Wrexham AFC has recently announced a partnership with the Gatorade Sports Science Institute (GSSI) to implement advanced hydration strategies for its players. This new collaborative work is aimed at improving performance to achieve better outcomes. It equips athletes with personalized drinking profiles to help ensure no athlete gets left behind. Through cutting-edge technology—including GSSI’s ‘Gx’ Patch—Wrexham’s players have unprecedented access to real-time insights into their hydration needs. This makes sure that they’re able to operate at peak performance through each match.
The GxPatch serves as a sweat tracker, measuring the amount of sweat an athlete loses and the concentration of electrolytes in that sweat. This information is vital, given that Wrexham’s players average 10-12 kilometers of distance covered in a match. These tests carried out on each the male and female first-team squads returned some incredibly informative results. These findings will ultimately help inform individualized hydration strategies. These plans will prove to be invaluable during these high intensity training days and match days.
Dr. Ian Rollo, the principal scientist at GSSI and the leader of research in this collaboration. He concluded by reinforcing the idea of improving hydration education in football. “Historically, we know they were dehydrated coming into the final stretches of a game,” he stated. Those are just a few examples of the major players we’ve seen hurt the most at that time. We’ve put in strategies for them to make sure they can go for 96 or 97 minutes – and if you look at football, that’s when a lot of games are won and lost.”
Kevin Mulholland, Wrexham’s head of medical performance and sports science, echoed Dr. Rollo’s sentiments, highlighting the benefits of these hydration strategies on match days. “We do so many different bits around the players to help their performance but on a match day you really see the benefit when we can test our players pre-match and post-match – and their hydration status at the end of the game is where we want it now,” he said.
The GSSI’s groundbreaking technology assists athletes in performing the best in their sports. It has an important and less recognized role in public health, keeping people healthy and properly hydrated. Players don the ‘Gx’ Patch during high-energy training sessions. This patch-like device continuously monitors sweat loss and electrolyte concentration, allowing real-time insights via a proprietary, smartphone-based app. Developed for player hydration education, this app helps players understand how much to drink each hour of activity in order to stay properly hydrated.
Dr. Rollo’s advice to the Wrexham players was to drink something like Gatorade, a beverage that’s specifically designed to replace fluids, carbohydrates, and electrolytes. “During one of these sessions is when we would be recommending the Wrexham players something like the normal Gatorade sports drink,” he noted. This method not just replenishes lost fluids and electrolytes, it delivers the carbohydrates energetic players need to perform at their best.
For lower intensity training, Dr. Rollo suggested opting for a Gatorade Hydration Booster. This low carbohydrate booster is designed to deliver the full spectrum of fluids and electrolytes without additional carbohydrates. This level of flexibility enables players to tailor their hydration strategies based on the needs of each training session.
Along with the partnership with GSSI, there has been considerable strategic planning surrounding days of especially high volume training, which mimics match day scenarios very closely. By reserving research days for these sessions, Wrexham hopes to be able to fine tune its hydration strategies even more.
These personalized hydration plans implementation-focused steps intended to help players improve their endurance, performance, and hydration levels on match day specifically. Mulholland further stressed the need to stay adequately hydrated. Proper hydration can make all the difference, especially when it’s crunch time in a close game and every play counts.
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