Creatine: it looks like anthrax, but it’s good for you!
The purpose of this article isn’t to prove to you that creatine’s safe. That’s been done before with study after study after study.
No, today is all about using creatine to get the best bang for your buck.
Creatine’s Purpose
Creatine does three things that you need to know:
- Helps replace/saturate muscles with glycogen and water.
- Helps your body produce more ATP (energy), allowing you to lift one or two more reps. This also allows you to produce more power (lifting weights explosively; preferably heavy).
- Slightly blocks myostatin (as shown by new research). Myostatin is responsible for telling your body that your muscles are big enough and to stop making them grow. If this signal is slightly inhibited, then your body will produce more muscle.
On top of all this, creatine has been shown to decrease the likelihood of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. This is why I recommend everyone over the age of 50 to be taking it.
Now that we know the basics, let’s look at how we can use it for different goals. All of the following methods for using creatine are assuming that you are already intermittent fasting daily.
Using Creatine for Fat Loss
Since I am in fat loss mode at the moment, I figured I’d start off with this one. In fact, I was going to write a sweet article today on either squatting or acne, but taking my creatine this morning inspired me to write this article.
Generally, during a fat loss diet, your carbs will be pretty rock bottom low. That means that your glycogen may be close to depletion in your muscles. Since this is the case, we want to replenish the glycogen before every weight-training workout. Here’s what you will do:
- On the evening before your workout, take 5g of creatine in water (10g if you are over 200lbs). Generally, you’d want to do this 4 hours before you go to sleep.
- On the day that you work out, take 5g of creatine (10g if you are over 200lbs) in water.
The reason that you want your glycogen to be replenished before your weight training workouts is that you will be stronger and able to put more work into your session. More work = more fat lost.
If you have 2 days off in a row, then I suggest taking creatine any time that you’d like on the first “off day”.
Using Creatine for Strength
The recommendations are the same for fat loss as they are for strength. The only difference is that you will also include 2.5 – 5g in your pre-workout shake.
Using Creatine for Muscle Gain
Assuming that you are eating and training for muscle gain, here are my creatine recommendations:
- Regardless of the day, take 5g of creatine in water every morning.
- Take 5g of creatine in the post workout shake along with dextrose, protein, and branched chain amino acids.
- Take 2.5g of creatine with each meal containing starchy carbohydrates on workout days.
During a muscle gain program, we want to keep glycogen stores topped off. When using creatine with dextrose and amino acids, this may facilitate more glycogen and amino acids to be “sucked” into the muscles. The same thing happens for the 2.5g with each meal containing starchy carbs. As an added bonus, you are taking shots of creatine throughout the day to help block myostatin.
Use Creatine Monohydrate
This is the only creatine supplement that I will ever recommend. No supplement out there has as much research supporting it as good, old creatine monohydrate. Screw creatine ethyl ester and all the other types. Stick with plain, old, cheap creatine monohydrate. Defy me, and none of the above recommendations will work and you will have wasted your money.
After reading this article, I have a feeling that I have opened your eyes on how to use creatine properly and that everything makes more sense. Feel free to contact me or comment on this article if you have any questions.
Peace out Hombres.
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