Is Prime a Terrible Sports Drink for Hydration? Not Necessarily.
First up: I’m not sponsored by Prime. I don’t even drink it.
However, I often hear on social media about why the Prime hydration beverage typically targeted towards athletes isn’t a good option. I disagree.
We have to get over the fact that one item is always going to be the solution—like the incorrect notion that one post-workout high-protein shake will single-handedly optimize recovery and muscle growth for all training bouts.
In this article, I’m going to review:
Prime compared against other hydration products.
How to consider context when making fueling recommendations for an athlete.
Does sodium matter?
How Does Prime Stack Up?
Below is a chart comparing Prime against other common hydration products:
Is Prime the lowest in carbohydrates? Yes.
Is Prime the lowest in sodium? Yes.
But neither carbs nor sodium are the most important component for hydration—total fluid intake is. So, if an athlete enjoys the taste of Prime, they can afford and access it, and it motivates them to drink fluids, great.
Context Matters: What Else is Going On?
Is the Athlete Consuming Anything Else?
When an athlete asks their dietitian about Prime, the quick assumption is that they’re consuming nothing else while working out except for Prime.
But what could you as the listener be missing? Here are two examples.
Example 1 – The 45-minute Lift: Let’s say an athlete has a carbohydrate-containing snack before a morning lift (e.g., a pack of Nature Valley Oats ‘n Honey crunchy granola bars that contain 29 grams carbohydrate). The lift lasts 45 minutes and the athlete chooses to drink Prime during the lift. Assuming the athlete has recovered well from yesterday’s training session and is consuming adequate carbs and calories throughout the day, what they're consuming during their lift is unlikely to limit their performance. In this example, Prime being lower in carbs does not matter. Sleep, caloric intake, and everything else the athlete does throughout the day is more likely to matter than Prime.
Example 2 – The Pretzel Eater: The above athlete now enters a 2-hour soccer practice. There’s plenty of running involved and during a hydration break, the athlete begins to drink their Prime beverage and snack on a 1-ounce bag of Rold Gold pretzels (23 grams carbohydrates). Now the combination of Prime and pretzels provides hydration and carbohydrates (and sodium).
Taking a moment to better understand the athlete's full picture will improve your nutrition recommendations for them.
Training: Type, Length, and Intensity
Guidelines for carbohydrate intake during activity rely on multiple factors, including training duration, intensity, and type. Here are standard carbohydrate intake recommendations based on a few of those factors:
All-out exercise lasting 30-75 minutes: Carbohydrate mouth rinse or small amounts of ingested carbohydrates (i.e., Prime on its own may be fine).
Exercise lasting up to 2 hours: 30 grams carbohydrate per hour, beginning 60-75 minutes into the exercise.
Exercise lasting ~2-3 hours: As above, but once the athlete hits the 2-hour mark, increase to 60 grams carbohydrate per hour.
Exercise lasting 2.5-3 hours or longer: As above, but once the athlete hits the 2.5-3-hour mark, increase to 90 grams carbohydrates per hour, opting for multiple transportable carbohydrates (read more about those here). (1)
Jeukendrup & Gleeson (2024) also wrote about fueling for the athlete's goal: If performance is a priority, carbohydrate intake during exercise is key, whereas "if the goal is recovery, improving muscle adaptations, increasing fat metabolism, or weight loss, carbohydrate intake is not required or desirable." (1)
Granted, the above recommendations are for steady-state exercise, like cycling, running, swimming, and rowing. A stop-and-go sport like baseball or softball doesn't require a steady supply of fruit snacks throughout a 1.5-to-3-hour game. In these sport scenarios, could the athlete withhold or have a smaller intake of carbs? Yeah, probably. They are neither burning through muscle glycogen at an elevated rate nor is their performance limited as would be true for an endurance athlete.
Training Environment: On-the-Go or Staying in Place?
For a rower, are they practicing:
Out on the lake? They have to consider limited space and added weight in the boat.
In the shell house on a stationery erg? They can store additional fueling options on the ground surrounding them.
When out on the lake, Prime is unlikely a top choice when training greater than 30-75 minutes due to its low carbohydrate content and reliance on additional beverages and snacks in the boat. Gatorade and light-weight carbohydrate gels would be better options. In the shell house with ample storage, Prime plus additional carbohydrates could work.
Taste Fatigue
Lastly, consider why something like Prime could be advantageous for an endurance athlete enduring daily and twice-daily workouts for months and years at a time: It provides for different flavors and helps athletes avoid taste and flavor fatigue. It's along the same lines as getting sick of fruit punch sports drinks and seeking out a new flavor.
What About Sodium?
(Thank you, Brett Singer, for continually educating sports dietitians about this).
Simply because we lose sodium in sweat, fluid in sweat, and burn through muscle glycogen (carbohydrates) during activity doesn’t mean they automatically need to be replaced during exercise to optimize performance or prolong activity. For fluid and carbs, yes, it makes sense, as both during-exercise deficits have been supported in the research to impair performance.
But what about sodium?
McCubbin & Costa (2023) evaluated what happened to certain markers when participants received sodium replacement, versus a placebo group, during running. Participants were split into two groups: Those who received zero sodium and those who would receive 100% of their expected sweat sodium loss during a 5-hour treadmill run in a 30-degree Celsius room (86 degrees Fahrenheit). Before the test, sodium losses were measured so that sodium replacement would be individualized. The outcome? There was no significant difference regarding water loss, net water balance, heart rate, thirst perception, plasma hormones (cortisol, aldosterone, or VEGF-C concentrations), or post-exercise urine volume. (2)
So, if Prime has a lower amount of sodium compared to Gatorade, does that even matter when consumed during exercise in regards to performance?
Key Messages: Ask the Athlete Contextual Questions Before Making Assumptions
Humans lie somewhere on a continuum. It’s our job to meet them where they’re at.
The priority for hydration is fluid. Thereafter, fluid choice can include carbohydrates for reducing fatigue and improving performance and mental focus, but carbs can also exist as food.
Sodium intake during training may not be doing much for performance. It salty items feel good to the athlete, go for it.
We can and should be able to make many hydration and fuel choices work—and work for the client based on their preferences, dollars, and accessibility. Nutrition need not be black and white. For instance, what does the athlete like or dislike about their current choices? What are they currently doing? Do their hydration and fuel choices change daily and/or across different types and lengths of workouts?
We as nutrition professionals also need to think for ourselves, not repeat what we hear as fact from other professionals (and sport fuel companies), be flexible in our recommendations and thinking, and be genuinely curious about the athlete sitting before us. The plans we help athletes create include optimizing their current situations.
References
(1) Jeukendrup, A., & Gleeson, M. (2024). Sport Nutrition, fourth edition. Human Kinetics.
(2) McCubbin, A.J., & da Costa, R.J.S. (2023). Effect of personalized sodium replacement on fluid and sodium balance and thermophysiological strain during and after ultraendurance running in the heat. Int J Sports Physiol Perform,19(2):105-115 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37944507/
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