What is Creatine?
Creatine is a substance that is found naturally in muscle cells. It helps your muscles produce energy during heavy lifting or high-intensity exercise. Supplementing with Creatine Monohydrate increases levels of phosphocreatine, predominately in our muscle. This increases our ability to produce energy for everything.
What Does Creatine Do?
Creatine supplies energy to your muscles and can also promote brain health.
What are the Benefits of Taking Creatine?
Supplementing Creatine Monohydrate can have many training benefits such as:
- Increase Supramaximal Sprint Performance
- Increase in Strength Gain
- Increase in Strength Performance
It also has benefits for endurance athletes such as:
- Increase in Lactate threshold and time to exhaustion
- Increased Glycogen storage
- Higher Heat Tolerance
Studies have shown it also improves Cognition in:
- Vegetarians
- Elderly Adults
- People suffering from Sleep Deprivation
What Type of Creatine Should I Use?
If you were seriously considering supplementing Creatine, I recommend taking Creatine Monohydrate. You can get this in either pill or powder form which is completely up to you. When taking in powder form all you do is add to water/a shake and it has no taste. Creatine can slightly dehydrate your body as it hydrates your muscles so staying hydrated is key.
How Much Creatine Do I Take and When?
It doesn’t actually matter when you take Creatine however I recommend not taking on an empty stomach. Therefore, I like to take it with or after a meal. On rare occasion taking creatine in larger quantities in one go can give you a slightly upset stomach, an easy way around this is to take smaller portions more frequently. An example of this would be taking the same amount just spread out throughout the day. Creatine can be taken on a loading phase and then a maintenance phase. How much to take is dependent on your weight here is an example formula based on weighing 70kg:
Loading Phase: 0.05/kg/day for 3-4 weeks
Example: 70 x 0.05g = 3.5g per day = 70kg
Maintenance Phase: 0.03-0.05/kg/day
Example: 70 x 0.03-0.05 = 2-3.5g per day
Who Should Take Creatine?
There are lots of different people who could benefit from taking creatine – not just those who are avid gym goers! Creatine can be beneficial for other people, such as vegetarians, older adults, people struggling with sleep deprivation.
How Long Does Creatine Take to Work?
Whether you’re taking a normal. modest 2.5-5g dose of creatine every day then it’ll take roughly 2-4 weeks to kick in. If you’re impatient, there’s also a method called ‘front-loading’ which is a process which can speed up when creatine supplementation will kick in. It includes starting off on a small dose, up to a large dose, but of course with any method like this there will be risks – including stomach cramps, diarrhoea and digestive discomfort.
Do You Take Creatine Before or After Workout?
There have been a number of different studies undertaken about when you should take creatine and they’ve been so varied, so it’s not clear whether you should take creatine before or after working out. What’s recommended, is that it is taken before or after working out, rather than other times of the day or week, if it’s an exercise day. You don’t need to supplement with creatine on rest days, however, it’s advised so that you can keep the creatine content of your muscles high, especially if you’re going through the front loading phase.
In conclusion, I would recommend creatine just for the fact it has such a large range of benefits and no real downsides. However, I would always recommend first focusing on a balanced diet and solid training plan first. This supplement can be a great addition to your life not only for the physical benefits.
