Creatine 101: What Is It and Do You Need It?

If you’re interested in maximizing your health, you’re going to want to consider bringing creatine into your life. Hands down, creatine is one of the most research-backed supplements out there and has been shown to work time and time again.

That said, not everyone is going to benefit from using creatine. It does help a certain subset of the population, so it’s important to ensure that it applies to you.

Let’s look at some of the key details you’ll want to know about creatine to make an informed decision.

What Is Creatine and How Does It Work?

Every single time you perform a rep or set when lifting weights, you are using a substance called ATP. ATP is the fuel for very intense muscle contractions and is an exhaustible source of energy.

In order for ATP to be created, creatine phosphate has to combine with ADP, which resides in the cell. You are not limited in the amount of ADP you have present. However, you are limited in the amount of ATP you store.

The limiting factor for this is how much creatine is present. Once your creatine stores run out, ATP is no longer created, and thus those intense contractions come to a halt.

From this, you can imagine how creatine is going to help you. By supplementing with creatine, you can ensure that your creatine phosphate stores are higher. Thus, you produce more ATP each and every workout.

This allows you to perform more work during each session. Since a big part of seeing progress in the gym is being able to maximally overload your tissues with volume, the importance of this cannot be overstated.

Anyone who is training hard and wants to keep up an appropriate level of volume is going to need that ATP to be available.

What Are the Benefits Of Creatine?

1. Improved overall strength and power

The first key benefit is improved overall strength and power output. You’ll be noticeably stronger in the gym when you are using creatine [1]. You’ll be able to lift more weight, and you may notice that your overall speed and reaction time is elevated as well.

The more weight you lift, the faster the progress you see.

2. Better recovery between workout sessions

Next, you’ll also notice better recovery between your workout sessions as well as between exercise bouts in the same session [2]. Another critical element that factors into how quickly you make progress is how frequently you’re able to work out in the gym.

If you only train a muscle group once per week, for instance, you are going to get mediocre results. If you can train it two or three times per week, you’re going to see much better results.

Creatine can help you do this.

3. Improved muscle endurance

Along with enhancing your overall strength levels, you’ll also find that you have better muscular endurance. This doesn’t mean you’ll be better prepared to run a marathon. What you need to keep in mind is that creatine only helps with intense muscle contractions. In other words, if you are using your anaerobic system, then you will benefit.

So you will notice improved endurance levels at high-intensity levels. Meaning, rather than doing 3 sets of 5 with your squats, you may be able to do 5 sets.

This again factors into the total volume you can perform and the results that follow.

4. Increased lean muscle mass

Finally, the last benefit you’ll notice when using creatine is that you have an increased level of lean muscle mass. All of the above factors working together are going to help ensure you can build lean muscle mass better than without creatine supplementation [3].

Who Should Use Creatine?

Creatine is best going to support, as noted above, those who are doing intense forms of exercise. Think weight lifting, sprint training, stop and go sports, or any other activity that requires short bursts of all-out intensity.

Endurance athletes such as long-distance runners, cyclists, swimmers, and so forth, are not going to benefit much from using creatine. They may use it if they like, but the chances they see many benefit from it are quite low.

Creatine Supplementation

In order to see the most benefits from your creatine usage, you’ll want to perform a loading phase of creatine for about five days. Taking 20 grams per day for this initial phase will help ensure that you reach full saturation levels. After this, you can move into maintenance, taking just five grams per day.

If you are someone who prefers not to load, you can just move into maintenance and take five grams per day. Just realize you may not notice as great of benefits in the beginning, as it will take some time to saturate your muscles. 

 

 

By using a high-quality creatine product such as Creasurge or Growthsurge, you don’t need to worry about taking your creatine with anything else to enhance absorption. It’s designed to be naturally absorbed exceptionally well.

It’ll also help prevent you from experiencing any unwanted bloating or muscle cramps like many people do when using creatine.

So do give some consideration to adding creatine to your supplement routine if you aren’t already. It’s one of those supplements that may not have fancy claims but is most definitely going to make a dramatic difference in your workout performance.