Creatine and Weight Lifting

Creatine monohydrate is one of the most researched supplements in the fitness industry, behind caffeine, but, what is the relationship between creatine and weight lifting?

This inexpensive supplement (often found on websites such as MyProtein.com and Bulk.com) can range from £6.00 per 100g unflavoured.

The use of it is pretty simple.

What is the Recommended Creatine Dosage?

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• For maintenance: 5-10g daily

• For a loading creatine dosage phase: 25g Daily for 4x weeks, then 5g daily

Creatine Monohydrate Benefits

• Isometric strength increased only after a few days of taking creatine - Cramer et al. (2007)

• Increased training load that can be tolerated therefore increased hypertrophy - Bemben et al. (2003)

• Increased training quality & strength - Rawson et al. (2003)

• Improving aerobic endurance performance in trials lasting more than 150 seconds - PMID 12945830

When to take Creatine?

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Whether you want to have it in your morning coffee or some sugar-free squash, as long as you’re getting it in you’re doing it right.

There are, however, some benefits of taking it with carbohydrates and other supplements.

For example, the addition of 10g of creatine to 75g of dextrose, 2 g of taurine and vitamin C has been seen to increase the uptake and has more acute benefits than taking it alone.

Is there Such thing as Creatine Dangers?

Rather than take our word for it, we’ll leave it to the studies to explain exactly why you shouldn’t be concerned about taking creatine and weight lifting.

"None showed any evidence of dysfunction on the basis of serum enzymes and urea production. Short term (5 days), medium term (9 weeks) and long term (up to 5 years) oral creatine supplementation has been studied in small cohorts of athletes whose kidney function was monitored by clearance methods and urine protein excretion rate. We did not find any adverse effects on renal function. The present review is not intended to reach conclusions on the effect of creatine supplementation on sport performance, but we believe that there is no evidence for deleterious effects in healthy individuals”

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Can Vegetarians or Vegans take Creatine?

In biopsy samples, muscle creatine content was much lower in vegetarians.

Vegetarians who took creatine had a greater increase in lean tissue, and total work performance than non-vegetarians who took creatine.

One study even reported a massive 19-24% in 1RM bench pressing! So, why not give it a shot?

PS. Here are some favourites here at Infinity performance to get you started:

Before You Go…

Studies and science have given you every reason why to invest into creatine for weight lifting performance.

I’ve personally been taking it for as long as I can remember in my lifting career and I haven't yet, as far as I’m aware, had kidney failure…

If you’re ready to put creatine to the test, enquire today about online coaching to see your gains sky rocket.