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Creatine and Weight Lifting

I had a follower, and regular commenter, Rob ask a question about Creatine. Rob’s question was as follows:

What does taking Creatine do for you when you take it before and after a workout and what form to you take it as?

I wasn’t sure of Rob’s EXACT context of the question so I decided to give a run down on the “official / scientific” side of Creatine, my person thoughts on the supplement, and how I take the supplement.

What Is Creatine?

Wikipedia states that “Creatine is a nitrogenous organic acid that occurs naturally in vertebrates and helps to supply energy to muscle”. The Australian Institute of Sport web site has a lot of details about creatine, here is a summary of the most relevant points.

• Creatine is a naturally occurring compound found in large amounts in skeletal muscle as a result of dietary intake and endogenous synthesis from amino acids.
• Phosphorylated creatine provides a number of important functions related to fuel supply in the muscle. The most well known role is as a source of phosphate to regenerate ATP.

Food, diet and how the body uses energy is really a very complex topic so here are a few links to help you if you want more information about how it all works.

• http://www.musclehack.com/creatine-facts-what-is-the-best-creatine/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creatine_supplements
• http://www.creatinemonohydrate.net/creatineinformation.html

What Does Creatine Do?

Here are some more points from the Australian Institute of Sport web site.

• Creatine supplementation has been shown to enhance the performance of exercise involving repeated sprints or bouts of high intensity exercise, separated by short recovery intervals. Therefore, competition or training programs involving intermittent high-intensity work patterns with brief recovery periods (<1 min), or resistance training programs may be enhanced by creatine loading.
• Creatine loading promotes weight gain due to fluid retention.
• Overuse could potentially have a harmful effect on liver and kidney function.

This is why it can be helpful to training. It enhances performance when doing weight training (if your having bursts of weights with small breaks between each set). You don’t feel as muscle fatigued and you can get out more reps. The last point, about it potentially having a harmful effect on liver and kidney function, is why you “Creatine Load” and drink lots of water while loading.

Creatine Loading

Creatine loading is the way in which you take creatine, you don’t want to be taking it for weeks on end just for the hell of it. Here’s a point from the Australian Institute of Sport (its an informative site!).

• Creatine loading protocols have been well studied. Rapid loading may be achieved by five days of repeated doses of creatine (e.g. 4 x 5 g doses). A similar loading will occur over a longer period (28 days) by taking a daily dose of 3 g (slow load).

I am currently using “Universal Nutrition Storm” as my creatine. The way I am currently “loading” is to have creatine 30 minutes before, and within 30 minutes of completing a workout (as recommended by my creatine brand). This would be the “Slow Load” method. I try and only do creatine for 1 month at a time, and then go off it for one month. For 2 reasons, one is the possible effect on liver and kidney function, and two being the fact that if you keep taking the same thing all the time, your body gets used to the effects. Got to keep the body on its toes if you want it to change.

Marcus, the owner of the site MuscleHack experimented with the rapid loading method, but found no difference from the slow method. He keeps with the slow load method as its more convenient. You can read about it here : http://www.musclehack.com/my-creatine-experiment-update/

My Creatine Experience

Here’s a list of things I have found during my usage of creatine:

• It tastes bad (I’ve only tried the one brand to be honest, but its yuck!).
• I do feel as though I have more energy when I am doing my workout (if this is a placebo effect or not, feeling better about your workouts is a good thing).
• I have had comments from people regarding how my muscles are looking after a week of creatine loading, and no change in routine.
• My body never really feels terrible the next day after a workout. I feel slightly sore but seemingly less sore than when I don’t creatine load. (Again, maybe its a placebo, but its a damn good one).

So my recommendation is try creatine when doing weights. All your going to waste is a few dollars buying some. I have included a list of interesting links on the topic in the sources section below.

Hopefully this answers your question Rob! Thanks for the question. You can check out Robs fat to fit journey at http://robfitness.wordpress.com/

Sources :

• The Australian Institute Of Sport
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adenosine_triphosphate
• http://www.creatinemonohydrate.net

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