Creatine
You might be intrigued by creatine: but do you know why you should be considering creatine?
Creatine is probably one of the most researched, most effective and probably the cheapest supplement to help your performance.
How does it work?
Creatine helps you to be stronger and more powerful, with even more muscle tone. You can lift more in your session and your muscles can tolerate more intensity of training. That means that you will be able to achieve more from the same amount of training time! Better still, creatine helps you to recover faster and fight fatigue(2).
The creatine that our body already uses is all derived from our food: like meat and fish(3). The body makes creatine from arginine and glycine. Sometimes it’s hard to get more of something without a downside, and that is that you’d have to eat lots more meat and fish (so more calories). How can you do that without gaining fat? Well you can supplement with creatine! By having extra supplemented creatine, you won’t shut down any processes in the body: the body makes creatine from arginine and glycine.
The primary way the body makes energy is part of the creatine cycle. Creatine works on the energy cycle called the ATP-PC (Adenosine Triphosphate Phosphocreatine) cycle(1). When creatine levels in the muscle are depleted, your energy is severely decreased. Once you have creatine, it is stored in your muscle to be ready and available to assist with your power, strength, explosive strength and muscle endurance. Apparently your memory and information processing can even be significantly improved from creatine supplementation(4).
You have 2 options for taking creatine:
- a. you can saturate your muscles with creatine which is increasing the dose by 2-3 times for 5 days and the effects will be immediate
or - b. You can await saturation by taking the stated dose (usually 5g) and you’ll notice your strength increase in 2 weeks.
If you do choose “a”, spread the dose over a few intakes as sometimes your gut will not be ready for such a high dose.
Some people cycle with creatine with 12 weeks on and some time off, but there are no studies to support whether this is best. Any water retention in excess should dissipate within the first 2 weeks of daily use.
Timing:
According to best research it doesn’t matter which time of the day that you have creatine. However, the best way to ensure it is absorbed well is to ingest it with some carbohydrates! Post workout is great for this.
At AAA there are a number of excellent choices when it comes to creatine.
Just click here to find out our selection!
References:
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10609446
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9298778?dopt=Abstract
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12750586?dopt=Abstract
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1691485/pdf/14561278.pdf