One of the most popular workout supplements, second only to perhaps protein powder, creatine is also one of the simplest and safest ways to enhance your performance. You just take a daily serving of creatine and *bada-bing!* you’re lifting more than you’ve ever lifted before.
Simple as that, right?
Well, kind of.
Typically, we divide workout supplements into two categories: pre-workout and post-workout.
Pre-workout supplements you take immediately prior to exercise to acutely enhance performance and post-workout supplements you take immediately after exercise to promote better recovery and anabolic muscle growth.
But creatine both enhances performance and assists with anabolic muscle growth and recovery.
So, when is the best time to take creatine? Before exercise or after? What about on “rest” days—is it okay to supplement creatine on days when you’re not working out?
Really, what’s most important is that you’re taking creatine at all, whether pre- or post-workout.
However, some research suggests that “creatine timing” does matter. In this article, we cover when is the best time to take creatine, as well as the exercise benefits to supplementing creatine.
But to better understand when to take creatine, we need to first address: what does creatine even do? Let’s get to it!
What Does Creatine Do?
Simply put, creatine is an organic compound highly concentrated in muscle, where it is stored as a sort of “backup fuel” reserve for the production of ATP energy.
In other words, what creatine does is fuel the production of ATP energy, the basic energy-carrying unit found in the cells of all living things, to power muscle contractions and various other energy-demanding processes.
When we exercise, we naturally burn through our natural creatine reserves, after which muscle failure and catabolism (muscle breakdown) begins to kick in, limiting one’s power and stamina.
While we both obtain dietary creatine from food and synthesize creatine in the body, supplementing additional creatine is viewed by many as a safe and effective option at elevating one’s muscular creatine reserves—and, by that token, one’s capacity for muscular power and endurance.
But how exactly does creatine enhance one’s muscular power and endurance? What are the exact biomechanisms to creatine’s performance-enhancing effects?
Understanding this may help us better determine when is the best time to supplement creatine, let alone whether it’s a good idea to supplement creatine in the first place.
Exercise Benefits of Creatine
Though many people have a general idea of creatine being a beneficial ingredient for increasing one’s muscle mass, few understand exactly how advantageous this organic compound can be for your overall health and fitness.
For exercisers, both aerobic and anaerobic, creatine is one of the most reliably effective natural performance enhancers you can add to your daily workout routine.
Here are some of the exercise-related bio-benefits of supplementing creatine:
Increases Muscle ATP Energy
Creatine is stored in the muscles to fuel ATP (adenosine triphosphate) production during times of heightened muscular activity—e.g., such as during exercise.
Having sufficient creatine reserves readily available is key to sustaining high-intensity exercise performance before reaching exhaustion.
Once your natural energy reserves dry up, fatigue kicks in and so does muscle-damaging lactic acid, as your body resorts to less efficient energy-producing mechanisms to stay active.
Supplementing creatine helps further saturate your muscle tissues with ATP-promoting creatine, allowing you to work out harder for longer under both aerobic and anaerobic conditions.
As one study on the effects of creatine on ATP synthesis during 10-sec maximal handgrip exercises observed, creatine’s ATP-promoting effects may help with exercise performance.
The study’s results strongly indicated that “an improvement in performance during was associated with the increased availability for the synthesis of ATP.”
Stimulates Protein Synthesis
It’s fairly well-known and well-documented that creatine stimulates ATP production, which in turn assists with athletic performance and possibly anabolic muscle growth.
However, it’s not 100% certain that creatine’s ATP-related effects are directly responsible for the organic compound’s also well-known promotion of protein synthesis, which is required for increased muscle gains.
In one review on the potential mechanisms of action explaining creatine’s role on building muscle mass, it was suggested that “ may exert its effects through multiple approaches, with converging impacts on protein synthesis and myogenesis.”
Either way, whatever the mechanism, creatine seems to assist with enhancing muscle growth as much as muscle performance.
Buffers Lactic Acid Build-Up
Once your primary energy reserves deplete, your body produces lactic acid as a byproduct to a secondary “backup” energy-producing fermentation pathway.
The accumulation of lactic acid in muscle tissue explains the “burning” sensation of high-intensity exercise, a sensation associated with sore, painful muscles and catabolic muscle degradation.
For the most part, some lactic acid is normal and only a mild discomfort. However, excess lactic acid can not only derail your exercise performance but also diminish your overall muscle and strength gains.
Fortunately, supplementing creatine may help mitigate lactic acid buildup in muscles, as one study’s findings have demonstrated that “creatine supplementation decreases lactate during incremental cycling exercise and tends to raise lactate threshold.”
When Should You Take Creatine?
Okay, so creatine helps synthesize additional ATP for prolonged exercise intensity, stimulate protein synthesis for enhanced muscle growth, and buffer lactic acid buildup to protect muscle tissues against excess soreness and degradation.
But does creatine do this acutely, meaning right after you supplement it, or do you have to wait a while for creatine’s beneficial effects to emerge?
For the most part, for creatine to reach peak effect, you’ll need to wait after a few days of creatine supplementation to notice any results on muscle mass and performance.
This is because it takes some time for creatine to sufficiently “saturate” muscle tissues, as opposed to the fast-acting energy boosts of, say, caffeine.
This is why it’s often recommended to “pre-load” your creatine supplement regimen with a few consecutive days of ingesting high creatine dosages before expecting any significant results.
Even so, the question remains: in relation to exercise, when is the best time to take creatine? Does it matter if you take it before or after exercise? Or is it sufficient to just take creatine daily at any ol’ time?
Again, for the most part, it’s most important that you take creatine daily. However, when you take it in relation to when you exercise also seems to matter.
Should You Take Creatine Before or After Exercise?
If creatine must gradually accumulate in muscle tissue to reach peak effect, it should follow that the timing of creatine supplementation doesn’t matter—so long as you’re getting your daily allotment of creatine. However, research suggests that creatine timing may matter.
Given the options of taking creatine immediately before exercise, immediately after exercise, or at any time not close to when you’re exercising, some research suggests that taking creatine immediately post-workout is best:
Based on this study alone, it would seem that the definitive answer is to take creatine immediately after exercising—say, with your post-workout protein shake. However, it’s not 100% certain this is definitively the case.
Another study on the combined effects of creatine + protein + carbs found that taking this stack immediately before and immediately after exercise was more effective at increasing lean body mass and 1RM strength, as opposed to taking this stack in the morning and evening—i.e., long before and long after exercising.
To say the least, it seems the best creatine timing strategy involves taking the supplement either immediately before or immediately after exercise, if not both.
Taking Creatine on “Off” Days: A Good Idea?
If taking creatine near working out helps maximize muscle and strength growth, what are the advantages of supplementing on days when you’re not working out at all? For one, taking creatine on “off” days helps sustain a boosted level of saturation in muscle tissue—especially if you’re not working out every single day.
This is particularly true when you’re first taking creatine, which may require a “loading” period to quickly saturate your muscle tissues.
Typically, this involves taking a high daily dose of creatine for roughly 5-7 days—even upwards of 20g daily—before settling into a more reasonable amount of 3-5g creatine daily, whether working out or not.
The 24/7 Creatine Supplement Stack: Performance Lab®
Creatine before exercise or creatine after exercise—or both! And why not take some creatine on your rest days as well to ensure that your muscles are staying metabolically primed for ongoing muscle repair, recovery, and growth?
This is all certainly possible, and perhaps even recommended if you’re a BIG-time bodybuilder or high-intensity exerciser.
But it’s difficult to find a stack of creatine-supplying supplements that work well together and/or don’t cumulatively overdose you on creatine.
That's exactly why Performance Lab® has stacked three workout formulas that each supply a healthy dose of muscle-saturating creatine and that each are taken respectively pre-workout, post-workout, and during rest days.
The following three Performance Lab® formulas comprise the ultimate 24/7 creatine supplement stack, each with additional all-natural, performance-enhancing sports nutrition ingredients:
Performance Lab® Pre
The innovative “beast mode in a bottle” pre-workout stack, Performance Lab® Pre is a stim-free, creatine-powered formula designed to upgrade strength, boost intensity, and maximize muscle gains with a premium blend of natural ingredients. Pre works by:
- Recharging muscular ATP energy reserves with a pure, bioavailability-enhanced form of creatine known as Creapure® pH10.
- Elevating nitric oxide (NO) production to support enhanced blood flow and oxygenation throughout the brain and body.
- Improving muscular stamina and endurance with a combination of cellular energy enhancement and acid buffering compounds.
- Replenishing electrolytes depleted by sweaty exercise with Himalayan pink salt trace minerals to sustain healthy hydration levels.
Taken 30 minutes prior to exercise, Performance Lab® Pre delivers an easy-to-absorb creatine, as bioavailability-enhanced Creapure® pH10, a pH-balanced creatine supplemented designed to absorb into muscle tissue more efficiently with minimal risk of gastric side effects associated with inferior creatine products.
Combining the best creatine form with a synergistic mix of natural performance enhancers, Performance Lab® Pre acutely enhances exercise performance while also protecting hard-working muscle tissues against the deleterious side of exercise.
Supplement Facts: Setria® Performance Blend , Creapure® pH10 (contains 94% Creatine Monohydrate ), CarnoSyn® Beta-Alanine, Maritime Pine Bark Extract (95% proanthocyanidins), Himalayan Pink Salt, Sodium (from Himalayan Pink Salt), NutriGenesis® Iron+
Performance Lab® Post
The peanut butter to Pre’s jelly, Performance Lab® Post is a muscle-restoring post-workout supplement stack designed to protect muscle tissues against exercise-related breakdown and promote a speedier, more robust recovery.
If Performance Lab® Pre’s capsule delivery system provides “beast mode in a bottle,” Performance Lab® Post’s encapsulated formula works as a “sport drink in a capsule”—the cleaner alternative to artificially sweetened liquid and powder formulas.
Performance Lab® Post works by:
- Boosting muscle ATP energy production dedicated towards anabolic muscle-repairing and -building processes.
- Stimulating muscle stem cells to promote greater muscle growth than what exercise alone could accomplish.
- Neutralizing exercise-induced free radicals and protein-damaging advanced glycation end-products (AGEs) with sustained-released beta-alanine.
- Replenishing exercise-depleted muscle tissues for overall decreased soreness so you’re ready to fully exert yourself for your next workout.
While many bodybuilders and exercisers are familiar with taking a protein shake immediately after exercise, few appreciate the advantages of taking a post-workout stack distinctly intended for stimulating the anabolic recovery processes after exercise.
With an additional supply of Creapure® pH10 creatine, Performance Lab® Post helps restore the creatine reserves lost to high-intensity training for better overall results.
Supplement Facts: Creapure® pH10 (contains 94% Creatine Monohydrate ), SR CarnoSyn® Beta-Alanine, Ajipure® L-Glutamine, P40p™ Organic Pomegranate Extract (Punica granatum) (40% punicosides, 50% total polyphenols, 50% total polyphenols), Himalayan Pink Salt, Sodium (from Himalayan Pink Salt), NutriGenesis® Potassium+
Performance Lab® Maintain
A unique “rest day” formula, Performance Lab® Maintain is designed to restore depleted muscles on days in between exercise with 12 hours of slow-releasing anabolic nourishment.
Paired with Performance Lab® Pre and Post, Performance Lab® Maintain helps maintain muscle and strength gains during “off” days with a simple stack of two ingredients:
- Creapure® pH10 Creatine: the high-quality 99.5% pure form of pH-balanced creatine found in both Pre and Post that works better than standard creatine monohydrate with minimal risk of bloating and gastric distress.
- SR CarnoSyn® Beta-Alanine: a slow-releasing (SR) form of CarnoSyn® beta-alanine, an advanced beta-alanine supplement that helps raise muscle carnosine, namely in fast-twitch muscle fibers that take a beating during high-intensity exercise and sports training.
As many know, taking creatine on “off” days is key to sustaining elevated levels of ATP-saturation in muscle tissues, especially while in the “loading” phase of creatine supplementation.
Whether you’re just starting to take creatine or you’re a gym veteran who’s stuck in a strength plateau, stacking Performance Lab® Maintain with Performance Lab® Pre and Post may help you stay metabolically fit for anabolic muscle growth and strength gains.
Supplement Facts: Creapure® pH10 (contains 94% Creatine Monohydrate ), SR CarnoSyn® Beta-Alanine, NutriGenesis® Iron+
Conclusion
With enough research and anecdotal evidence to back the safety of using creatine, virtually no one anymore is questioning the long-term validity of using creatine to safely enhance exercise performance and fat-free body composition.
Yet, this doesn’t mean everyone won’t find something new to argue about, and, in the case of creatine, the hot controversial topic is “timing.”
Whether you want to take creatine before working out or after—or both—seems to be a matter more of personal choice and/or convenience.
Ideally, if you can split your creatine dosage into both a pre and a post serving, with an intermittent maintenance dosage for “rest days,” this seems to be the best way to go.
But, frankly, even if you just take creatine daily at any time, you’re still going to achieve significant gains as a result.
Fortunately, Performance Lab® has already done all the thinking for you here.
With a pre-, post-, and maintenance creatine supply delivered by way of Performance Lab® Pre, Performance Lab® Post, and Performance Lab® Maintain, respectively, you may achieve all the strength and physique advantages of proper creatine timing while also receiving an adequate daily amount of creatine for general performance enhancement.
References
- Riesberg LA et al. Beyond Muscles: The Untapped Potential of Creatine. Int Immunopharmacol. 2016 Aug; 37: 31-42.
- Brosnan ME, Brosnan JT. The role of dietary creatine. Amino Acids. 2016 Aug; 48(8): 1785-91.
- Kurosawa Y et al. Creatine supplementation enhances anaerobic ATP synthesis during a single 10 sec maximal handgrip exercise. Mol Cell Biochem. 2003 Feb; 244(1-2): 105-12.
- Farshidfar F et al. Creatine Supplementation and Skeletal Muscle Metabolism for Building Muscle Mass—Review of the Potential Mechanisms of Action. Curr Protein Pept Sci. 2017; 18(12): 1273-1287.
- Oliver JM et al. Oral creatine supplementation’s decrease of blood lactate during exhaustive, incremental cycling. Int J Sport Nutr Exerc Metab. 2013 Jun; 23(3): 252-8.
- Cooper R et al. Creatine supplementation with specific view to exercise/sports performance: an update. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2012; 9: 33.
- Antonio J, Ciccone V. The effects of pre versus post workout supplementation of creatine monohydrate on body composition and strength. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2013 Aug 6; 10: 36.
- Cribb PJ, Hayes A. Effects of supplement timing and resistance exercise on skeletal muscle hypertrophy. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2006 Nov; 38(11): 1918-25.
