• Question: Does sport drinks such as Lucozade and Emerge actually help endurance and speed as they claim

    Asked by Bells Girls to Stephanie, LauraAnne, Katy, Helen, Emilia, Dan, Andrew on 4 Nov 2016. This question was also asked by _-_-jason-_-_.
    • Photo: Stephanie Millward

      Stephanie Millward answered on 4 Nov 2016:

      Ha ha good question! For some people it is all about the power of the mind so therefore if they believe the drink will help it will do! Other people feel that the extra sugar or protein makes them feel stronger. I personally don’t use many sports drinks as I find adding a bit of salt to my summer fruits squash helps to stop cramp and I eat bananas and protein to give myself enough energy!

    • Photo: Helen Hanstock

      Helen Hanstock answered on 4 Nov 2016:

      It really depends on the event. We know that for endurance exercise over an hour long it’s a good idea to take on a bit of sugar to sustain our energy levels. This could be from a sports drink but it could also come from, as Stephanie suggests, some sugary squash, or an energy gel or small snack. When I do long running races that last around 2 hours I tend to carry a few jelly babies to eat when I am starting to feel tired!

      Sports drinks also contain a bit of salt to replace the salts we lose in sweat. As Stephanie said this helps to prevent muscle cramps. Some Lucozades contain caffeine too, which we know can improve endurance performance.

      So, if you have a long race or training session, then a bit of sugar will help to make sure that your muscles don’t run low on energy (the energy we store in muscles is called glycogen) and a bit of salt will help to prevent cramps. Sports drinks are convenient because they contain sugar, salt and water and taste good too. But you could equally make your own by adding a pinch of salt to sugary squash as Stephanie suggests – which is easy to do and will save you a few pennies!

      Keep in mind that all of this relates to long and hard training sessions that last over an hour. If you are doing a shorter exercise session, you probably won’t need the sports drink. Your muscles should have enough energy already stored, and so having lots of sugary sports drink might mean that you take in more calories than you need! So for shorter exercise I would suggest to stick to water during your training and then refuel with a snack afterwards such as a banana or cereal bar.

    • Photo: Dan Gordon

      Dan Gordon answered on 4 Nov 2016:

      Hi Dylan, nice question. Both Stephanie and Helen have given you some nice answers here, let me try and some more information for you. Drinks like Lucozade contain carbohydrate in a ‘complex’ form. This is designed to allow it to leave the stomach once digested and be transported to the muscles where it is needed. The key energy used during an endurance event such as the marathon is carbohydrate, however we recognise that if we do continuous exercise where your heart rate doesn’t go beyond say 170 beats per minute that we only have enough carbohydrate stored in the muscles for around 90 minutes of work. That means that the marathon runner will fall short. If carbohydrate starts to run out the cells start to rely on fats, which although plentiful produce energy at a much slower rate and hence we would have to slow our running speed down.
      The use of these carbohydrate drinks has been an area that has been extensively researched and the conclusion is that they do work, and increase the amount of available carbohydrate available, but only if you follow a series of rules. 1) Don’t drink large volumes, small volumes leave the stomach more effectively than larger volumes. 2) Keep the concentration low to moderate, a 6% solution is what Locozade contains, the higher the concentration would appear to be better, because it contains more carbohydrates, but this slows the rate at which is leaves the stomach. 3) the drink should not be cold, a warmer tepid drink will leave the stomach better than a cold drink.
      So assuming you can control all of these then yes you can increase the performance of endurance athlete by around 8-10%.
      There is though as Helen says no benefit of these to a sprint or power athlete. These performers do not rely on carbohydrates enough to warrant such a drink.

    • Photo: Emilia McAllister-Jepps

      Emilia McAllister-Jepps answered on 6 Nov 2016:

      Hi Dylan, thanks for your question!

      There are lots of reasons why people feel these drinks help them with speed and endurance.

      As an athlete I do not use these drinks on a daily basis as we are encouraged to get as much from our diet before we introduce any kind of supplements. As a power athlete, I find that the drinks have little effect on my speed. But in longer training sessions could help to prolong my endurance if used in the right way.

      A drink would be a last resort in terms of looking at methods of improving endurance and speed. Because there is not much longevity in the effect.

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