What Athletes Need to Know About Creatine
Creatine is a rarity in the workout supplement world: it really works, and it’s cheap and safe. If you’re trying to build muscle or lift the hardest things, you can get into the habit of taking creatine every day, but of course there are some caveats.
What does creatine do?
Creatine quickly energizes your muscles for short, intense bursts of strength. You may have heard of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which stores energy in our cells. (One of the main reasons you eat is to make ATP.) When our muscles use ATP, it breaks down into ADP and free phosphate. Creatine can retain excess phosphate and immediately attach that phosphate to ADP so that it can become ATP again.
This means that the more creatine in your muscles, the better you will perform movements that require short-term, intense muscle use. Lifting weights is the main thing creatine helps with, but it can help sprinters too .
If you can lift a little more weight with a few more reps, you can end up getting a little stronger. Creatine likely has several other effects that promote muscle growth as well. Ultimately, it can provide small but non-zero increases in strength and muscle size for most people. For more information on creatine, check out this review of the evidence at Examine.com .
Who is it for?
Nobody needs to take creatine. You can train well without it, and you won’t miss out on huge winnings. For many of us, this is just a tiny push. If your main sport is cardio, creatine won’t help you. If you are lifting weights or trying to build muscle through strength training (such as bodybuilding), this can help.
How much this helps will depend on how much creatine you already have. Our body produces a lot of creatine by itself, and we also get it from food, especially if you eat meat. Vegetarians and vegans generally get less creatine from the start, so they get more of the benefits.
Also, some of us are not responding. “Some people walk with (almost) full muscle saturation with creatine, so they don’t get any benefit from creatine supplementation,” sports nutrition researcher and bodybuilder Eric Trexler writes in Stronger by Science . “In fact, the lack of an answer is great news. You have been genetically selected to win a lifetime supply of free creatine! “
What are the downsides?
When it comes to supplementation, creatine is pretty safe. There are no dire side effects, and people who notice the downside most often can cause gastrointestinal distress, especially in high doses and / or on an empty stomach.
In terms of cost, creatine is also one of the cheapest supplements, especially if you buy it in powder form as creatine monohydrate. For example, it’s not that hard to find a $ 15 100+ serving pack. If you prefer creatine in capsule form, it tends to be slightly more expensive.
Any supplement comes with the caveat that no one at the FDA checks if they contain what they say they contain. It’s always best to research brands of nutritional supplements using tips like the ones given here .
How to take creatine
Unlike most drugs, which wears off within a few hours, creatine stays in our muscles for a fairly long period of time. If you start taking the recommended dose of three to five grams per day (larger people should take the larger dose, and vice versa), it will take about a month to fully load your muscles with creatine. Or, you can complete the process faster by using a “loading dose” of, say, 20 grams per day.
After that, just take your usual dose once a day; the exact time doesn’t seem to matter. If you want to stop taking creatine, it will probably take several weeks for your creatine levels to return to normal.
This extra creatine in your body will also make your muscles hold more water, which is normal and may even promote muscle growth. But if you need to worry about weight classes for your sport, or if you find it mentally difficult to keep track of your weight on an increasing scale, you can decide if you agree or not. (Athletes in weight classes sometimes stop taking creatine a few weeks before a competition in order to lose a couple of pounds of water weight.) On the other hand, gaining a few pounds after starting creatine is a way of knowing it works.
So far, creatine has been studied more often in untrained people than in experienced athletes, and more in men than women. We still don’t know exactly how many people didn’t respond, and there is still ongoing research going into the details of all the risks and benefits. But if you want to try one of the rare supplements that actually does what it says it does – usually – consider giving creatine a try.