I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not athletic. I’ll gladly admit it. I’ve never been athletic or coordinated and probably never will be. When I played soccer as a kid, I looked forward to the halftime snack more than playing in the game. I fell off the pommel horse during gymnastics, crushing both my neck and my dreams of Olympic gold. And I once tore my ACL jumping up and down during a volleyball game, so yeah … “unathletic” doesn’t begin to cover it.
My athletic peak at age 7 (look at that form).
So when presented with the challenge of working out with Gatorade, I was a bit freaked out. There was no way I was going to look as good as the athletes in the commercials (my sweat certainly wasn’t going to bead in cool technicolor streams). After a little research and a quick trip to Kroger, though, I was ready to hit the weights. Do you actually hit them? It was time to find out.
As my trek to the gym approached, I was more worried about what I would listen to while walking to the gym rather than what I would do once there (I was thinking a lot of Rihanna and Azealia Banks). What would I wear? Who would I see? Did I really need my MCard to get in? While getting ready I munched on the Prime Energy Chews that I had purchased as the first of three Gatorade supplements.
The company follows a simple plan: Prime, Perform, Recover. With these 6 bitesize snacks I was promised energy, control and 24 carbs for strength in the weight room. But as I headed to the gym, all I had was an overly sweet taste in my mouth.
Lucky for me (and the rest of the gym), my wallyball team had a game that night. And although wallyball feels more like a sport you’d find in the pages of Obscure Sports Quarterly, for someone who rarely gets to the gym it seemed like a great place to put Gatorade to the test. We were in the playoffs of co-rec B, so I was expecting some true athletic talent and hoping that Gatorade could help.
Gif courtesy of survivingcollege.com
Man, did I need the help. My team lost all three sets of our game and we were knocked out of the playoffs. I felt sluggish the entire time. That could have been because I was out of shape, but I’d rather not blame myself, so let’s blame Gatorade. As I slumped home, I hoped that the Recover drink might make up for this bad performance, but like the Prime chews it was incredibly sweet and after a couple of sips I had to flood the bottle with water, trying to cut the taste. The drink had 16g of protein (great for building muscle), but also had a horrible taste.
As I turn away from the gym and into the open arms of Netflix, it’s hard to say if the Gatorade GSeries really helped. Some of the world’s best athletes and scientists seem to think that it does, but from my one-time trial run I would have to disagree. And maybe that’s because I only tried it once, or maybe it’s because I’m about as graceful in the gym as Miley Cyrus on a stationary bike, but either way I was hardly impressed.
Gif courtesy of wifflegif.com
Athletics aside, the Gatorade GSeries is also incredibly pricey. The sleeve of six chews goes for $2.72, and the two-pack of recovery drinks totaled $7.24. Ringing in at over $10 per gym outing (and that’s not even including the middle Perform drink), the GSeries seems unrealistic on a college budget. The jury is out, but from my unathletic perspective, in terms of taste, performance and cost, if I’m ever back in the gym it won’t be with Gatorade.
To see how this challenge went with one of our more athletic writers, check out the athletic perspective.