If you take creatine, you probably asked yourself before,
“when is the best time to actually take it?” Well, a new study might offer more insight on this
question for our popular supplemental friend, and the answer is much simpler than you might think.
Before that, I wanna give a big shoutout to the amazing team of Examine.com.
Examine is one of the best resources for nutrition and supplement information on
the internet, and one of my top resources for many of my videos, including this one.
The big news is that Examine just launched their very own channel right here on YouTube, and they
were kind enough to ask your favorite triangular bro to help them with some of their content.
I cannot thank Examine enough for not only this humbling opportunity,
but also for all the wonderful knowledge they’ve provided me over the years.
It is 100% my honor to represent them in their new venture.
Check out Examine’s very first video in the link in the description, especially if you wanna see
more of my beautiful face I know you love. Examine’s awesome. Check them out.
Now back to creatine. I wouldn’t be surprised
if most of you believe that the best time to take creatine is right before your workouts.
Logically, it makes sense since creatine is considered an ergogenic aid,
which other commercially available ergogenic aids, like caffeine,
are indeed best ingested before exercise. It also seems reasonable since we often find
creatine included in pre-workout supplements, usually as a bonus
add-on so supplement companies can justify charging you even more ridiculous prices.
But, even though creatine is often marketed as something to take before exercise,
the scientific evidence never really came to the same conclusion.
And when we look at this new study, it seems that the notion of pre-workout
creatine consumption might be leaning a bit too much into bro science territory.
In this 8-week randomized, double-blinded trial, 34 college athletes, both men and women,
were given 5 grams of creatine monohydrate either 1 hour before or 1 hour after resistance training,
as well as 5 grams on non-training days. They were tested for changes in body composition,
muscle strength, and muscle endurance with the goal, obviously, to observe differences in these
measurements between the two creatine timings. Before we dive into the results, as always,
a disclaimer: This is only one study. Simply treat it as what it is, and that’s
a SINGLE piece of information among an OCEAN of information,
so we should never make drastic changes to our fitness strategies based on one study.
We gotta take all the data into consideration as well as our personal experiences to make the best
personal fitness decisions. Now, the results:
After 8 weeks, the trial showed that taking creatine 1 hour before training yielded no
statistically relevant differences compared to taking creatine 1 hour
after training in all the measured outcomes. In other words, whether you take your creatine
before or after your workout, the findings suggest that it probably won’t make much of a difference.
Now there are some things, like limitations, to consider in this study.
One, there was a big compliance issue regarding dietary intake reporting.
Those pesky college kids skipped their homework of logging their food intake more
often than the researchers liked. It’s not the biggest problem,
since getting enough creatine from food alone is difficult for most diets anyway,
but still something worth mentioning. And two, the study results showed that
muscle endurance, measured by taking moderately heavy weights to failure, did not improve in
either creatine group, which is surprising since previous research abundantly shows creatine
generally benefits this type of training the most. Now, this is not a limitation of the study itself,
but more of an eyebrow raiser and also a good reminder of the importance of taking
all the scientific data into consideration rather than relying on a single study.
And when we do take all the data into consideration, the main findings in this
new study only reinforce what we’ve observed in past research, and that is that the time
you take your creatine doesn’t matter much as long as you take in on a regular basis.
So what all this ultimately means for you is that whether you take creatine before,
after, in the morning, at night, whenever, don’t worry, your gains will be just fine.
Once again, check out and subscribe to Examine.com’s new YouTube channel,
especially if you enjoy videos like this one breaking down health and fitness research.
They’re kind of an expert at it. Their first video is on how screens
might hurt your sleep, and features content from yours truly, so make sure you leave
a comment on the video letting them know how much you looove your triangular bro.
Other than that, If you enjoyed this video,
please give it an ergogenic thumbs up and share it with your creatine-loving friends.
As always, thank you for watching and DON’T FORGET TO GET YOUR PROTEIN.