Top 11 Hydration Drinks for Endurance Athletes
By Matt Johnson
Founder of The Feed.
Hydration is vital to performance and endurance training, full stop. See how to instantly boost your performance through smarter hydration planning.
The first thing we discuss with every athlete is what their hydration strategy is. The reason is that nothing else matters if you become dehydrated.
A smart hydration strategy is about matching your hydration for the duration and intensity of your workout. Here are our top hydration choices for every situation.
Number 11: Best All-natural Ingredients
Untapped Ginger Mapleaid is the most natural hydration product we have found. Made from pure maple sugar that has the minerals, amino acids, and antioxidants to make it an ideal athletic fuel. Real ginger soothes your stomach letting you enjoy the calories needed to perform, while sea salt replaces lost electrolytes. Looking for a natural Caffeine boost, check out the Lemon-Tea flavor!
Number 10: Electrolytes + Great Taste
During the day or during light exercises, you don't need all the calories that can come with hydration drinks. That's why I love Gu Hydration Tabs to add electrolytes to my water along with a great taste. You can't go wrong with the Strawberry Lemonade flavor.
Number 9: Electrolytes + Carbs New from a UK Sports nutrition company is SiS Beta Fuel: another entrant in the new generation of high carb hydration drinks. Beta Fuel will deliver all the electrolytes you need, along with 80g of carbs per bottle.
Number 8: Best Cramp Prevention
Pickle Juice Shot; not really hydration, it does solve one of the significant problems of dehydration - cramping. Pickle Juice may not have the best taste, but you won't care when it saves your painful calf cramp. Pickle Juice sells like crazy because it works.
Number 7: Best for sensitive stomachs
Not only is Fluid Performance one of the best testing hydrations drinks, but it is also a great recommendation for anyone that has an overly sensitive stomach. It is low in carbs and high in flavor. Raspberry Lemondate is my go-to flavor.
Number 6: Best Hangover Relief
If you are super dehydrated or hungover, you will want Skratch Hyper Hydration in your bottle. Even Vegas level hangovers are no match for Skratch Hyper Hydration. With 1720 mg of Sodium, this is only meant for extreme situations.
Number 5: Best Caffeinated Hydration
The harder you train, the more stress you put on your gut, the less your gut wants to ingest calories, but the more it needs to. INFINIT's Jet Fuel is specially formulated to be easy on your gut during the lactic acid build up and distress brought on by anaerobic efforts. It also has a mega-dose of caffeine (125 mg) to increase the rate of absorption.
Number 4: Best Pre-workout
If you want to go from in bed to totally in the zone, then you want SFH Push as your pre-workout drink. I use this pre-workout, and I haven't found anything that works as well for caffeinated stimulation that is free of jitters and 100% filled with total focus.
Number 3: Top Daily Hydration
75% of us are chronically dehydrated, and Athletes are even more so. Nuun Vitamins is my go-to hydration for daily hydration. It was also the winner of my Top 10 Hacks to Daily Hydration post. It is low calorie, enhanced with vitamins (why not!), and tastes great.
Number 2: Winner Best Tasting Hydration All serious athletes should have Skratch Labs in their pantry. You should be using Skratch in 100% of your workouts. Even if you add in a High Carb drink like Maurten, Skratch should still be part of your hydration strategy. The Tour de France riders on the EF Pro Cycling Team have one bottle of Skratch and one bottle of Maurten with them at all times.
Number 1: Winner Best Overall Performance Hydration
We hear a lot about game-changing products. Few of them truly change the game as Maurten has. Its proprietary Hydrogel converts the liquid to a gel when it reaches the higher Ph-levels of your stomach. Enabling you to consume massive amounts of carbs (80g to 100g per hour) with NO stomach distress. The proof is in the results. The last 20 Major Marathons were all won by athletes using Maurten.
Bonus: Save 15% on our most popular Hydration Super Packs:
A great way to give Maurten a Try. You get 6x Maurten Drink 320, 6x Maurten Drink 160, and 6x Maurten Gel 100. Use 320 for longer intense workouts. Use 160 for hot or lower intensity workouts. For a turbo boost of energy, use Maurten Gel every 30 minutes. SAVE 15% WITH CODE: MAURTENSUPERPACK15