What’s creatine?
Creatine is one of the most popular and used sports supplements, partly due to its safety, non-doping substance and with a strong scientific evidence concerning its possible benefits and sports performance improvement.
95% of the body’s creatine is found in the muscle, in its free form or as phosphocreatine (PC), having a key role in ATP’s resynthesis through the metabolic pathway of high-energy phosphagen or ATP-PC system. In other words, it allows ATP to be rapidly regenerated and provides energy to the muscle for maximum intensity and short duration activities (up to 6-10 seconds).
These type of activities include strength training, speed intervals, sprints, etc. Hence, any sports activity, competition or training program that has this kind of efforts, would clearly benefit from creatine supplementation, mainly due to an increase in the amount of creatine inside the muscle.
What benefits can creatine supplementation produce?
Creatine supplementation, specifically being creatine monohydrate the most recommended and effectiveformat, not only has positive effects on power, explosive, intermittent, strength or speed sports, its benefits go far beyond that.
- Helps to restore muscular glycogen, which is essential for endurance or intermittent sports.
- Reduces muscular damage caused by intense exercise, having a recovery effect in this case.
- Diminishes the loss of muscle mass during inactivity periods caused by injury, making it a good supplement for injured athletes.
- Increases intercellular water and increases a liquid retention, hence optimising hydration. This is essential for heat and humidity conditions, although it’s also potentially negative due to a body weight increase, which can worsen sports performance.
- Positive cognitive and brain effects, alleviating creatine deficit that can be caused by exercise or sleep deprivation.
CREATINE Creapure® - 300g
CREATINE Creapure® is a gluten-free and vegan product, only Creatine Monohydrate Creapure® 100% , without added preservatives, stabilizers or maltodextrins.
Creapure®, is a trademark and patent of creatine monohydrate at its purest level.
The main differences of Creapure® with respect to other creatines are as follows:
- Its purity level is 99.99%, while that of other creatines is between 98-99%.
- It is subjected to rigorous quality controls, in which each batch is analysed individually.
- It is an ingredient that appears on the COLONIA LIST.
- Creapure is synonymous with reliability, as it complies with very strict regulations, and it has been used by many athletes for many years.
How to take creatine
Given the many positive effects of creatine, many athletes are convinced to take it, but do they really know which is the most appropriate intake protocol?
The first thing to bare in mind is that creatine isn’t an acute intake supplement, like caffeine for example, meaning that there’s no point in taking a single dose of creatine before a workout or race.
The aim of creatine intake is to increase its amount in the muscle, so it’s necessary to take it continuously and over a certain period of time as opposed to isolated, single doses. Thus, the first scientific studies recommended a creatine protocol or loading phase with doses from 20 to 25 grams per day for five days, followed by a maintenance phase of several weeks with an intake of 3 to 5 grams per day.
The choice of one protocol or another will depend on the ‘rush’ the athlete has to increase muscle creatine stores. For example, if the athlete begins creatine supplementation early enough, targeting an improvement inmore than thirty days, a loading phase would not be necessary. However, if the athlete for various reasons hasn’t been able to supplement or needs to optimise his ATP-PC metabolism in less than 30 days, it would be advisable to rely on a loading phase of 5 to 7 days.
CREATINE monohydrate 300g
Gluten-free and vegan product, only Creatine Monohydrate, without added preservatives, stabilizers or maltodextrins.
Before or after training?
Having reached this point, where the athlete clearly knows the benefits that creatine offers and the intake protocol, with or without a loading and maintenance phase, the following doubt may arise:
When to intake creatine? Which’s the best time? Before or after training? Would there be any difference in creatine’s effect?
In order to answer this question correctly, you firstly need to know which is the aim of creatine’s supplementation and which differences there are when taking at one time or another.
Thus, the primary goal of creatine supplementation is to increase its amount in the muscle, which together with proper training, will allow multiple benefits such as increase muscle mass, gain strength, improve speed, etc.
So, which are the factors that allow to speed-up the absorption of creatine into the muscle?
1) Increase blood flow and perfusion to the muscle, which helps to transport the creatine.
2) The activity of the sodium/potassium pump allows a greater uptake by the muscle.
The combination of both will lead to an increase in the amount of intramuscular creatine
It’s clear that exercise is going to enhance these two key factors, therefore the first recommendation that can be done according to creatine’s timing intake, is that it’s convenient to take creatine preferably around exercise (before, during or after), rather than far from that time.
However, is there a difference between before, during and after?
Differences between taking creatine before, during or after training
From the point of view of increasing creatine concentration in the blood after its intake and the boost of factors that favour its absorption into the muscle (blood stream and sodium/potassium pump), the advised moments would be before or during exercise, since the blood stream and the activity of this physiological pump would be greater. You must consider that creatine’s peak in the blood can be achieved about one hour after its intake, progressively declining for four hours.
On the other hand, if the aim is muscle recovery or boost muscle glycogen replenishment, it could be interesting to take creatine after or at the end of exercising.
However, analysing several quality and well-controlled scientific studies, and not just a few that provide us a convenient result, the conclusion that can be drawn is that it isn’t entirely clear whether creatine intake to enhance performance is preferable before, during or after, and even more when assessing a long-term effect.
If you’re thinking about adding creatine to your routine, check out our supplements section, where you can discover different options to improve your performance and meet your training goals.
Therefore, and as final conclusion, the intake of creatine is recommended by focusing on the doses, seeking to saturate the tissues with it, and around exercise (before, during or after), rather than far from that time, in order to take advantage of the factors that enhance its muscle absorption.
The nuance of the final decision (before, during or after), will depend on logistical issues such as access to creatine, stomach comfort or the desired effect of creatine.
