Creatine is a nitrogenous organic acid that occurs naturally in vertebrates and helps to supply energy to all cells in the body, primarily muscle. This is achieved by increasing the formation of adenosine triphosphate (ATP). It is also a cheaper solution which does not require you to break the bank to get some.
Creatine is porbably the most studied supplement in the history of body supplements. While not an amino acid itself, creatine is produced in the body from the amino acidsarginine, glycine, and methionine. Creatine is found in skeletal muscle in the form of creatine phosphate, and its main mode of action is to provide an inorganic phosphate to resynthesize ATP during high intensity activities, typically lasting 10 seconds or less like a 100 meter sprint. However, as more research has been done, it appears that creatine may have benefits for other types of exercise as well.
Although other forms of creatine have recently become available, the primary form for supplementation is creatine monohydrate. Over the past several decades, a tremendous amount of research has been done on creatine monohydrate.
In this article we will be focusing on creatine monohydrate.
Benefits of Creatine
Firstly, creatine offered by body-building supplements comes in all shapes and sizes. The one that is most recommended by nutritionist and even has a certification standard is Creapure®. Creapure® is the premium brand for creatine worldwide. When it comes to manufacturing creatine, no other brand combines the three pillars of quality the way Creapure® does:
• careful selection of raw materials
• high-performance technology thanks to sophisticated process engineering under GMP conditions
• precise chemical analysis
There is a lot of impurities in most other brands, so I recommend sticking with brands which use Creapure®.
Creatine basically allows you to produce more energy in burst of energy. With more energy, you can train harder and more often, producing faster results. Creatine doesn’t appear to affect aerobic metabolism. Thus creatine supplementation would be expected to impact on activities lasting between 10 seconds and 2 minutes with little to no benefit for activities lasting longer than that (the potential impact of creatine on endurance athletes is discussed further below). Creatine also appears to improve recovery between repeated bouts of high intensity activity such as repeated sprints or intervals.
It has been shown that with correct exercise that there is an increase in muscle gains when an athlete was one creatine. This is due to the athlete being able to perform more reps per weight and hence increase workloads.
How To Use It
On the bottle of most supplements you will see that there is a recommended loading phase which is about a week of double dosages. Although this is common practice, some athletes have seen no significance to carrying out loading. The reason for this is simple. There is only so much creatine that the body can store. Recall that the creatine is stored every time that you take it. So by taking it every day eventually you will reach the upper levels that provide the performance enhancement. After you reach that level, you could get away with just taking it on your weight training days as it takes two weeks of no use for the body’s creatine levels to get back to normal.
Hope this article was helpful and make sure to keep hitting the gym or else the creatine will just add to water weight, this will just lead to a large waste of money!