After a workout, your body will need to replenish its energy stores as well as your recently reduced creatine stores. Your body is also generally more responsive to absorption in the postworkout state making it an ideal time to supplement.
Related: Best Post Workout Supplements. Fitness and Nutrition Expert, Getting Fit. There is a short window of time approx 30 minutes right after your workout where cellular uptake of nutrients is maximized. This is the best time to use a creatine monohydrate supplement. Related: Best Tasting Protein Powders. Fitness Expert Owner, Whole Intent. Since creatine provides your muscles with the energy you need to perform intense workouts, the best time to take creatine is before your workout.
When you ingest the creatine roughly 30 minutes prior to your workout, it will supply you with a burst of energy throughout your workout and keep your muscles going at a high intensity. However, it is also worth noting that the effectiveness of the creatine is dependent on your diet.
If you eat meat with every meal, then the creatine may not have as significant of an impact on your workout. Owner, NG Nutra. This extra work then causes the body to recuperate at a faster rate yielding greater muscle mass and strength gains. Interestingly creatine has no effect on aerobic activities as the body uses energy a bit differently with aerobic training.
Related: 13 Best Fitness Books. Creatine has been available since the early s and has an excellent safety record. Creatine fuels the production of cellular ATP energy in moving muscles, which in turn drives more intense exercise and produces better exercise results. From that aspect, the claim that creatine enhances muscle and strength gains makes sense.
However, creatine also seems to impact muscle growth more directly by stimulating protein synthesis. Via the promotion of protein synthesis, creatine seems to support greater exercise-induced enhancement of muscle mass and strength. Once your primary energy reserves—creatine, glycogen, etc. While some lactic acid buildup is to be expected with a successful workout, too much may be detrimental to your performance and gains. Especially under conditions of mild cognitive decline and impairment, creatine supplementation seems to improve certain aspects of cognitive performance and mental energy.
However, even under conditions of healthy cognition, creatine seems to boost performance. Creatine enhances muscle growth and strength gains, buffers lactic acid accumulation, and boosts cognitive performance—and it does all this as a result of long-term supplementation, meaning you have to take creatine for a while before really noticing its benefits.
Which begs the question: does it matter when you take creatine or is simply getting enough creatine daily all that matters? Well, first and foremost, getting enough creatine daily is fundamentally important to its success.
However, some research does suggest that taking creatine immediately before or after working out seems to provide significant anabolic advantages over taking creatine long before or long after exercise. While this supports the post-workout timing of creatine supplementation, the key thing seems to be to take your creatine close to when you exercise—both pre- and post-exercise.
Now that you know what creatine does, why you should take it, and when you should take it, the question remains: how much creatine should you take?
Several factors go into determining the creatine dosage that works for you, including your total body weight, muscle mass composition, fitness goals, and much, much more. However, generally speaking, the average recommended creatine dosage is g creatine daily, whether taken all at once or distributed throughout the day. You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar. Correspondence to Jose Antonio. VC and JA contributed significantly to all aspects of this study. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript.
This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. Reprints and Permissions. Antonio, J. The effects of pre versus post workout supplementation of creatine monohydrate on body composition and strength. J Int Soc Sports Nutr 10, 36 Download citation. Received : 09 May Accepted : 10 July Published : 06 August Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:.
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Download PDF. Abstract Background Chronic supplementation with creatine monohydrate has been shown to promote increases in total intramuscular creatine, phosphocreatine, skeletal muscle mass, lean body mass and muscle fiber size.
Conclusions Creatine supplementation plus resistance exercise increases fat-free mass and strength. Introduction Chronic supplementation with creatine has been shown to increase lean body mass and enhance exercise performance [ 1 — 10 ]. Resistance training protocol All subjects followed a periodized, split-routine bodybuilding training regimen geared primarily for skeletal muscle hypertrophy. Food diary, workout log, body composition Subjects provided a hour diet recall on one random day on week 1, 2, 3, and 4 as determined by the investigators.
Exercise performance assessment Subjects performed a 1 repetition maximum lifts 1-RM on the bench press. Results Twenty-two subjects were initially recruited for this investigation. Table 1 Body composition and strength Full size table. Table 2 Magnitude-based inference results Full size table.
Figure 1. Full size image. Figure 2. Table 3 Dietary intake Full size table. Discussion The results from this study suggest that consuming creatine monohydrate post exercise may be superior to consuming it pre exercise with regards to improving body composition i.
References 1. Article PubMed Google Scholar PubMed Google Scholar View author publications. About this article Cite this article Antonio, J. Copy to clipboard. Contact us Submission enquiries: Access here and click Contact Us General enquiries: info biomedcentral. You can take creatine on rest days, but the timing is less important than on days you work out. The reason for taking creatine on rest days is to keep the creatine content of your muscles high.
Studies into this have found mixed results. Some studies such as this one suggest taking creatine with carbs can help boost effectiveness for building muscle, but others suggest that this has no effect.
Nutritionists suggest spreading your creatine dosage out throughout the day and combining with a meal with carbs where possible — and drinking plenty of water.
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