Full transcript of the episode:
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of The Fuelled Triathlete. I’m your host, Andrea. Today we are starting off a series of podcast episodes, all about supplements, and we are going to be talking about different supplements each week. What are the pros and cons, if this is something that’s actually worth it and can improve your health and performance as an endurance athlete.
So there’s a lot of hype around supplements and a lot of marketing that goes into it. So we want to break down what’s worth your money and what’s worth it to be actually to be actually taking. So today we are going to be talking all about creatine. And if this is something that can help improve your performance as an endurance athlete.
Before I get into that, I did just want to talk about that next week. I am going to be hosting a masterclass all about carb bloating. And the price is going to be $30 Canadian. And with that, you’re getting an hour live training with me. All about how to carb load properly. So how to create your own carbo-loading plan.
What are the best and worst foods for carb loading? How much carbs you need, how long you should be carb bloating, like, you know, for example, how many days you should be. Carbo-loading. We’re going to talk about traveling with carb loading. So what you should have if you’re eating out at restaurants. What foods do you can pack with you what you can have in a hotel room.
So it’s going to be a live training. There’s going to be time for question and answers. So if you have a race coming up, that’s over an hour and a half, you can benefit from carb loading. Carb loaning has been shown to improve your performance by two to 4%, meaning it can take two to 4% off of your finished time when you’re carb loading properly, because you’re not going to hit the wall and it’s going to help delay that onset of fatigue and overall improve your performance. So carbo-loading is much more than just a big pasta dinner the night before a race, or just trying to cram in as much carbs as possible in those days, leading up to the race. There is a way to do it properly, so you will learn all about how to do that.
And like I said, get the tips, the tools to be able to put together your own carb loading plan. If you cannot make it live, you will have access to the replay that you can watch when it’s convenient for you. If you do want to sign up, then you can go to the show notes of the podcast.
So if you’re listening on apple or Spotify, in the show notes you’re going to find a link for more details about the masterclass and be able to sign up. So I hope to see you there.
Okay. So back to today’s episode all about creatine. I think it’s important to talk a little bit about supplements before we get into actually talking about creatine, but just supplements in general and just making sure that you vieew supplements properly.
So supplements are not meant to be a magic pill or to just change the game for you. Especially if your diet is not well-balanced. So really supplements are meant to compliment or enhance your diet. I always recommend to my clients that first let’s focus on your daily diet, it should be foundational with whole foods so that you get all the essential nutrients that you need. Calories macronutrients.
And once you’re getting all of that and adding on layers of sports nutrition, like pre and post-workout nutrition and fueling during training, then you can look at adding supplements.
So you always want to look into the research again, there can be many claims that can make supplements seem very attractive. They may seem like the magic pill, but that’s not always the case. You want to ask yourself, is it worth it. Weigh the pros and cons. Weigh the cost of that supplements and the side effect.
So we are going to be going over all of that today. Today, we’re going to talk about what creatine is exactly, where you can get it. What does it do in the body? What are the possible benefits? Where can it actually improve your performance?
And how does that relate to us as triathletes and runners? And we’re going to talk about, you know, if you do want to take a supplement like creatine, then what kind doses you want to take. So let’s get into it. Creatine is a substance that occurs naturally in the body.
It’s made up of different amino acids and most of the creatine in our body is found in our muscles. It’s stored in our muscles, in the form of something called phospho creatine. So there’s phosphates attached to this creatine and the benefit of creatine is that it’ it helps our body produce energy during high intensity exercise and heavy lifting. So when we need to generate quick energy, when again, we’re lifting heavy, hitting a PR, we’re doing a high intensity sprint, something that takes about 10 seconds. You know, our max effort, the body will convert this phospho creatine to create ATP, which is used for energy.
So the more creatine that our body has, the faster that it can create this ATP and keep up with that energy demand during high intensity exercise or heavy lifting. So this is one of three energy systems that our body uses. There’s an energy system for this very high intensity, very short duration exercise.
Then there’s another and energy system for somewhere that’s in the middle. And then we have our aerobic or endurance energy system that requires oxygen. This is what our body uses when we are exercising for multiple hours at a time.
Our body can make creatine. That’s one place where we’re getting it. We’re also getting creatine from our diet. So in poultry, meat or seafood, and then we can also get creatine from supplements. While our body can make it, and while we can get it from diet, we can’t really get that high level that we need to really saturate our muscles with creatine, unless we supplement.
You need to supplement with creatine to increase the stores of those phospho creatine or that stored form of energy in the cells. And this helps your body produce more of that high energy molecule ATP. So with that said, when we look at the benefits of creatine and what it does, it helps with that sprinting, high intensity exercise.
When you think of creatine, you might think of muscle-building and weightlifting. It can enhance your adaptations to resistance training, meaning it can help gain muscular power and strength. And it’s not that the creatine itself in and of itself does that. But what creatine does is because it helps you make more ATP.
It provides you with the ability to be able to lift heavier. And you’re giving your body that stimulus, that it needs to be able to build muscle. So that’s one important thing to keep in mind. If you just take creatine, it’s not necessarily just gonna itself cause you to build muscle. You have to combine that creatine with the heavy strength training and as well the nutrition habits that come along with building muscle consuming enough calories. Getting enough protein and that. So again, we also see because of the energy system that it helps with, it helps with very short duration, intermittent high intensity exercise, like a hundred meter sprints things that you can only keep up for for so long. You know, 10 seconds. There is also some emerging evidence that creatine can help with brain health and cognition.
I mentioned earlier that our muscles store creatine, but we can also store creatine in our brain. And when we increase those brain creating stores, it may help improve cognition and memory, especially in aging adults and during times where we may be sleep deprived.
We need a bit more research to show, but it may have a beneficial role on bone health. And helping keep our bones strong..
So you may be wondering how does this relate to endurance performance? And, you know, if we think about. You know, how much sprinting are we actually doing when we’re training?
However, if we think about a race you’re probably rarely ever just re maintaining one steady pace. Throughout the race depending on changes in elevation, how the course is designed or. You know, if you see someone close ahead of you that you want to sprint past, you’re probably, you may have multiple surges at different times within a race.
And it’s, at those times that creatine may have that helpful performance benefit for you when you’re going or having these quick surges. Sprint’s to the finish. That’s recreating comes in.
The other times where for endurance athlete it may be beneficial is if you are an endurance athlete who is strength training.
So if you are following a strength training plan, that is progressive and it’s designed to help you build muscle, then creatine can help you at that time.
So the important thing to think about as an endurance athlete is, when you look at the bigger picture and you look at your year, you’re going to have different training phases and different training cycles throughout the year. So there’s a time where you are lifting heavy. Maybe it’s not usually very close to race.
And, but if you are looking to lift, lift heavy, build some strength, build some muscle at that phase of your training, may be a time to take creatine.
There may also be times in your training cycle where you do have some high intensity training. So you are including some more sprints or high intensity cycling or running or swimming, and there is some potential to if you’re taking creatine at that time that you can get those training adaptations and performance benefits when you’re taking creatine at that time. The other thing to consider, if you’re taking creatine all throughout the year and close to a race is creatine can come with a bit of weight gain in the form of water retention because our body will store more water as we store more creatine.
Certain populations of endurance athletes may benefit from taking creatine.
So older endurance athletes who are experiencing some muscle mass loss, taking creatine may help prevent that loss, especially if you are taking that in combination with some strength training and then women as well, potentially, after the age of 40, especially our muscle mass starts to decline when we get into perimenopause and menopause and post-menopause. If you are looking to build some muscle mass, then you may want to look at taking creatine at these phases within your training cycle. So to summarize when it comes to how an endurance athlete may benefit, it’s not that it’s necessarily going to have the benefit on your performance in that endurance zone of training.
But if you want to take it at a time where you’re trying to build muscle or where you’re doing some high intensity, high volume training then creatine can help you get some benefit in developing your muscular power, muscular speed. And then when you come to race time, because you’ve done that training, you’ve had creatine to help you optimize that training.
Then when it comes into race time, you have better performance when you’re sprinting or where were you doing some surges in your pace throughout.
So any side effects of creatine. Creatine has been shown for some people to cause GI issues or gastrointestinal issues. So for some that may be in the form of constipation for some that may be diarrhea. It may go away as you continue to take it. But that’s just something to potentially watch out for. Doesn’t necessarily happen to everyone.
And there is also some weight gain that usually happens, in the form of water weight. So when we store creatine in our muscles, we also store water as well.
I did want to come back to what I said earlier when I was talking about different populations of people who may benefit from creatine. Something that I did forget to mention is that vegan endurance athletes may benefit from this. Because if we think that a one source of creatine is going to be from our diet, vegans or vegetarians are not necessarily always eating red meat, poultry, fish.
If you are someone that wants to try creatine, so one thing to keep in mind, it is a very well-researched supplement. It is generally safe when it’s taken as directed in healthy individuals and, relatively inexpensive.
So it’s something to possibly try out. I would say if you have a race coming up, don’t some try something new within a couple months before that race, try it first, maybe in the off season if you’re doing some strength training, or just to see how you tolerate it.
That would just be my suggestion.
So what to look for ?There’s different forms of creatine, but I would say take a creatine monohydrate and something to look for as well is, On a supplement we’ll have a badge or symbol on it that says informed choice.
This means that that batch of supplements has been, third-party tested to make sure that there’s no cross-contamination with any banned substances.
This is especially important if you may be going through some testing for banned substances, or you just want to make sure about the quality and the safety of your supplement.
There’s two different ways to take creatine. If you want to try it, there’s one where you have a loading phase and one where you’re you’re skipping that loading phase. If you maybe are more sensitive to stomach issues or you do want to avoid some extra weight gain then you may want to avoid this loading phase, but basically this loading phase just means that you’re taking a higher level of creatine within the first five days before you get to the maintenance dose, just so that you’re loading your muscle creatine stores more quickly.
So a loading phase means taking five grams of creatine at four different times within the day. This may come with about a one to 3% weak gain due to water retention after that five days. You’re then following that up with about three to five grams of creatine daily. The other method is just to start taking at the maintenance dose.
So it’s taking three to five days for at least 28 days continuously. It’s a slower buildup to getting to loading your muscle stores and to actually starting to see those benefits. But it just may be better tolerated.
Creatine should be something that you take daily and not just on the days that you’re training. And you do want to add it to cold liquids before you consume it. Taking creatine with carbohydrates may promote the uptake of creatine with your muscles. So if you do want to have it with a meal, like with your recovery meal, post-training. Or mix it into a drink that contains carbohydrates, like a sports drink or some juice then that’s another way to be able to take it and to increase the absorption. If you do find a supplements that you want to use, there’s usually some instructions as well on there. But in general, it’s about three to five grams of creatine per day.
Okay. So that’s all I have to say about creatine. If you have any other questions. You can send me a message, but I hope that helps and give you a little bit more insight into this supplement.
Stay tuned because the next couple of weeks, we are going to be talking about different supplements. We’re going to talk about branch chain amino acids, caffeine, beta alanine, beet juice, and again, open to other suggestions of other supplements you want to learn about.
So you can send me a message.
If you’re on Instagram, you can find me @andreadietitian and just a reminder too, about the carb loading masterclass coming up next week. If you are someone who’s looking to do something to enhance your endurance performance, then carb loading has been shown to be able to do that.
So if you have a race coming up. Then make sure that you sign up for this masterclass to learn about how to do carb loading properly. Thanks so much. And I really appreciate you guys listening to the podcast. If you could share this with your fellow triathletes and training buddies, that would be great just to help us find help more people find the podcast. Thanks and have a great day!