The Sports Drink Market Place

If you are engaged in heavy physical activity, whether from loading up the moving van, running a marathon or simply pushing yourself in your workout session, then you are probably sweating your way to a serious thirst.

In such an instance, water may not be enough to quench your need for liquids and give your body what it needs. As a result, there is a healthy and ever-growing sports drink market that provides people with many options.

Anytime that you engage in a strenuous physical workout, whether it involves shoveling snow, competing in sports, or testing your limits during a training session, you most likely will sweat enough to develop a serious thirst. When you hit that stage, it is just not enough to drink water to try to quench that thirst and give your body what it is craving. And, as a result of that fact, the sports drink market is a growing industry that offers people lots of options for handling this kind of need.

When you find yourself with a serious thirst from being involved in heavy-duty physical exertion, water alone will not really do the trick to quench your thirst. The sports drink market has responded to the need that people have for a better way to re-hydrate and give their bodies what they need when they are moving and sweating. Today, there are many sports beverage drinks that give your body what it needs to relive severe thirst.

If you have been sweating up a thirst by exerting yourself physically, whether from an intense workout session or from just plain hard work, then you will quickly find that water alone may not be enough to tame your thirst. When you reach that intense stage of needing liquids, your body must have more than water to re-hydrate and recover. As a result of this need, the sports drink market has created a wide variety of sports beverage choices to help you quench that thirst.

Back in the day, old-timers who ranched across America used to brew up batches of what they called switchel. This might have been the original sport beverage and contained a mixture of molasses, vinegar and water, and was used during the intense physical exertion the ranchers experienced during haying season. For most people, their workouts have changed since that time, and fortunately so have the products on the market.

The various energy sports drinks and endurance drink bottles that are seen in the sports drink market no longer rely on vinegar and molasses, but the formulations still have some commonalities to those ingredients. Today, when you read the label on your favorite energy sports drink, you will primarily see the ingredients of sugar to supply carbohydrates, and minerals such as sodium and potassium which add electrolytes to the sports beverage.

The assorted endurance drink and energy sports drink options that are available on the sports drink market aren't based on the old vinegar and molasses recipe, but the basic formulas actually do have some elements in common. These days, when you analyze the label of an energy sports drink bottle you'll see that sugar supplies carbohydrates and various minerals, such as potassium, magnesium, and sodium, which provide the electrolytes for the sport beverage concoction.

There are many energy sports drinks on the sports drink market these days, but you won't find vinegar and molasses enumerated on the ingredients list when you check the label of your favorite sports drink bottle. But, today's sports beverage formulas do have some of the same basic elements that are in the old-fashioned recipe. Carbohydrates are supplied by sugars in the drink and electrolytes are supplied by various minerals such as sodium, magnesium and potassium.

This combination of carbohydrates and electrolytes found in endurance drink mixes essentially provides the same benefits to today's athletes that the ranchers got from the switchel. The bottom line is that these extra ingredients give the body what it needs to re-hydrate quickly in order to replace the rapid loss of moisture from the body due to the physical exertion.

Every manufacturer of a sports beverage knows how important it is to keep an athlete's body from becoming dehydrated. When dehydration occurs, performance is reduced. In addition, consuming the electrolyte sports drink formulations help to assure that the body does not become overheated which can cause problems and add stress to the cardiovascular system.

Even though many of the advertisements for sports beverage products put a lot of emphasis on the restoration and the balancing of electrolytes, many doctors say that the most important benefit in these recovery sports drinks comes from the carbohydrates. It is the carbs from the sugars that help to feed the muscles during the workout, help to replace energy stores, and help to delay fatigue, all of which improves endurance.

In the way of the ingredients, there is very little to distinguish the recovery sports drink formulations of the three major brands in the sports drink market. The big three names in energy sports drinks are Gatorade, All Sport and Powerade and all three of these brands have almost identical ingredients, although the actual amounts might vary slightly.

As far as the actual recipes drink manufactures use, there is not much to differentiate between the three biggest brands on the sports drink market. The three best-selling energy sports drink brands are AllSport, Gatorade and Powerade, and while they all have very similar ingredients listed, they have various amounts of carbs and electrolytes in each type.

The three major brands of sports beverage drinks on the sports drink market are Powerade, Gatorade and Allsport and if you compare the ingredients listed on their labels, then you will see they are basically the same. The major difference is in the ratio of carbohydrates to electrolytes in the mixtures, as well as some other proprietary ingredients in the various formulations.