Electrolyte sachets are everywhere now, and most of them are sold to people who do not need them.
If you train 3 or 4 times a week for around an hour, you are almost certainly one of those people. Here is why, and what would change it.
What Electrolytes Do
Electrolytes are minerals that carry a charge once they dissolve in your body’s fluid. Sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium and chloride are the ones that come up in training talk, and between them they control how fluid moves around your body, how your muscles contract, and how your nerves fire.
Sodium does most of the work for performance, and it is the one you lose most of in sweat. All of that is true. The question is whether you lose enough of it for a sachet to make any difference.
You Are Probably Already Covered
The average UK adult eats 8.4g of salt a day. The recommended maximum is 6g. Men average 9.2g, women 7.6g, and those numbers have barely moved since 2008.
So the typical person walking into a gym in this country is not short of sodium. They are already well over the line before they have touched a drink.
Your Sessions Are Probably Not Long Enough
Under 60 minutes, water covers it. You will not sweat out enough sodium in that time to change how you feel or how you perform, and a sachet in your bottle will not do anything your normal dinner would not have done anyway.
A 45 minute small group session sits comfortably inside that, even a hard one. So does most of what happens across a normal gym week.
When It Does Change
Some people do need them, and it comes down to how long you go, how hot it is, and how much you sweat. Three situations worth taking seriously:
- Sessions running past 90 minutes, particularly in summer
- Being a heavy or a salty sweater, the sort leaving white tide marks on your kit
- Race day, or two hard sessions stacked in the same day
HYROX is where this comes up most on our timetable, because the sessions are long and the effort stays high the whole way through.
If that is you, aim for 460 to 1150 mg of sodium per litre of fluid. That is a wide range because sweat is, and you will find your end of it by paying attention rather than by doing sums.
The Bottom Line
Nearly everyone reading this needs water, a decent dinner and some sleep, not a sachet. The people who benefit are doing 90 minutes plus, or finishing sessions caked in salt, and they are a small group.
If you are not sure which one you are, ask your coach. We can look at what your sessions are asking of you, which is usually less than the marketing suggests. And if you are not training with us yet, the 6-week challenge is where that starts.