Is it useful to drink creatine before strength training?

For most natural trainers who do not eat enough red meat and deep-sea fish in their daily diet, drinking creatine before strength training is useful, but this effect is not "miraculous drug level", and there are indeed many people who do not have any effect at all. There is no need to insist on it, and there is no need to kill it with a pole.

When I was working as a teaching assistant at a fitness studio two years ago, I met a member who was a programmer. He practiced strength four times a week and was stuck at the bench press limit of 70kg for almost three months. He would only add a spoonful of creatine after training when he remembered. Sometimes he would skip it if he forgot. Later I asked him to Half an hour before regular training, drink 3g of creatine with room-temperature mineral water. Do not add sparkling water or coffee. On the weight day of the third week, he directly pushed 4 75kg weights. He came down and clutched the bar and told me that the last push did not suddenly lose force like before.

But if you browse fitness forums, you will definitely come across a bunch of posts saying that creatine is an IQ tax. I used to know a fitness friend who lives in Hulunbuir. Beef and mutton are indispensable in every meal. He usually drinks creatine before training. The deadlift weight and number of sets are almost the same. He always laughs and says that the money he saves is worse than buying two more pounds of beef tendon. In fact, this difference is really normal. We ordinary people can only get about 1g of creatine from our diet every day, which is still a long way from the 3-5g required for muscle saturation. The spoonful before training can just fill up the reserve. The energy supply for short bursts of movement during training can keep up, and naturally it can handle one or two more sets of exhaustion. ； But for people who eat a lot of red meat, the creatine in their muscles is already close to saturation, and no matter how much they take supplements, it will overflow. Of course, drinking can’t make a difference.

There are also many new studies saying that in fact, as long as you regularly supplement 3-5g of creatine every day, whether you drink it before and after training or on an empty stomach in the morning, the long-term effects of building muscle and improving strength are not much different. The reason why many people think that drinking before training makes them feel better is simply because they hit the peak concentration of creatine during training. During the set, lactic acid accumulates slower, and the last two times are not easy to collapse, and the feeling is more intuitive.

But don’t expect to start cheating directly after drinking creatine. Last month, I met a newbie who dared to add 15kg to the bench press bar after drinking creatine for the first time. The second time he pushed, he was wobbly. Fortunately, there was someone protecting him so he didn’t hit his chest. To put it bluntly, it is an "energy buff" that can only help you push out the potential that you can already tap. If you paddle every training session and take a ten-minute break to watch short videos between sets, it will be useless no matter how much you drink. If you are prone to flatulence or diarrhea when drinking creatine, or if your kidney function itself is abnormal, you don’t have to drink it before training, or even take supplements. After all, compared to supplements, the core is to train properly and keep up with your diet.

If you really have to worry about when to drink it, just try it for two weeks. Drink it for a period before training and a period after training. Use it whenever you feel comfortable and have good strength. Supplements are originally meant to serve training, so you can’t follow the rigid rules on the Internet and dig into the details.