Creatine

 What was the first thing that came to mind when you saw the subtitle “Creatine”? Gold’s Gym? Vascular big-men? Arnold? You are on the right track, but don’t worry. With this supplement, bulging quads and Popeye’s forearms won’t happen overnight. Read on to learn why purchasing a Goliath-sized jug of the powder might help your performance. 

 It’s Monday morning and you overslept! The most important business meeting of your life is today and you just might be late getting there. You splash water in your face, quickly get rid of your morning breath, throw on your wardrobe and dash out of the door. Phew, you’re here. Oh no…the elevators are out of order. You look for the stairs and you have ten flights to climb! What do you do? Sprint! What is happening physiologically during the first several seconds of your sprint? Even before you get to the second floor? 
 
In the exercise physiology world, we classify all exercise in terms of body energy systems. For example, going for an easy run? This energy system is aerobic. Four-minute sustained all-out intervals? This utilizes your anaerobic system. In the case of our stair climber, the first few seconds of the sprint classifies itself as the ATP/PCr system. Specifically, this system gives you immediate power (muscle contraction)! ATP is “adenosine triphosphate” and PCr is “phosphocreatine”. You may have heard of ATP in other training articles or even remember it from your high school or college science classes. Put simply, ATP is the energy force of a living cell. For our purposes today, it’s the driving force of the muscle cell. The “P” on the end of ATP is phosphate—because of the “tri” in adenosine triphosphate, there are three of them. This is what makes ATP special! Every time your muscle cells use ATP, one of the phosphate groups is torn off, now making the adenosine triphosphate, adenosine di (two) phosphate (ADP).  

 This is where creatine comes into play. During any extremely hard efforts (sprints, heavy weight lifting, or plyometrics), the ATP/PCr system is the first to respond. Our bodies naturally produce creatine in the liver and if you eat meat, you just found your other source of the supplement. We carry two versions of the molecule: free creatine and creatine bound to a phosphate group PCr. What the liver produces is free creatine and of the creatine found in our bodies, about 40% of it is free. However, it isn’t until creatine is converted to PCr within the muscle cells, does it become available to help recycle used ATP. 

Now! Let’s go back to our businessperson sprinting up the stairs to the meeting. What I didn’t tell you was that during the rush of the morning, there was a premade smoothie in the refrigerator that included (you guessed it) creatine! He somehow knew that he’d be dashing and dodging and depleting his creatine stores so the first thing he did when he awoke was gulp down his creatine smoothie. 
 
The result of this intelligent act was the increase in free and phosphorylated creatine by approximately 10-20%. As he is sprinting, his stores of ATP are turning into ADP and in order for the ADP to be recycled, it needs a phosphate group. Can you guess what comes to the rescue? That’s right! PCr! As a result of enzymatic reactions, phosphocreatine donates its phosphate group to ADP, thereby turning it back into ATP to be used again to contract the working muscles (seen in the equation above). Because of Businessman’s heightened creatine stores, he was able to sprint full gas to the 4^thfloor! Had he not chugged his smoothie, he would have been totally gassed by the 2^ndfloor. Six more flights, buddy. 

In this story, we learn a valuable lesson: call ahead to make sure the elevators are working. Just kidding. The lesson is that the ATP/PCr system can only last so long before we totally deplete ourselves of readily usable creatine.  But the good news is that with supplementation, we can delay depletion, which for some athletes becomes the difference between the top step of the podium and second place. 

Now, it’s important to remember that you won’t see results over night and there is a loading protocol that I suggest to those of you that are about to raid your local GNC. To start, begin with approximately 20 grams per day and divide that into four equal portions to take throughout the day. Do this for a full week. To maintain the supplementation, all you need is 3-5 grams per day. I should also mention that taking your creatine supplement with your protein supplement that has carbohydrates may enhance your body’s ability to utilize the dosage of creatine. 

What are the expected results?!

• Enhanced isometric strength 
• Lean mass gains and improvement in overall muscle strength and power
• Increased performance in high intensity exercise bouts lasting two minutes or less with GREATLY pronounced effects in exercise bouts lasting 30 seconds or less

The research shows that there are no negative health effects when supplementing long term (years) when you follow a prescribed loading protocol as seen above. If you are a vegetarian, you may see greater gains simply because you aren’t ingesting it regularly via lean or red meat. If you find that you gained a few pounds during the loading phase, 99% of the time it’s water retention, not fat. So no angry emails 😉 

Increase the Creatine!