Swimmers’ performance not improved by sports drinks

Sports drinks do not appear to enhance performance in swimmers, a small study has suggested.

New research, which is being presented at the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health’s annual conference in Birmingham, found that among 19 competitive swimmers, drinking sports drinks had “no benefit on swimming performance”.

The research team from across East Anglia set out to test whether drinking during swimming improves performance and whether isotonic sports drinks are better than water.

Over a series of 12 75-minute training sessions, the swimmers, aged between 11 and 17, drank either sports drinks, water or no drinks at all.

Overall, they found there was no performance difference between drinking regimes.

No individual athlete had progressive performance improvement with drinking water and sports drink, their study abstract concludes.