When you’re aiming to grow muscle or increase your performance, chances are, you will need something to support your goal. Many products offer a miracle, however, nothing beats creatine. Being a safe and well-researched supplement, here is how creatine monohydrate can support your performance1.
Creatine – its function in the body
Creatine is an amino acid; however, it doesn’t make up protein in our body. Instead, it plays a role in supplying our muscles with energy.
When you work out, your cells use ATP, adenosine triphosphate, which is your cell’s energy currency. When the energy from ATP is used up, it becomes ADP, adenosine diphosphate2. To ensure your muscles are performing well, your cells need to be remaking ATP constantly, so that your muscles have enough energy to carry out movement.
The creatine in our muscles has an additional phosphate in it and is stored in the form of phosphocreatine. It’s helpful to think of it as being charged – with the phosphate, the phosphocreatine has a lot of energy. When ATP is used up, the phosphocreatine can give its phosphate to ADP, therefore, remaking ATP and giving the cell new energy. The resultant creatine can then be “recharged” and reused to recharge more ADP molecules3.
Therefore, supplementing with creatine increases the amount of creatine in the muscle, restoring energy quicker. Creatine also changes cell signals, making cells produce molecules that increase cell growth4.
What does supplementing creatine do?
Creatine is a supplement that can help you reach multiple goals and support your training, whether you’re a frequent gym-goer or a seasoned sports-player5:
- Improved performance in sprints, whether a single sprint, or multiple sprints
- Bigger and stronger muscles through more hormones that promote musclebuilding6
- Ability to do more work7
- Better recovery
- Improved aerobic performance
- Better ability to make glycogen8
Who can benefit from creatine?9
When starting to supplement creatine, you’re likely wondering whether it can help you fulfill your ambitions. Those that play football and rugby, lift weights to build muscle, do combat sport or enjoy track and field, creatine will help increase your muscle mass.
For those interested in team sports like basketball, soccer, volleyball, and handball, or those that play tennis, you can benefit from the increased energy that creatine supplements can give you. Those that are engaged in water sports, swimming, combat and skiing, will appreciate the improved ability of muscles to contract.
To get the most out of a creatine supplement, pair it with carbohydrates to increase its uptake by your muscles10. Those with low levels of muscle creatine and more fast-twitch muscle fibers may benefit most from creatine11. Fast-twitch muscle fibers help with explosive movements, like those during sprints12.
How is creatine used?
Our body produces around a gram of creatine every day. We get another gram through diet, mainly meat, which is why vegetarian and vegan athletes may have a lower level of creatine13. When supplementing creatine, there are two techniques you can use.
You use a loading phase, where you take around 20g of creatine each day split evenly, taking 5 grams four times during the day. Then, the dose gets decreased to up to 5 grams of creatine per day for however long you’d like to take creatine for14.
Another technique is to use a single dose of around 3-6g of creatine each day. You’ll need to wait longer for the results to appear though – somewhere around 21-28 days15.
To increase your performance, look no further than Maxler creatine. Maxler 100% Golden Creatine provides 5g of creatine monohydrate per serving. The product contains only CreaSolv creatine, which is a form of creatine that is more bioavailable and does not get broken down by the acidity in the stomach. This allows you to get 100% of the active ingredient with no extras.
