4 Tips for Hydrating During At-Home Workouts

Hydrating at home during your workout can, ironically enough, be more challenging than hydrating while out at the gym or doing another workout outside of the home. When you go to the gym, you tend to pack all of your gym essentials—while a change of clothes maybe goes into your gym bag, the one item you definitely remember to pack is your water bottle.

As you move from one lifting exercise to another, you bring your water bottle with you, sipping as you go. As you elliptical or swim, you consciously take drink breaks to stay hydrated during your workout.

Even outdoors, while hiking or at the track or the trail, you are nary without your handy sidekick of a water bottle. Perhaps decorated with stickers from your favorite brands or events, an extension of and expression of yourself, your handy water bottle inevitably leaves the house with you when you are on the way to spin or run or swim or lift or bike or hike.

Indeed, the single most likely thing to accompany you to workouts outside your home, besides the very basic accoutrements of appropriate clothing and footwear, is: your water bottle. But what about at home? When you leave for an outside-your-home workout, you get dressed and prepared in a way almost as if you are going to work (though workouts are nearly always fun, and work is inevitably sometimes not).

Your work or workout self gets dressed, prepped, and ready for action! But at home, which can be full of distractions, you may be just trying your best to get some yoga in before your roommate comes home with her takeout, or before the baby wakes up from that all-too-short nap. You might not even change your clothes from whatever you happen to be wearing at that given moment.

Your home workout likely feels less a distinct part of your day when compared to your nicely compartmentalized outside-of-your-home workout. As a result, you may not even be thinking to take your water bottle with you, because, well, your workout is at home and there should be water “somewhere around here” anyhow! Don’t get dehydrated just because you are working out at home: here are 4 tips to keep your hydration up even during your home workout.

1. Fill your water bottle and have it on hand for your home workout, just as you would for workouts outside of the home.

You may not be leaving your house or apartment, and you may have drinks in the fridge and water in the tap nearby, but that doesn’t mean you should go through your whole workout—whether it is 15 or 50 minutes—without a drink on hand. What you do both before and after your workout is key to the success of your workout: that means ensuring you have a water bottle nearby for your at-home workout too. Before you begin your workout, get a water bottle and fill it with some Ultima, and keep it on hand. Then, do your workout—and you’ll be less likely to interrupt or bail on your workout midway through because you are thirsty!

2. Make your at-home workout a distinct part of your day: carve out time for your workout.

A big part of why you are so much more likely to stay hydrated for an out-of-home workout is because you tend to automatically leave the house or go to the gym with all of your workout essentials packed and ready. You have set aside time for this out-of-home workout, but an at-home workout should truly be no different in this regard. You may have to wake up earlier than everyone else in your household, you may have to sneak your workout in to whatever small block of time you have, but it is still your workout and should be treated as the valuable time for your mind and body that it is. Once you decide to do X workout, do not let Y and Z around the house interrupt you if you can at all help it: get that workout in! Telling yourself that this special time is your workout time will go a long way towards ensuring that you do all the small little things—like keeping up with proper hydration—to have a great workout too.

3. Make any impromptu workouts easier by always having Ultima Replenisher electrolytes prepped in the fridge.

Since home workouts do tend to be less scheduled than out-of-home ones, you will be helped if you are a little extra prepared and ready to go at a moment’s notice when you do decide to do a home workout. Similarly to meal prep—but far, far easier!—you can also do “drink prep” by ensuring you have a stockpile of just 1-2 electrolyte filled water bottles in the fridge and ready to go at all times. Once you use one up, replace it with a new bottle.

4. Have a drink on hand throughout the day outside of your workouts too.

Just as you are more likely to pack your Ultima Replenisher electrolytes for an out-of-home workout than one in the home, you are similarly more likely to bring a water bottle to your outside-the-home job than your work-from-home job. Hydrating during workouts is important, but you also don’t want to approach your home workout (which may already be tricky enough to do!) already dehydrated.

Keep up your hydration throughout the day by filling your water bottle at breakfast and keeping it with you at your desk or while you do chores or other work in the home. This tip is true for whether you are spending most of the day at home or not! Wherever you may be when you are not working out, you will have a better workout if you stay hydrated there and then too!

Working out at home can present unique challenges, particularly in the form of distractions, potential interruptions, and the lack of precise scheduling. However, if you approach your home workout with the same enthusiasm and seriousness as one done outside of the home, you are sure to have both more fun and more success and satisfaction in both doing and completing your home workouts. Keep yourself hydrated for your at home workout, and go further with more fun in your home workout too.

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About the Author:

Ann Mazur is an avid drinker of Ultima Replenisher—her current favorite flavors are blue raspberry and watermelon—as well as an avid exerciser, both in an out of the home. Ann is founder of Runners Love Yoga, whose tagline is “Do Yoga Run Faster” and whose mission is to provide streamable yoga workouts for runners everywhere.

When not busy filming classes for Runners Love Yoga TV (where you can do yoga with her in your own home!), she can be found designing activewear for the clothing side of her brand. She loves to run, and is an Olympic Trials Marathon finisher, and additionally loves swim workouts and yoga. When she is not moving and being active, she enjoys writing and reading; she holds her Ph.D. in English from the University of Virginia.