and if you sweat a lot, also sodium.¹ This can give you a natural boost to keep your performance stable. A trial at the Ironman 70.3, for example, showed that athletes who consumed sodium before and during the run finished faster.² You can find out why these are all just guidelines and what really matters further down.
How Electrolytes Help You After Exercise
Once the training is done, the focus shifts to regeneration. Now it is also important to replenish fluid reserves and compensate for the loss of minerals through sweating. This helps, for example, to reduce the risk of muscle cramps.
If your next session is more than 24 hours away, even half a liter of water as the conclusion of your cool-down can be sufficient. Until the next training, you will consume enough electrolytes with your meals and your daily water ration.
However, if the training has severely drained you or if you need to quickly replenish your reserves because the next training is due in less than twelve hours, you will need rather 1.5 liters per kilogram of weight loss. It is important to replenish your water reserves slowly and in combination with a meal so that the water stays in the body longer.¹
After exercise, the following are particularly suitable:
- Apple spritzer
- Lye pastries
- Low-fat milk
- Bananas
- Nuts
- Lightly salted snacks
Display
- For daily hydration support during sports & active days, for example
- Electrolyte complex of chloride, magnesium, potassium & sodium
- Supplemented with the amino acids glycine & taurine
- Pleasantly mild raspberry flavor
- With galactose instead of household sugar or artificial sweeteners
- Without fillers or flavorings
- Developed with doctors & experts
Electrolyte deficiency: How do you know you need electrolytes?
During endurance sports and in high temperatures, the body loses a lot of fluids and electrolytes through sweating. With a fluid loss of two to four percent of body weight, an electrolyte deficiency can become noticeably apparent.³ A disturbed electrolyte balance can impair your performance and muscle function.
Too few electrolytes? Possible symptoms include:
- Headaches after exercise
- Nausea
- Digestive problems
- Fatigue
- Muscle cramps
- Muscle weakness
- Concentration problems
- Decreased performance
- Circulatory problems
Since some of these symptoms can also have other causes, such as illnesses, you should consult your doctor or naturopath and find out whether an electrolyte deficiency is actually present.
7 Tips for Maximum Performance in Sports: How to Get the Most Out of Electrolytes
So that you can consume the right amount of electrolytes and use them specifically to support your training, the following tips will help you apply them correctly.
1. Use electrolytes judiciously
Those who understand when and why the body needs electrolytes can use them in a performance-oriented way. The basis should always be a balanced diet. Sports drinks and electrolyte supplements can be a useful addition when duration, intensity, or heat significantly exceed normal losses.
2. Adjust timing to the load
You don't need to remember complicated plans to time your electrolyte intake correctly. Three questions are crucial:
- How long do you train?
- How high is the intensity?
- How quickly do you need to recover?
From this, it automatically follows whether electrolytes will benefit you most before, during, or after your training.
3. Actively replenish mineral losses
If you drink water after your workout, you are providing your body with fluids, but you may not be supplying enough minerals. Sodium, potassium, magnesium, and calcium are lost through sweat. Actively compensating for these losses, especially during long and intense exercise, is crucial for performance even during the workout itself.
Display
- For daily hydration support during sports & active days, for example
- Electrolyte complex of chloride, magnesium, potassium & sodium
- Supplemented with the amino acids glycine & taurine
- Pleasantly mild raspberry flavor
- With galactose instead of household sugar or artificial sweeteners
- No fillers or artificial flavors
- Developed with doctors & experts
4. Combine Electrolytes with Carbohydrates
For longer training sessions, a combination of electrolytes and carbohydrates is recommended. Carbohydrates can accelerate fluid absorption and provide muscles with energy. A concentration of four to eight percent is considered ideal.
The amount of electrolytes and carbohydrates contained is crucial for the effectiveness of the drink. This means, practically speaking: more is not always better. Highly concentrated or unbalanced products can impair tolerability, while a balanced combination of water, sodium, and a suitable carbohydrate source can be more functional.⁸'⁹'¹⁰'¹²
In addition to classic sugar sources, other carbohydrates such as galactose can also be used. For longer and more intense efforts, studies consistently show that carbohydrate-electrolyte drinks can have benefits for endurance performance – especially in the heat, during time trials, or during repeated intense running efforts.¹⁰'¹¹
5. Train the digestive tract
When it comes to sports, it's not just about what you drink, but how you drink it. Under intense exertion, blood flow to your gastrointestinal tract is reduced, and it can react to excessive amounts of fluid at once with nausea, bloating, or cramps.
If you consume fluids and electrolytes in several small portions, you relieve the stomach, improve gastric emptying, and help your intestines better absorb fluids, carbohydrates, and electrolytes.⁵
6. Create an individual hydration plan
During intense exertion on hot days, the body can lose up to ten liters of sweat, resulting in a deficit of up to seven grams of sodium per day. However, sweat loss is individual. Trained athletes, for example, sweat earlier and more than untrained individuals and therefore need more electrolytes.
Here's how to determine how much you sweat: Weigh yourself before and after your workout without training clothes, subtract the end weight from the starting weight, and add how much you drank during the session. The result tells you how much you should drink after the workout, at a minimum.¹
7. Ensure the correct composition
Not every workout requires a full load of electrolytes. For moderate exercise, water is sufficient. For more intense exertion lasting over 60 minutes, drinks with a sodium concentration of 400 to 1,100 milligrams per liter are recommended during and after training. Other minerals should then only be present in moderate amounts. For sessions lasting over 90 minutes, you should pay attention to additional carbohydrates.¹
If you don't fancy ready-made sports drinks, a fruit juice spritzer made from one part juice and two parts sodium-rich, low-carbonation mineral water works just as well. After training, soup is a good way to replenish your sodium levels.
Can you take too many electrolytes?
Drinking is important during long periods of exertion. However, you shouldn't overdo it: too much low-sodium water can dilute your blood sodium level and lead to hyponatremia. This means that the body has too little sodium in relation to fluid. As a result, the osmotic pressure in the blood drops, causing water to flow into the body's cells and potentially increasing intracranial pressure.
Too many electrolytes? Possible symptoms include:
- Nausea
- Headaches
- Cramps
- Loss of consciousness
- in extreme cases, pulmonary and cerebral edema
Hyponatremia particularly endangers recreational athletes who are moving slowly and drink more than they sweat. This affected 13 percent of the runners examined at the Boston Marathon.⁴ Experts therefore recommend following your thirst instead of drinking according to a strict schedule.
Electrolytes as an underestimated factor in muscle building
Electrolytes and hydration support you in the training area not only when it comes to performance. Hydration also affects muscle performance.⁶
Electrolytes are an important prerequisite for you to be able to unleash your full power in your workout. They also support stable cell volume in the muscle and help retain fluid in the body after a workout. This facilitates regeneration and repair processes. Electrolytes therefore do not directly build muscle, but they are a good foundation.
Looking for tips for effective muscle building? Then find out how creatine supports your muscles.
Do electrolytes help with a hangover (or post-workout fatigue)?
A tough day of training can feel almost like a hangover the next morning: headache, fatigue, low blood pressure. This is often due to dehydration and an electrolyte imbalance, which can also occur after alcohol consumption.
While electrolytes can affect fluid balance, replenish lost minerals like potassium and magnesium, and alleviate typical "hangover" symptoms such as headaches, dizziness, and extreme fatigue, they cannot do more against either type of hangover.⁷
Electrolytes in connection with concentration & mental performance
This is also relevant for the brain; even mild dehydration can affect concentration, coordination, and reaction time – especially under stress. Even mild fluid deficits can be associated with impairments in mood, attention, or sub-areas of cognitive performance – in both men and women.⁹'¹⁰'¹¹ This can become particularly noticeable in sports, where timing, body tension, and decision-making speed come together. The balance of electrolytes is crucial for nerve function and thus also for mental performance under stress. Electrolytes are therefore not only for "more water in the body" but for the quality of function under stress.⁹'¹⁰'¹¹
Electrolyte Takeaway: Timing and application are key for training
Electrolytes are not just about optimal fluid balance. Those who use them purposefully and in accordance with their exertion improve performance, strength, and muscle power. You shouldn't wait until it's too late and you're stepping off the treadmill with a headache to think about electrolytes.
Find out how much you sweat and which hydration plan suits your exertion level. And most importantly: Listen to your thirst, it's the best indicator of your individual needs.
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This article is based on carefully researched sources:
Sources & Bibliography
- ernaehrungs-umschau.de
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- Almond CS, Shin AY, Fortescue EB, et al. Hyponatremia among runners in the Boston Marathon. N Engl J Med. 2005;352(15):1550-1556.
- natuerlich.thieme.de/therapieverfahren/bewegung/detail/trinken-beim-sport-individuell-und-zielorientiert-102
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- tu-dresden.de/mn/biologie/ressourcen/dateien/studium/master-biology-in-society
- Fordtran JS, Rector FC Jr, Carter NW. Stimulation of active and passive sodium absorption by sugars in the human jejunum. J Clin Invest. 1975;55(4):728-737.
- Hunt JB, Elliott EJ, Fairclough PD, Clark ML, Farthing MJG. Water and solute absorption from hypotonic glucose-electrolyte solutions in human jejunum. Gut. 1992;33(4):479-483.
- Davis JM, Lamb DR, Pate RR, Slentz CA, Burgess WA, Bartoli WP. Carbohydrate-electrolyte drinks: effects on endurance cycling in the heat. Am J Clin Nutr. 1988;48(4):1023-1030.
- Phillips SM, Turner AP, Gray S, Sanderson MF, Sproule J. Ingesting a 6% carbohydrate-electrolyte solution improves endurance capacity, but not sprint performance, during intermittent, high-intensity shuttle running in adolescent team games players aged 12-14 years. Eur J Appl Physiol. 2010;109(5):811-821.
- Maughan RJ, Leiper JB. Sodium intake and post-exercise rehydration in man. Eur J Appl Physiol Occup Physiol. 1995;71(4):311-319.
