Creatine has long been a popular supplement in the bodybuilding community. Ironically, it’s role in strength training has not been as prevalent. Ironically, because one of the primary roles of creatine is in increasing strength. Although bodybuilders are stronger than untrained individuals, strength is purely a byproduct (albeit a positive by-product) of their aesthetic targets. In this post, I examine the benefits of Creatine supplementation for athletes who see increases in physical capacity as their primary outcome. Powerlifters, Olympic lifters, strongmen, short time domain track and field athletes and CrossFitters fit in this category.
But first a lesson in physiology as it pertains to creatine. Our primary aim is to do work – to create energy in the body to do… stuff. This ‘stuff’ (whatever it may be) almost always requires a muscular contractions. Muscular contractions create movement. Without movement we are severely limited in our capacity to ‘do work’. So how does creatine allow us to contract muscle?
Without going into irrelevant (in this context) details of Krebs cycles and mitochondrial reactions (though ‘Krebs Cycle’, ‘Pyruvate’ and ‘Acetyl Coenzyme A’ are good topics to pursue if you’re interested in taking things a bit deeper), what we basically want to do to kickstart the process of muscular contraction is to create ATP (adenosine triphosphate, take note… TRIphosphate. TRI = three, so three phosphate molecules). ATP is the primary transporter of ‘energy’ in the body which allows us to contract muscles. ATP creates this energy when it releases one of it’s phosphate molecules and becomes ADP (adenosine DIphosphate, di = two). So now we have all this ADP floating around with no capacity to generate muscular contractions. Enter creatine phosphate. The key here is ‘phosphate’. Creatine phosphate donates it’s phosphate to ADP, turning ‘di’ back into ‘tri’ and a passive compound back into a catalyst for muscle contraction. Phosphocreatine generates ATP at an exceptionally high rate, much faster than carbohydrates or fat (responsible for fueling less violent muscle contractions in longer time domains), and it doesn’t require oxygen to do so. Creatine therefore plays a (if not THE) major role in the explosive and substantial generation of strength, speed and power.
We want to make muscles contract harder and faster. If we can do this we can generate more strength, speed and consequently power. Remember, power = force x distance / time = work capacity. Based on this let’s make some well grounded assumptions:
- Greater work capacity is afforded by increased speed and strength.
- Speed and strength are maximised by improved muscular contractions.
- Muscular contractions are improved by creatine.
- Creatine creates higher work capacity.
Creatine is already present in the body. It’s stored in muscles, and as such, we tend to have a limited supply of creatine from the ‘muscles’ we eat (animals). Want we want to do, is cram as much creatine into our body as it can store (about 0.3 grams per kilogram of body weight). To be able fill up our creatine tanks however, the amount of food we must consume is highly excessive – up to 10kg of red meat every day. So without supplementation, we’re only partly filling the tanks. As a supplement, creatine is called ‘creatine monohydrate’.
So we know that creatine is vital in the construction of work capacity, and that it’s available in supplement form. Making the jump from knowing its chemical action to assuming a positive role of supplementation however is naïve. To make this claim, we can turn to the literature.
As expected from such a potentially powerful supplement, the research is considerable. It concludes (amongst other things) that:
- Creatine supplementation does in fact increase creatine in the body (Elevation of creatine in resting and exercised muscle of normal subjects by creatine supplementation, Long-term creatine intake is beneficial to muscle performance during resistance training).
- Creatine supplementation enhances muscular performance and allows individuals to work at higher intensities – resulting in the positive gains experienced from exercise at high intensity (Creatine supplementation enhances muscular performance during high-intensity resistance exercise).
- Creatine supplementation results in an increase in muscle mass (Long-term creatine intake is beneficial to muscle performance during resistance training).
- Creatine supplementation increases maximal strength by 20-25% (Long-term creatine intake is beneficial to muscle performance during resistance training).
- Creatine supplementation creates increased work capacity in pursuits not traditionally associated with strength, with increases in performance in running, cycling and jumping for efforts less than 60 seconds (Effect of oral creatine supplementation on jumping and running performance, Creatine supplementation enhances intermittent work performance).
- An increase in performance is seen equal in magnitude to the increase in the levels of creatine in the body from supplementation. This applies to both maximum torque (power) and total work capacity (Creatine ingestion favorably affects performance and muscle metabolism during maximal exercise in humans).
- Weightlifters experienced an increase in strength, muscle mass and muscle fibre size following creatine supplementation (Performance and muscle fiber adaptations to creatine supplementation and heavy resistance training).
The physiology is well understood, and the research is considerable. If nothing else, surely this lends support to the concept that creatine supplementation is worth exploring.
