The BEST Way To Use Creatine For Muscle Growth (4 STEPS)

With over a thousand studies being done on creatine, it's scientifically proven to be an effective and safe supplement to help you build stronger and bigger muscles. But science also reveals that there's a specific way to use it to maximize its benefits and save you money while you're at it. Today, I'll show you how to do just that in four easy steps. Before we dive into step one, let's first briefly discuss what creatine is and how it can help you build more muscle and strength. So creatine is a substance that we naturally produce and use up as an energy source to power our muscles through the first 10 seconds or so of high intensity activities such as sprints or tough set of bench press. When we supplement with creatine, we can increase our natural creatine levels by about 30%. This increase, if maintained through consistent supplementation, has been shown to provide a significant boost in power and strength during our workouts, which over time has been shown to translate to significantly greater muscle growth. It's effective and it works, but it's also very easy to waste a bunch of money on it without fully reaping its benefits. The first step to avoiding that is to make sure that you pick the right type of creatine. Walk into a supplement store and you'll be recommended all sorts of fancy forms of creatine that are supposed to boost absorption or provide some kind of enhanced effect. But what does research say? Well, ever since my last creatine video I posted a couple years back, there's been some new contenders in the market. Luckily, a 2021 systematic review was recently published that analyzed eight different forms of creatine to determine which was most effective. As you can see in the following table, the researchers also broke down the cost per serving for the different forms of creatine, with creatine monohydrate being the cheapest, with buffered creatine costing almost eight times as much of the eight which came out on top. Well, it turns out they all work just as effectively at boosting muscle creatine levels. Which which makes sense. Plain old creatine monohydrate has no problems with absorption, nor does it cause any notable effects that a more costly alternative would be solving. These alternatives still exist in the market, however, because companies try to one up their competitors by claiming to have a proprietary formula that makes it seem like they're more effective than others who just sell a single ingredient cheaper form of creatine. Because of this, they can charge more of a premium for their product, but their Fancy forms have not beaten out plain old creatine monohydrate, regardless of what the marketing tries to convince you. So given that you could save over a dollar every single day from sticking to plain old creatine monohydrate, save your money and stick to that. You can easily tell if you're picking the right choice if you look at the nutritional label and the only ingredient shown is creatine monohydrate. Alright, so after you've picked up your creatine monohydrate, the next step you want to get right is how much to take. As it does seem, there's a lower limit that you'll want to meet. For example, one study on female swimmers showed that 2 grams per day of creatine monohydrate supplement for six months failed to improve their performance. Similarly, another study showed that one gram per day of supplementation for a full year failed to improve muscle function or lean mass, meaning that 12 grams per day is likely too low of a dose. However, the typical dose of 5 grams per day, which is also the standard scoop size for most creatine products, may actually be overkill. Illustrating this is a 2018 paper that compared the effects of supplementing with either 3 grams or 5 grams of creatine monohydrate per day when compared to the placebo. Both groups experienced significant increases in strength and based on the results, the researchers suggest that 3 grams per day is a sufficient dose for most lifters. And if you crunch the numbers, it makes sense given that studies have shown a significant improvement in performance from dosages of around 0.03 grams per kilogram per day. So for a 170 pound individual, that amounts to just 2.3 grams of creatine per day, which is less than half of the often recommended 5 grams scoop size and would mean that your tub of 30 servings of creatine would last you two months instead of just one. So what I'd recommend is stick to 3 grams per day, a little less than the typical scoop size, as that's going to be more than enough for the vast majority of people. If you are on the much heavier side, then you may benefit from just a slightly higher dose based on your body weight. Now, with that being said, when you first start taking creatine, you may actually want to consider bumping up the dose far above this. This is where step three comes into play. So after you start taking creatine, it takes time for your creatine levels in your muscles to gradually increase and fully saturate. It doesn't happen overnight and in fact often takes a couple weeks to significantly increase depending on how fast you'd like to experience the effects of creatine. Though, there's two protocols you can use. The loading protocol is a method that helps you saturate your muscles with creatine as fast as possible so that you can start reaping the benefits right away. This involves taking 5 grams of creatine four times per day to get a total of 20 grams per day. You repeat this for about seven days to elevate your creatine stores and then afterwards drop down to just 3 grams per day as we previously talked about in order to now maintain your elevated creatine stores. In contrast, the non loaning protocol is a method that gradually increases your creatine stores. In this case, you Simply stick to 3 grams per day from the start. But rather than taking just a week to elevate your creatine stores to, this protocol will typically take about three to four weeks before you start experiencing the benefits of supplementation. Both protocols do get you to the same point, so there isn't necessarily a better one to pick from. The loading method is advantageous if you'd like to reap the benefits as quickly as possible, and it's also the protocol I'd recommend if you're dieting. This is because as your creatine stores increase, your muscles will begin to store more water with it and your body weight will increase. Taking a low daily dose will often result in a slow and gradual rise in your body weight over the first 23 weeks, which can skew your weight loss results. On the other hand, loading for a week will cause a quick initial spike in your weight, but then you can easily use that as your new baseline bodyweight going forward, rather than having to wait several weeks to find out how creatine has affected your weight. The only potential downside of a loading protocol could be some digestive distress from taking so much at once, but that seems to be mitigated if you Space out your 20 grams per day into multiple doses like we discussed. So pick your poison and follow whichever protocol that you'll be most consistent with. But as you do so, it's important to understand when to take it and what to avoid taking it with to maximize its benefit. This is where step four comes in. When I first started taking creatine, I was under the impression that it was best taken right before my workout to help power my muscles, and I also heard that I should chug it with grape juice to get an added benefit. I vividly remember being in my car, creatine tub and grape juice in hand, following the protocol and then proceeding to have, I kid you not, one of the best workouts of my life. Since then, I've learned the placebo effect is a hell of a drug, but I've also learned the truth about when and what to take creatine with. Although there isn't too much research that dives into the specifics of timing, remember creatine doesn't have an immediate effect. This means that taking a pre workout doesn't provide any unique benefit and it makes no sense why many supplement companies say still include creatine as part of their pre workout formula. In fact, one study found a 1.7% difference in lean mass increases when taking it after your workout in comparison to before your workout, but this difference wasn't significant by research standards. As for what to take it with, there is some evidence that taking creatine with carbohydrates and protein increases saturation levels more than just taking creatine on its own, but this only really makes a difference during the initial saturation phase and is of lesser relevance during the maintenance phase. So while taking it with a post workout meal may have a very small benefit, what's most important is that you're taking it every day at a time that you can be consistent with. But with that being said, there is a small possibility that caffeine consumption may actually hinder the benefits of creatine. This is illustrated by a recent 2021 paper and an excellent analysis of it by Dr. Eric Trexler. Within it, he took the past five studies done on creatine and caffeine and found that in four of those five studies, creatine alone worked to produce the desired outcome, such as a boost in torque, strength and hypertrophy. However, in all of those five studies, when creatine was combined with regular caffeine consumption equivalent to at least 2, 3 cups of coffee a day, despite the muscle still being saturated with higher levels of creatine, it now failed to provide any performance benefits. Dr. Trexler speculates that it may either have to do with some of the opposing effects that creatine and caffeine have on our muscles from habitual consumption or the fact that taking them together can cause gastrointestinal discomfort and would negatively affect your workout, but the research is still far from conclusive. For now, here are the best recommendations. If you're extremely concerned about the potential interference between caffeine and creatine, ditch regular caffeine consumption, since creatine tends to provide greater benefits over time. Instead, save your caffeine consumption just for times or workouts when you need it the most. But for many that can be a tough ask, in which case a more suitable alternative is to simply avoid taking creatine and caffeine together at the same time. So I know we covered quite a bit, but here are the main key points to get the most bang for your buck using creatine monohydrate, Follow either the loading protocol or non loading protocol to saturate your muscles and then take about 3 grams of it whenever you wish every single day to maintain it. And then after a few weeks there are a few signs that you want to look for to see if it's working for you as it's not going to work for everyone. This is something I'm actually going to cover in a follow up video that I'll link at the end of this one when it's up. That being said guys, creatine, just like any other supplement, it's not magic. It doesn't do the work for you, but when paired with the right training and nutrition plan, it can help you give you a bit of an edge. And if you're looking for a simple yet effective science based program you can trust that shows you exactly how to train and how to eat to transform your specific body as efficiently as possible, then simply head on over to bultwithscience.com and take our analysis quiz to find the best program for you and your body. Thanks for watching. I highly recommend you give these two videos a watch next. And don't forget to hit that subscribe button for more. I'll see you next time.