Make your own sports drink

Mixing your own sports drink is easy and doesn't take a lot of time. You need to buy the ingredients and have a household scale to weigh the quantities.

Sports drinks contain maltodextrin, fructose and electrolytes (salts). Here are 2 different recipes.

The first has 1 part maltodextrin and 0.8 parts fructose. It's for those very intense sessions where you need to be able to push yourself to the max.

The other has 2 parts maltodextrin and 1 part fructose. It is almost as good in absorption and can be used for most sessions. The difference is mainly that it is not as sweet (maltodextrin is tasteless but fructose is quite sweet).

For exercisers who do not exercise so intensively or for those who do not want the sweet taste, it is possible to just use maltodextrin and salts as well.

 

horizontal, kitchen scale, black
sugar, cup, pile of sugar

Recipe 1:

  • 550 gram Maltodextrin

  • 440 gram Fructose

  • 25g Electrolytes/salt with sodium chloride, potassium chloride and magnesium.

Mix everything in a bowl. Ready!

Recipe 2:

  • 660 gram Maltodextrine

  • 330 gram Fructose

  • 25g Electrolytes/salt with sodium chloride, potassium chloride and magnesium.

Mix everything in a bowl. Ready!

Then, when you are ready to use the sports drink, mix the amount you need with water in the drinking bottle. It is easily soluble and does not clump. If you want flavour, you can add lemon concentrate directly to the bottle.

Where do I buy the ingredients?

Maltodextrin, fructose and electrolytes (and many other products...) can be ordered from HSNstores webpage. They deliver to most countries in the EU. I am very happy with HSN's own products as they are well priced and it is possible to buy in larger volumes on the packaging.

In the past in Sweden, I usually shopped at My Protein but they stopped selling fructose. If you can't get fructose, you can either just use maltodextrin or mix in sucrose (regular sugar) instead. Sucrose contains half fructose and half glucose (maltodextrin), so you will need to add more to get enough fructose.

How much powder should I put in the drinking bottle?

Both fructose and maltodextrin contain 1 gram of carbohydrates per gram of powder. So if you take 70 grams of the finished mixture, that's 70 grams of carbohydrates. You can mix in whatever concentration you want. If you want a more concentrated drink that's fine and if you want more diluted that's fine.

Example 1: If you plan to drink 750 ml in an hour, you can mix 70 grams into that amount.

Example 2: If you plan to drink one litre in an hour but want both water and a sports drink, you can have 70 grams in 500 ml and 500 ml of water.

Experiment, and don't be afraid to get enough carbohydrates during your workout. Training will be more fun (because you'll have more energy) and more effective!