Project Creatine

visual_infinity

Are we supposed to have 5 grams of creatine? I bought a 500g btch of creatine from www.zipvit.co.uk - the cheapest in vitamins and suplements, and it says in the first five days of use you take so many heaped spoonfuls per day,then after that one per day before training, but when i weigh a heaped spoonful, it is only about 2g, so what is the correct dose?? I did read tht the dosage of creatine from another firm was 5g per day, which is the most accurate???

Jonathan

ric_stern/RST

assuming that you don't compete in track sprint or similar races, i.e., you compete in RR, TT, MTB, etc. then creatine won't do anything for your performance except possibly make you slower.

Ric

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SniperX

hmmmz TT meaning it ll work for time trials? y slower? the water weight?

ric_stern/RST

it *won't* work for TTs (assuming you mean ones more than say 60-secs in duration). creatine helps very short repeated efforts, so has no effect on longer durations. As you gain weight with it and it doesn't increase sustainable power you'll generally slow down (e.g., uphill).

Ric

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visual_infinity

Well, I go for longer distance cycling (well by my stadards, I do 20-30 miles on long rides. This kind of sustained excercise on my legs is the kind of sustained exercise a body builder would be doing, exxcept with heaver stresses, so surely it must be coming in useful. What makes you think it would not? Why do you think it might make me slower?

Jonathan

2LAP

As Ric, suggests creatine may make you slower due to increases in body weight due to water retention. It will also make your wallet empty which might offset the increased bod weight.

Body building and cycling are very different. During endurance cycling the intensity is 'reletivly' low and effort sustained; during body building the intensity is often 'maximal' and for a limited time. Because of these differences endurance cycing uses mainly the aerobic energy system while body building type activities use anaerobic energy system (primeraly the 'ATP-PC' or 'alactic' sytem). As creatine 'helps' the ATP-PC system it may help body building but is very very unlikely to help endurance cycling. In fact the only type of cycling that it is likely to help are events where there are repeated short maximal sprints with some limited time for recovery.

The forces involved in cycling are very small when compared to strength training, in fact endurance cyclists don't need to be very strong at all.

Lab_Rat

Hi there everyone,

Yes the Lab Rat is still alive.

As an endurance athlete, I am sceptical that Creatine will give you a useful benefit. The weight-gain is certainly not ideal for a cyclist, although if you're really skinny and could do with some extra muscle mass, then go for it.

I have since been sponsored by a Nutritional Co, and your diet is certainly more important than the supplementation. MAke sure you're eating 3 full meals a day (breakfast, lunch and supper),
supplement that with three snacks in between (e.g. fruit, meal replacement shakes etc) and only then consider the supplementation. Use a good multivitamin to combat free radicals and perhaps magnesium & potasium if required for cramping etc.
I don't really see the need for creatine as a cyclist, but if you're doing intense 100m rides, then perhaps.

Just my 2 cents worth.

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visual_infinity

Well I could do with the extra strength to make me go faster, I need more strength to ride in the higher gears for longer, all the pros have much larger leg muscles than I do. Its not particularly expensive if you buy from www.zipvit.co.uk

Jonathan

ric_stern/RST

Jonathan,

you don't need more strength to go faster. You need a bigger aerobic capacity (i.e., VO2 max and LT). These are not improved by strength (unless you have a functional disability). The size of pro's legs is related to type i fibres, which are trained aerobically.

Ric

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visual_infinity

I have spoken to a guy today who is a body builder who reckons that the idea that creatine only hlps for anerobic excercise is a complete nonsense, do any of you know of any websites from respectable organisations to confirm or deny its effective use for a cyclist?

ric_stern/RST

If you do a search on Pub-Med, the national library of medicine, you can see all the abstracts to all the research. there's literally hundreds of them for creatine. If you review them, you'll see that creatine has no benefit for endurance cycling.

Ric

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http://www.cyclecoach.com

visual_infinity

Thanks Ric

2LAP

Thats interesting, as body building activities are mainly anaerobic and with the aerobic energy system only being used significantly during recovery. I would be interested in knowing why he thinks this is the case.

tomdavis80

Several problems with your study and with his study. The first is that there needs to be more control in the studies. Secondly, if you did it for only one week, that may not be enough time to get the effect, you have to sustain it.

One problem I saw with his study is that I would have preferred to see this study done in this way, for 30 days with no prior serious training for two months before, train normally with no creatine. Then take two months off and then try it with creatine and then measure the results against each other. I'd also strongly advise having IDENTICAL training plans and IDENTICAL routes for each day and have a power meter for both of those months. Then perhaps, one might get a decent and comparable measure of the improvements over the 30 days. Again, consistency is the key here. And I'd prefer to do it with someone who already has at least a few years in his legs so that the improvements in each phase won't be insanely fast unlike what you WILL get from a beginner and the beginner's first month will skew the second month with creatine.