Anyone take Creatine? How has it affected performance?

I’ve been a lacto-ovo vegetarian for 2 years now and a friend recently recommended I supplement my diet with creatine. An hour’s worth of googling has returned a few blogs and fitness related studies that suggest it could help with Anaerobic efforts and general cognitive functions.

Does anyone have experience with this? I don’t want to gain much in the way of weight, but I’m 5’7’’ and 128 lbs so I have a bit of room to experiment with during my upcoming build phase of TR.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

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Thanks! I just realized there’s a very obvious search function - should have used that!

No worries.

FWIW - I went down this road recently thinking it would help my leg strength and improve my cycling (trainer). What I found was zero improvement on the bike, negligible results in the gym and felt bloated. I ended up quitting after 3 months.

Good to know! Thanks for sharing your experience.

I gained about 2#'s and maybe…maybe can lift harder? But I’m not sure. My goal was to help preserve muscle mass, I’m 50, 190 pounds, 12.5% fat via dexa.

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My suggestion is always to stick to a good diet (you’re already on the right path) and only take suppliments if your blood tests show that you’re deficient in certain areas.

Tim

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It gave me low grade headaches after a day or two of consistent use. I don’t remember the dose but it was the normal recommend amount for me (6’4", 185lb) and not a loading dose. Always occurred each time I went on it. Wasn’t worth taking if I was going to have headaches all the time. So I have a ton of creatine in the basement I don’t use now…

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@mattymurda creatine may be useful in some cycling events…for sure on the track…probably for flat-ish crits. It’s mostly useful in situation where you have to generate a lot of power quickly & repeatably.

Keep in mind that loading creatine will also load water. So after a couple weeks you’ll put on 2 to 3 kilos. It all somes off when you stop supplementing with creatine.

Great review of science & methodology for basically any supplement:

Not my area of expertise by far, but I’ve been interested whether that extra water content in the muscle would be bioavailable during performance, implying less reliance on exogenous hydration?

Haven’t looked into the literature, but I wonder if longer durations or obviously exercise in the heat, etc. would reveal more of a benefit with creatine suppl? Very interested if anyone knows more

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I tried creatine, it worked for short explosive efforts. It was useless for me as for road racing, longer efforts it caused severe leg cramps, a common side effect.

Isn’t it very bad for the kidneys, though?

Stupidly enhances performance in the gym for high weight sessions.

Does nothing for aerobic training.