Sports Nutrition Bible

[ono]

Creatine

So i talked about Phosphocreatine earlier on. I explained that PC consisted of a phosphagen molecule and creatine. So,although most of you have probably supplemented or at least heard of creatine, i'd like to give you a brief breakdown of what the compound actually is.

So....What is Creatine?

It's basically a compound that's made naturally in our bodies to supply energy. It's mainly produced in the liver from 3 amino acids:- glycine, arginine and methionine. From the liver it's transported in the blood to the muscle cells where it is combined with phosphate to make phosphocreatine. Just like magic.

The muscle cells turn over around 2-3g of creatine a day. Once PC is broken down into ATP (energy, remember) it can be recycled into PC or converted into a naother substance called creatinine, which is then removed via the kidney in the urine (pee )

Creatine is typically obtained (in diet) from beef, fish and pork. The typical person stores around 120g of creatine. 60-70% is stored as PC while the remainder is sotred as free creatine.

Supplementation

While i'm on the subject, i might aswell go into the supplementation of creatine. I'm sure most of you have tried creatine monohydrate before, or CEE maybe...Probably with decent results.

The most common course of action is to saturate your muscles with a loading phase of creatine, followed by a maintenance phase. This method is effective, but it's not actually the best way of doing things. In fact it's quite a costly way of getting creatine into your muscles.

What should i do then?

Seen as though around two-thirds of this creatine (20g per day) actually ends up in your urine (wee) with only the remaining one-third ending up in your muscle cells.

To reape maximum benefits of creatine supplementation, a better idea would be to take smaller doses spaced throughout the day. The key is to try to slow down the absorption from the gut. This gives the maximum chance of all the creatine ending up in your muscle cells and not in your urine. To do this, try taking only 6g daily (instead of the 20g - for the loading phase), but instead of consuming it at once, in shake format, sprinkle it on your food. Sprinkle 1g at a time over the course of 6 meals which would give you a total of 6g per day. This will actually produce effects equivalent to taking 20g a day. After that, maintenance should only be 2g per day.

Not only will this method save you money, it will also produce less water retention which can only be a good thing. This loading strategy can be repeated every 8-12 weeks.

Cycle length

The maximum effectiveness, it's proposed that creatine is best taken is cycles lasting 3-5 months, followed by one month off cycle.