Built for Him, Bought by Her: The Gender Gap in
Performance Nutrition

Women now make up over a third of pre/post-workout drink buyers, and that share is growing faster than any other segment in the category. Brands still designing these products around a single buyer are already behind.

The pre/post-workout beverage category built its identity around a single buyer: performance-driven, mostly male, focused on training gains. That assumption is aging quickly. Across social conversation and purchase behavior, the profile buying these drinks is shifting toward a broader, increasingly female audience with a different set of expectations.

This snapshot from Brightfield Group tracks how far that shift has gone: who's buying, what benefits they're actually asking for, and where the ingredients inside the bottle still lag behind. Women's share of pre/post-workout drink buyers has grown 8.5 percentage points in the past year, the fastest-moving segment shift Brightfield tracked in the category this year.

The formulation gap isn't where you'd expect it. The core performance ingredients across men's and women's health conversation sit close to parity. What separates the two says more about how brands are marketing to this growing buyer than about what's actually in the bottle.

Snapshot Highlights:

• The buyer has shifted, the messaging hasn't. See which benefit conversations still skew heavily toward one gender, and which one only reaches men after their workout ends.
• Not all ingredients are created equal. Find out which additions actually differ between men's and women's health conversation, and which ones don't move the needle at all.
• The purchase gap tells its own story. See which products are bought almost exclusively by one gender, and what that reveals about how the category is positioned.
• One benefit stands out for women. Discover the single physical outcome where women clearly outpace men.
• The performance core isn't the differentiator. Learn what's actually separating products marketed "for her" from the rest of the category.

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