Water, sports drinks, fruit and vegetable juices, milk, soup, soft drinks, and other beverages all contribute fluid to your diet. During workouts, training sessions, and competitions, cool water or sports drinks are the recommended fluids to drink. For exercise lasting less than one hour, plain water has always been recommended-and still is. More recent evidence, however, shows that sports drinks may enhance performance even for exercise lasting as little as a half hour to one hour, provided the intensity of the exercise is high. Sports drinks contain carbohydrate, which provides energy to your working muscles and may delay the onset of fatigue.
Fruit juices contain twice as much carbohydrate content and are low in sodium.
Soft drinks also have a high carbohydrate content and contain little sodium, no potassium, and carbonation. Drinks with a lot of carbohydrate or carbonation are not recommended during workouts or competitions because they take longer to be absorbed and may cause abdominal cramping. Electrolytes, such as sodium, potassium, and chloride, are lost in sweat. These substances are in foods you normally eat, so the lost amounts can usually be easily replaced. Athletes, however, may be at greater risk of sodium depletion because large amounts of sodium can be lost with high sweat rates.