[Closed] creatine

nothing like steroids, it helps fuel the muscle for working out. so helps you get more out of your gym session

can help aid, endurance an recovery in smaller doses, or muscle building in larger. as i understand it allows capiliaries to open up allowing a greater quantity of "stuff" to get to your muscles. It can have an unpleasant effect on yr bowels tho, worth tryin a few brands as some are better than others.....

I've tried it, didn't find it overly helpful, I found it just bloated me and didn't help much. I found protien shakes far more useful.

Have you been diagnosed creatine deficient?

I tried it a while back and noticed more 'brute strength' and endurance gains than without it. Beware, coffee and tea (and any coke) are out, they wash it out of your system.

It's banned in France as there is some evidence it may cause renal failure.

Also (according to the 'ever-reliable' Wikipedia) it may trigger asthma too.

On the whole, I'd avoid.

Andy

used it for about 18 months when i was weight training , gained 7-8 lbs in 4 months and a lot of strengh , you need to drink a lot of water 3-4lts a day . 3 months on then a month off , not great on the bowels to start with.

Used by loads of people for many years - it's fine! In my weight training days I found it bulked me up (water retention I think) a bit plus allowed me to train harder. I've never used it as a cyclist as the added bulk is not what I'd want now.

Used it for a few months, found it allowed me to train harder. Try it for a month. I presume you are already trianing though, if not I would train for a t least three months first to get your muscles and tendons used to training before you over stress them. Hope this helps?

Don't use it. It ADDS water retention as one of the side affects.

Great for body builders, powerlifters, sprinters, tennis players, bobbins for cyclists.

Beware, coffee and tea (and any coke) are out, they wash it out of your system.

I wonder what that means ?

bobbins for cyclists.

Helps with SS ultimate leg strength, but too many side effects for my liking.

Coffeeking- I came to that conclusion as well on the sideaffects.

No thanks.

Coffeeking- I came to that conclusion as well on the sideaffects.

Nothing compared to steriods.

No, but still a lot compared to just getting on with it and using protein drinks to help speed up recovery and re-building.

Idiots use Steroids = Buy now/pay later.
😆

I used it extensively back in 1999 when I was doing a lot of karate training - so mostly power stamina, pure power type stuff. It made a huge difference to my training, but I was really going for it then, training maybe four times a week for two hours a time.

It basically works like this:

Your body uses ATP, adenine tri-phosphate, as an energy source. ATP is metabolised to ADP - adenine di-phosphate, i.e. in the process of liberating energy, a molecule of phosphate is lost, so tri become bi.

ATP is hard to make from scratch though so rather than make more ATP from scratch, the body recycles the ADP back into ATP.

Creatine phosphate is the substance the body uses to facilitate that regeneration by that substance donating a phosphate molecule to AFP, so having more of it helps to increase the rate at which that regeneration process works, hence why it feels like a power boost. The waste product is creatinine and is filtered out of the body via the kidneys.

Creatine phosphate is thus a naturally occurring substance in the body. By taking supplements, you only increase the bodies load. Supplements are usually made from things like the shells off of shell fish IIRC.

One of the side effects is that the body retains more water in the muscle tissue. The presence of more water in the muscles helps them to work harder, but it can result in dehydration as there is less water in the rest of your body (I was never very sure exactly how that worked).

My mother is a kidney failure specialist and was always worried about the side effects of high levels of excess creatinine in me and what that might do to my kidneys. I only used it for about 6 months, though in that time, it made a massive difference. One of the other side effects was that I trained far harder than normal and ended up injuring myself as a result.

For endurance type sports like cycling, it’s of little value though.

good for weight training especially short intense power stuff, small reps. I take a bit 2-3 caps before going to the gym and I am convinced it improves performance.

there must be benefits for cycling, increased leg and upper body strength should be positive

increases weight due to water retention.

Idiots use Steroids

I think it depends on the quantities - worked out well for Arnold anyway.

there must be benefits for cycling, increased leg and upper body strength should be positive

increases weight due to water retention.

I smell contradiction.

I think it depends on the quantities - worked out well for Arnold anyway.

Possibly, although he may have testes the size of peanuts, kidneys like pickled walnuts and a fried liver.

Actually that sounds like a recipe..

Cheers for the advice ,think i,ll just do some training and consume some protein supps and see how i go.

I used it for a bit - quite effective but drink lots more water than usual. My wife was also suspicious (she did an Anatomy degree) of it's potential damage to the liver.

I'd stick to a sensible diet with plenty of protein - I did and gained three stone in under 2 years. All healthy weight.

[i]I think it depends on the quantities - worked out well for Arnold anyway. [/i]

I'm not so sure, look at his head.

[img] [/img]

I think it depends on the quantities - worked out well for Arnold anyway.

This is the lad with the classic problems of Steriod abuse we are talking about.

I did read of some research that suggested a regime completely different to that of bodybuilders/power athletes etc could be beneficial to endurance athletes. It was [i]something like[/i] a small amount daily rather than the loading that power people do, but I cannot remember precisely and Ic an't be bothered to google it 🙂

"increases weight due to water retention"
"I smell contradiction"

not really because the weight drops off pretty quickly when you stop taking it and the strength stays.

It's use is pretty common amongst climbers for training, since it increases power endurance (ie. you can keep pulling harder for longer, and thus get more out of your training session).
They tend to stop taking it before competitions / hard routes though since the water retention adds weight which is no good obviously.

For cyclists? I don't think there is much advantage for normal endurance stuff, but for sprints/track maybe?

I used it back in 1991/2 when it first came into popular use within British Cycling. We had to load for a week then take a normal amount for two weeks then none for a week, then load again etc etc etc. We were told by Peter Keen to take 1grm per kg body weight once a day on the normal weeks and to triple that dosage on the loading weeks. The only difference I noticed was that I was super grumpy on the normal weeks and bad tempered, @rsey and aggressive on the loading weeks. I gave up after six months of use and went back to eating more red meat.

We did quite a bit of testing with creatine when i was at uni, the placebo results were very similar to those who were taking it. I think we came to the conclusion that people performed better because they thought they were taking creatine and so should be. I remember the side effect not being nice. I can't remember much more just now i have a scrambled head from white wine and a french lesson. Lucy

[url= http://www.torqfitness.co.uk/news/torq-raw ]HERE[/url]

Did I read somewhere that you must combine it with Vit C for it to be effective? Might have been the Torq web site.

I've got a 24hr event coming up so I'll give the Torq powder a go and see what it might do, if anything. I'll report back any findings.

scrambled head from white wine and a french lesson. Lucy

Mon Dieu! That really conjured up some saucy images in my mind.

I find that dihydrogen oxide causes water retension as well.

Macavity - it doesn't... if you drink water you'll pee it out - water rentention is when you drink water and DON'T pee it out - for example if you've been eating a lot of salty food.

... and I just thought I was a little chubby - now I know it's water retention & not fat 😉