Lactate Gels: The New Endurance Nutrition Trend, Explained
If you’ve spent any time around endurance nutrition circles recently, you may have come across a new term: lactate gels. Unlike the carbohydrate-based gels that have dominated triathlon fuelling for decades, this new category is built around exogenous lactate — lactate you ingest directly, rather than the lactate your muscles produce during exercise. It’s a genuinely new idea in sports nutrition, and it’s worth understanding before you decide whether it belongs in your race-day plan.
The premise: lactate isn’t waste
For years, lactate had a bad reputation — treated as a metabolic waste product responsible for the burn and fatigue athletes feel during hard efforts. That view has shifted substantially. Exercise physiologists now understand lactate as a reusable aerobic fuel, produced by the body as part of normal carbohydrate metabolism, and capable of being recycled by muscles, the heart and even the brain as an energy source.
Lactate gels take that reframing and run with it: if lactate is a legitimate fuel rather than a byproduct to be cleared, why not deliver it directly through nutrition, in theory giving athletes a fuelling option beyond what carbohydrate intake alone can provide?
Who’s making them
One name currently associated with this category is ExoLactate, whose gel contains 5 grams of lactate per serving. According to reporting from Triathlon Magazine Canada, the product was developed by co-founder Aitor Viribay following what the outlet describes as seven years of research into the concept.
The important caveat: the evidence isn’t there yet
Here’s the part that matters most if you’re considering trying one of these products: the scientific evidence for a genuine performance benefit from ingested lactate has not been confirmed. Triathlon Magazine Canada is explicit on this point, stating that “the value of adding lactate has yet to be confirmed.” The reporting also notes a specific physiological wrinkle worth understanding — when lactate is produced naturally inside the body through carbohydrate metabolism, that conversion process itself yields usable energy. Ingesting lactate directly bypasses that process, meaning athletes miss out on the energy the body would otherwise generate along the way.
In other words: the theory behind lactate gels is genuinely interesting, and it reflects a real shift in how sports science understands lactate. But “interesting theory” and “proven performance upgrade” are two different things, and right now, this category sits firmly in the former.
Should you try one?
If you’re curious, there’s nothing wrong with experimenting in training rather than on race day — that’s true of any new nutrition product. But treat lactate gels as an emerging category to watch, not a confirmed upgrade over your current fuelling strategy. Availability in the UK hasn’t been confirmed either, so if you want to try one, check directly with the brand rather than assuming it’s stocked locally.
If you’d rather stick with a fuelling strategy that has a stronger evidence base behind it, our guide to the best energy gels for triathlon racing is a good place to start, and our roundup of the best triathlon nutrition products more broadly covers the options that are proven to work on race day.
- Lactate gels deliver exogenous lactate as a fuel source, rather than relying purely on carbohydrate
- ExoLactate’s gel contains 5g of lactate per serving, developed by co-founder Aitor Viribay
- The performance benefit of ingested lactate has not been scientifically confirmed
- Direct ingestion misses the energy generated during the body’s natural lactate-production process
- UK availability is unconfirmed — check directly with the brand
Source: Triathlon Magazine Canada.
