Can Creatine Improve an Athletes Performance

Is there a Benefit to Endurance Athletes taking Creatine

Creatine has a pretty long and glorious history compared to other sports supplements. The supplemental form, creatine monohydrate, was first taken up by Linford Christie and Sally Gunnell in the early 90s, and it’s stuck around as other wonder supplements have come and gone – in fact it’s now become the most heavily researched and widely used ‘ergogenic’ supplement on the market after caffeine.

Creatine is not just for improving strength. It does many things in addition to being renowned for robust strength enhancement. It has direct implications for many components of endurance performance, such as oxygen consumption.

Well, a 2003 study demonstrated that creatine supplementation led to a 5% increase in lactate threshold, meaning you can run at a higher pace for much longer without redlining. Creatine has been shown to work in conjunction with the carbs in your diet to raise levels of glycogen stored in the muscle cells, with a recent study in the journal International Society of Sports Nutrition showing a near 20% increase in stored carbs both before and
after a two-hour bout of training.

This is all good stuff, but to realise the full potential
of creatine it’s crucial to step back and look at the bigger picture. A onehour
run is about 4% of your day. The other 96% is recovery and health – here,
creatine can be a real weapon in your arsenal.

This is all good stuff, but to realise the full potential of creatine it’s crucial to step back and look at the bigger picture. A one hour run is about 4% of your day. The other 96% is recovery and health – here, creatine can be a real weapon in your arsenal

It’s also now being seen as a health supplement, and even a tool in the fight against fat gain.

Research out in the journal Cell has shown that creatine increases the ‘thermic effect’ of feeding, in other words increasing the uptake in calorie burning that happens after you eat. Small, but significant changes like this can add up to real world results over the long term, and multiple studies dating back decades show that supplementation is associated with a reduction in body fat. However this is when included in a balanced diet.

That ability to increase glucose transport into cells has brought it the attention of the medical community and recent research shows that supplementation can improve blood sugar control

– a marker for diabetes risk – after a carb heavy meal.

The standard dose is 5 grams per day. However, beneficial effects have been observed with as little as 2.5g per day.

5 grams is often associated with body weight gain as body water. Importantly, this is NOT body fat. Please do not confuse this FACT.

There are some advantages to better hydration, however. Typically, an athlete can lose up to 2% of body weight during an event due to fluid loss. Creatine may increase body weight (as water) by approximately 5%. Now, instead of losing just 2%, an athlete may be able to lose 7% before performance is negatively affected and simultaneously decreasing complexities of fluid intake during an event

Should i Load Creatine?

Standard practice you may have heard in the gym is that you need to have a pre-load at the start of use. 

Creatine also does not need to be loaded. However it can start working faster if it is loaded. There are many loading protocols that are effective.

The standard practice of taking 5g per day every day will maximize muscle creatine after ~4 weeks. Since creatine doesn’t need to be cycled, this is typically sufficient.

To load creatine faster, you simply take more to start off before beginning a maintenance schedule. One tried-and-true method is to take 20g per day for 4 days, then the maintenance dose of 3-5g thereafter. Another is to take 10g per day for 2 weeks followed by the maintenance schedule

Mental Performance

The nervous system is a huge consumer of energy, and the harder you think the more energy is consumed – energy supplied by ATP. It’s no surprise then that one of the biggest areas of research recently has been concerned with looking at creatine’s ability to both protect and boost brain function. Recent research at the University of Sydney showed that supplementation increased both memory and intelligence, by up to around 30% on some measures. Creatine has also shown to protect against brain injury and age-related cognitive decline.

Potential Increase to Lactate Threshold

Well, a 2003 study demonstrated that creatine supplementation led to a 5% increase in lactate threshold, meaning you can run at a higher pace for much longer without redlining. Creatine has been shown to work in conjunction with the carbs in your diet to raise levels of glycogen stored in the muscle cells, with a recent study in the journal International Society of Sports Nutrition showing a near 20% increase in stored carbs both before and after a two-hour bout of training.

This is all good stuff, but to realise the full potential of creatine it’s crucial to step back and look at the bigger picture. A one hour run is about 4% of your day. The other 96% is recovery and health – here, creatine can be a real weapon in your arsenal.