I think the obsession started with the "8 glasses of water" rule of thumb some 70 years ago, or more. That was probably some sort of doctor's advice, not serious advice or perhaps just a generalization, that made it through the lens of American media and product marketing and was turned into some sort of easy to remember drinking advice, a story everyone knows. Reports from teams and individuals on performance improvements prior to and after adopting Gx, including anecdotal comments from athletes on social media. So far, 5 members of our team have used 25 Gx Sweat Patches during a variety of bike and run workouts, with efforts made to keep workout intensity and environmental conditions consistent in many of the tests to provide comparable results They will make a chirping sound when it is tipped up. The bottle isn’t supposed to be tipped, doing so would prevent water from entering the straw.

We started with a simple hypothesis: that every athlete is unique, and therefore has unique hydration needs. The perfect scenario to test this hypothesis came when the Brazilian national soccer team asked Gatorade for help in preparing for the 2014 World Cup. Brazil’s coaches were looking to improve the team’s hydration and recovery during the two-week competition on their home turf. Now, with the introduction of the Smart Gx Bottle and Gummies, Gatorade has expanded its ecosystem greatly. Pairing with the Gatorade Gx App, personalized fuel plans are available based on elements such as activity, goals, duration and more, guiding users to appropriately utilize the brand’s various products.Most athletes testing the Gx patches have been tested by us multiple times, with consistent results, so we're confident in using our data as a reference point. For more info on the different types of sweat testing and their merits read this post. In practical terms, this meant something that could take sweat samples, ideally with no effort from the athlete, then talk to the cloud about what it found. The lighter the better; the simpler the better. A wearable device was one candidate, but what about something thin and flexible, like a patch or Band-Aid? A company called Epicore Biosystems was doing fascinating things with “skin-like wearable microfluidic solutions that are capable of non-invasively measuring sweat biomarkers, skin health, and physiology, in-real time.” GSSI partnered with them on the project. There are many ways to measure success of an initiative like Gx. Quantitative, and strategic metrics include: Whether this failure rate of ~16% (4/25) is representative of what will happen in the future is very hard to say, but this is something we'll keep a close eye on going forward. It's worth noting that the researchers who developed the patch stated a failure rate of up to 20% in their latest paper on the patch.

Similarly, Andy's lowest data point put his sweat sodium losses at 754mg/l (low), with his highest reading being more than 2x higher at 1,616mg/l (very high). Again, this would likely impact his hydration strategy in a long, hot event. Our assumption is that you probably have a decent idea of what the Gx Sweat Patch is and what it aims to achieve, if not exactly how it works. If so, you're likely here because you want to know if it's something you can use to refine your hydration strategy and improve your performance, so that's what we'll focus on, though the 'what', 'why' and 'how' is covered later in the blog if you want to dive into that. For example, an independent review of research from 2007 discovered that fully industry-funded research studies were significantly more likely to find favorable results than studies with no industry funding.It also seems to offer tips on many aspects of performance, health, nutrition and recovery such as sleep, foam rolling, protein intake and so on. Barnes, K. A. et al. Normative data for sweating rate, sweat sodium concentration, and sweat sodium loss in athletes: an update and analysis by sport. J. Sports Sci. 37, 2356–2366 (2019). Create a connected, multi-platform digital experience and embed IoT devices and kiosk touchpoints with responsive web apps and SMS messaging. When you complete a specific workout for the first time and scan the patch, the Gx app creates a 'Sweat Profile' for that type of session (referencing the sport type, temperature, intensity and duration). This can be used to estimate sweat and sodium losses for similar sessions in the future, so that you can reference that data and get estimates of your sweat and sodium losses without wearing another patch. It's rated to work in a temperature range of between 47F and 95F (~8C and 35C) and can be used either indoors or outdoors and across a variety of land based sports, but does not work in the water.