The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast by CTS

Creatine: What Cyclists Need To Know To Benefit From Creatine Supplementation

• CTS • Season 5 • Episode 279

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OVERVIEW
Creatine is one of the most researched supplements available, it's safe to consume, and it has been receiving renewed interest in endurance cycling. Although it's not incredibly useful for improving low-intensity aerobic performance, it can be beneficial for high-intensity efforts in training and competition, may have cognitive benefits and some recovery benefits. In "Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast" style, Coach Adam Pulford provides the need-to-know information about creatine for endurance cyclists in this 18-minute episode.

TOPICS COVERED

  • What creatine is and what it does in the body
  • How much creatine athletes need and when to supplement
  • What types of activity are enhanced by high levels of creatine in the muscles
  • Creatine's influence on the brain: cognition and concussion recovery 
  • Drawbacks to creatine supplementation
  • Creatine for vegan and vegetarian athletes

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HOST
Adam Pulford has been a CTS Coach for nearly two decades and holds a B.S. in Exercise Physiology. He's participated in and coached hundreds of athletes for endurance events all around the world.

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SPEAKER_00:

From the team at CTS, this is the Time Crunch Cyclist Podcast, our show dedicated to answering your training questions and providing actionable advice to help you improve your performance, even if you're strapped for time. I'm your host, Coach Adam Pulford, and I'm one of the over 50 professional coaches who make up the team at CTS. In each episode, I draw on our team's collective knowledge, other coaches, and experts in the field to provide you with the practical ways to get the most out of your training and ultimately become the best cyclist that you can be. Now, on to our show. My short answer is it depends, but generally speaking, sure. Especially if you compete in races with sprint finishes, full gas moments, or you just enjoy doing hard group rides or training sessions with high intensity efforts. But if you're not already maximizing your aerobic training volume or your missing training sessions, please don't think that this is going to make up for all of that. And if you're more of an ultra athlete, like a 200-mile gravel racer or 100-mile ultra runner, creatine won't give you a performance boost at all. However, it could provide some cognitive benefit and some health benefit to almost anyone, especially vegans. I'm Coach Adam Pulford. This is a Time Crunch Cyclist, the podcast that takes complicated topics and boils them down to short, actionable advice. Today we'll be talking about supplementing with creatine monohydrate for endurance athletes. Now, this is a topic I covered back in 2023, before creatine was getting super hyped, again, amidst all the popular influencer types out there. And for some reason, I'm seeing it everywhere right now, on podcasts, in my feeds, and hearing from you, our listeners, asking if you should be taking it. My advice will be the same now as then. And yes, there are some direct and indirect benefits for the right endurance athlete, and it's a pretty cheap supplement. So it gets the coach AP stamp of approval if you meet that criteria. But let's talk about some disclaimers first. I am not a doctor or a dietitian, so take my advice as a performance coach and curious investigator of supplements with over 20 years of helping athletes navigate some decisions like this. Number two, if you want to hear from a great dietitian certified to give professional advice like this, listen to my episode with Nicole Rubenstein, which is called Creatine for the Time Crunch Cyclist, and that's episode number 161. There we dive deeper into the why, how, when, and all things about creatine. Now, third, today I'll be providing you with some cliff notes of that discussion and also share what I have learned since. And I'll give my best advice on the intersection of training, performance, and supplements. So let's dive in. When it comes to supplements, many people think or want to think that there is a magic bullet or pill that will help them increase fitness or performance. Nobody likes the dull, boring answer, which is it takes hard work, good rest, and time to develop fitness and performance. But that is the secret, if there ever was one. And I want everyone to know that my best advice before taking any supplement is to start with a healthy diet of natural foods, consume macronutrients in the proper amounts that match your energy demands, and have excellent sleep habits. If you do all that, plus really good training and resting habits, you're doing 90%, maybe 95% of what it takes to get fit and increase your performance. So if you're doing all of that, and if you're curious about supplementation, we can now talk about creatine. The original question back in 2023 was what are the best supplements for an endurance athlete to increase their performance? And I came up with these five things. Number one, processed carbohydrates in the two to one or one to point eight ratio of glucose to fructose. That's a whole I mean I've done tons of podcasts on that, but that's that's number one. Number two, caffeine, number three, creatine, number four, beta's or beetroot, and number five, beta-alanine, which are that's different than beta's. Many argue that processed carbohydrate is not a supplement, but in my opinion, and if you think about all the powders, potions, and processed enhanced food items out there, it's definitely in the realm of supplements. Plus, compared to water alone in high-intensity time trials, race scenarios, and peer-reviewed research papers, increased exogenous carbohydrate definitely increases performance. And it's the number one supplement we all use. Technically speaking. So if you've been living under a rock for the past five years and that like just rocked your world, uh go back and listen to any of my episodes on carbohydrates and fueling for the time-crunched athlete. Heaps of information there. Now, it and that too, processed carbohydrates, is more important than creatine, by the way. I've since done podcasts on caffeine, creatine, betalines from beetroot, and beta-alanine, of which creatine is a very well-researched and established supplement to increase performance in the non-endurance sport side of things. But it's getting another look, especially in cycling, because of its ability to help anaerobically. So now that we're all on the same page and I've shared my worldview on supplements, let's discuss how creatine works, potential benefits and downsides, who should use it and when, and then cut through some of the marketing hype of it all. Creatine, how it works. Creatine works primarily through its effects on energy metabolism. Every cell in your body uses a high energy molecule called adenosine triphosphate or ATP to do primary functions. When ATP is used, it will lose a phosphate molecule and form ADP and AMP. That's adenosine diphosphate and adenosine monophosphate. Creatine is stored in our cells as creatine phosphate or CP. Stored and available creatine phosphate provides an extra phosphate molecule to regenerate ADP to ATP, thus providing your body with more energy and ability to regenerate energy more readily. Okay, so it's kind of a mouthful. But remember that this is not just the peripheral system, meaning like skeletal muscle, but it's the whole body, including the central nervous system. So that's your brain, your spine, your skin cell. I mean, everything is using ATP in this ADP plus CP regeneration cycle. Okay? Okay, so let's get away from some of the chemical biology now and swing back to the potential benefits. So now I will emphasize that this is potential benefits. Okay. We've got increased anaerobic capacity, increased high power repeatability, increased glycogen rethysynthesis, and reduced oxidative stress for endurance training, which may enhance recovery aspects. Now there's a really nice article from uh Oscar Zukendrup that I would suggest reading for anyone. It's it's like a five to seven minute read. Uh he organizes all the information really well. Look for that one in the show notes, but he covers how that all those potential benefits could be in cycling alone. Okay. Uh other sports, and I'll get to that here in a minute, uh, have a little bit of asterisk behind it. There's also this increased cognitive function, which again goes back to uh the central system, meaning the brain and the spine being able to use this ATP to ADP plus CP rejuvenation. Okay, so the brain is using ATP to do that. If we have creatine phosphate available, it can replenish its stores more quickly. Finally, there's uh some protection against concussion symptoms and potentially quicker recovery from uh concussion impact. Now I go into that with Nicole Rubenstein in in episode number 161. So for a deeper dive on that, go there. But essentially, when you hit your head real hard, if you crash in a bike race, your brain is injured, it swells, it needs to recover and repair. And so, again, coming back to this very uh, I'd say very high level and dumbed down version of how I describe the ATP and ADP plus CP kind of rejuvenation cycle, that is the premise for your brain healing after a concussion where creatine could potentially have some benefit there. Okay, let's talk about the downsides. There is some weight gain, uh primarily through water weight. So as you start to use creatine, you could increase a little bit of weight, but as soon as you stop using it, it usually goes away as well. And that's kind of the function of water weight. Uh, there's also some GI issues. So especially in loading phases or uh if you're not drinking enough water with uh taking creatine, especially for the first time, you can get some gut rot. And it is, it doesn't feel great. So just make sure to drink plenty of water if you're gonna start taking uh creatine. Now, hear me on this one. There is no direct aerobic benefit to endurance athletes, and that is a downside if you're taking it as an endurance athlete. Okay, it's it's all on the anaerobic side of things, okay? That's the potential of using this, and it's not aerobically. So steady state and weight-bearing competition like running seems like it has no benefit at all. Again, go back and read that article from Astra Zukendrup, and he explains all in detail why that is. So another downside is it's just another thing to remember to take, use, or manage, and it has very small potential gains. Okay, so you could just be wasting your money and your time and brain space trying to take the supplement that could or could not be useful for you. Now, who should use this? Athletes in high-intensity training cycle or athletes in competition with anaerobic performance determinants, that's who should be taking it. You know, finishing sprints, crits, mountain bike races, cycle cross, and shorter road races. Now, athletes who want potential cognitive function, again, maybe. And also because creatine is found in animal products like uh beef, chicken, fish, eggs, vegans and vegetarians may actually benefit more by supplementing with creatine. And then it's both from uh the performance standpoint as well as just the wellness and health standpoint. Let's talk about who shouldn't take it. Uh ultra athletes, so those who are competing just to complete a thing uh that is really long, let's just call it, I don't know, over six hours, okay? And having a relatively low anaerobic performance aspect to what they're doing. So, like I said, you know, long distance gravel racers, uh ultra runners, and you if you're just going to complete the Basta marathon, something like that. You don't need to be jacking yourself on creatine for the performance aspect. Also, I, you know, for my athletes who's who are taking it, I don't have them take it during a transition or a base phase. Again, intensity is low. Uh, we don't necessarily need it. Some people might take the maintenance dose of three grams, and I'll get into dosing here in just a second. Um, for the cognitive benefits or prevention against concussion, which can happen anytime. But overall, I think it's I think it's important to say you don't need to be taking this year round if you're going to take it at all. And basically anyone with kidney issues or pre-existing conditions uh shouldn't be taking creatine. So always check with your doctor or professional nutritionist before you start taking a new supplement. Okay, so let's talk about how to use it. Three to five grams of creatine monohydrate daily. You want to do this most of the year. No need to take it, like I said, during the transition or base phase, in my opinion. It's always good to cycle off supplements for a while. So if you are taking things for performance or health or something like that, it use the transition period and the base phase to maybe cycle off of that and then come back to it when the intensity or the density of your training picks back up. Now, for endurance athletes in particular, I don't suggest or see the need for using a loading phase. Loading phase for creatine is typically 20 grams a day for seven days. Now, if you do the three to five grams per day for three to four weeks, your body is fully loaded and you avoid the water gain and potential stomach rot issues that I talked about. I don't see the need to use it your own unless you like the cognitive benefits. For my own athletes taking creatine, which are only a very few, by the way, these guidelines are exactly what I recommend to them as individuals, and all of this information has come from working with professional dietitians and nutritionists like Nicole Rubinstein, who I already mentioned, Kristen Arnold, Dana Lis, as well as reading the latest research, of which I want to give a shout out to examine.com. They do a great job of providing summaries on all supplements and substances, along with backing it up with the latest research so that you can understand how things work. Better and more accurate than ChatGPT, in my opinion. So uh if you're a supplement nerd, I suggest checking them out. Again, that's exam.com, and I'll link to them in our show notes uh in our landing page. All right, so let's talk about some of the marketing bullshit of creatine. Okay, creatine is not the holy grail, it is not the fountain of youth, it will not make you into a sprint machine or two de France winner. You still need to train hard to make the gains. Creatine can marginably help on the anaerobic side of things. Now, you will also not increase your IQ, you will not increase your VO2 max or your aerobic capacity. Additionally, I've heard on some podcasts where they've been claiming 10 to 15 grams of creatine in the afternoon makes them feel ultra focused, and they're skipping the caffeine now. I don't know. I I mean, not for me, but I would say that with every supplement out there, even the effective ones, they have a high rate of individuality and nuance to them. So go ahead and try it, experiment, but just know that you might be getting some gut rot if you don't drink enough water. And if it doesn't work, you're just kind of peeing away some creatine and some money along with it. So the bottom line is this creatine is safe and one of the most studied supplements out there. The benefits are mostly in the high intensity realm of things, especially in non-endurance sport. Some new studies are showing the potential benefit in high intensity for endurance events, especially in sprints and repeatability of high power outputs. If you already struggle trying to hit your training volume and training intensity, or have a poor diet, or have bad sleep patterns, something like that, creatine's not gonna help you as much as improving those aspects of your life and your habits first. That's it. That's our show. Thank you to our listeners for always chiming in with good questions and topics, even on topics I've already done before. Things do change and evolve, and staying up on the current, latest of what works in the field as well as in the lab is what I try to do daily. And I do feel like I can always deliver a better message than a few years ago. So I hope I've done that in today's episode. In fact, we've been doing this weekly podcast for over five years now. So that's over 260 episodes, which is pretty wild when I think about it. But I wanted to mention that if you do have a specific question like creatine or threshold training or something like that, simply go wherever you get your podcasts and search it up with the phrase time crunched after it, and you'll likely find an episode or more on that topic. For example, uh, you can take VO2 Max Time Crunched, search for that, and I think there's like four episodes on that alone. So if you're a new listener, I suggest going back into some of those episodes as I think you'll find some good stuff in there. It may spur on some bigger, more specific questions, and if so, great. Go over to trainwrite.com backslash podcast, click on ask a training question, and send it over to me, and I'll do my best to answer it on a future episode. Speaking of which, I am batching several new shows right now and over the coming weeks. So and I'm really excited about them. So be sure to come back each week so you don't miss any of them. Thanks again for listening and see you back here again soon. Thanks for joining us on the Time Crunch Cyclist Podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. If you want even more actionable training advice, head over to trainwright.com backslash newsletter and subscribe to our free weekly publication. Each week you'll get in depth training content that goes beyond what we cover here on the podcast that'll help you take your training to the next level. That's all for now. Until next time, train hard, train smart, train right.

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Adam Pulford

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