Top 8 Drinks to Avoid Before a Workout

It’s all too easy to get wrapped up in the ins and outs of your pre-workout meal selections and forget to keep track of what you’re drinking. However, as you’ll discover, what you drink may drastically affect your exercise. Bloating and cramps to unexpected energy crashes can all be side effects of your pre workout.

So, if you really want to make your exercises both fun and productive, keep an eye on what you drink. To keep your exercise full of energy and cramp-free, avoid these 8 worst things to drink before working out. And besides, you don’t want to waste half your run looking for a restroom, do you?

Smoothies and Fatty Shakes

Nuts, nut butters, and seeds are delicious additions to any drink or smoothie, but not just before a workout. The fat passes slowly throughout the GI system, causing stomach issues such as cramps when exercising.

Pulpy Juice

Juice with pulp, is a bad pre-workout alternative due to its high fiber level.

When ingested before an exercise, fiber is hard to digest, which might induce cramps, constipation, or diarrhea. Fiber also restricts the number of carbohydrates and sugar accessible to your muscles throughout your exercise since it is sluggish to absorb.

Alcohol

Alcohol dehydrates you while simultaneously limiting the quantity of oxygen supply that reaches your muscles, which is a lousy combination for your exercise. When your muscles don’t receive enough oxygenated blood, they don’t have the energy they need to operate, and your workout performance suffers. Not to mention, drinking affects balance and lowers response time, increasing your chance of an accident or injury.

Juice in a Bottle

Bottled juices, unlike fresh-squeezed juice, frequently contain less than 10% genuine fruit juice and have minimal nutritional value. Instead, they load you full of large amounts of sugar, which might leave you with stomach pain and force you to sit out. Furthermore, although juice drinks and juice boxes may provide an initial surge of energy, the sugar high will quickly fade as you go through your exercise.

Soda

Soda is made mostly of refined sugar, it lacks the variety of carbohydrate sources that the muscles need for activity. You will be better off drinking a sports drink, which usually has a wider range of carbs (there are some drawbacks to that, too).

Sports Beverages

Gatorade seems like a no-brainer before (or during) the exercise. Sports drinks, after all, are built to maintain hydration levels and ensure that the muscles are ready to work. The problem is that many sports drinks are heavy in sugar, which may cause digestive problems such as cramps and diarrhea if you are sensitive to such things or consume too much in a small period of time.

Coffee

If you’re sensitive to caffeine or consume too much of it, you can have headaches or an upset stomach. If you opt to consume coffee before a workout, pay close attention to how the body responds, particularly if you aren’t a coffee drinker.

Energizing Beverages

Energy drinks (think Red Bull or Monster) may provide a short-term boost. However, because of the caffeine concentration, you may have cramps, headaches, and dehydration in the long run.

The next time you exercise, just make sure to avoid these worst drinks before working out.