Kelsey Higginson lays out three questions to ask before taking creatine: Are you doing strength and speed training? Is your nutrition dialed in, which accounts for 95% of performance gains? And are you past puberty and cleared by a doctor? Only then consider the supplement.
I think most athletes can take creatine if they can answer these 3 questions. Question number 1, are you strength and speed training? I ask this because the majority of the results is going to be finding a good program that's going to allow you to get stronger and faster and then using creatine to get more out of that training. So if you're not strength and speed training, I would definitely start that before I ever started creatine. So if you need help knowing where to start with strength and speed training, follow my friend Coach Darren. He's awesome. He's got some great resources. I'll tag him below. If you can say yes to speed and strength training, then we're going to move to question number 2, which is, are you dialed in on your nutrition? Are you getting enough protein? Protein, carbs, fats? How is your hydration? Doing these two things is going to get you 95% of the way there, and then creatine is just going to come help your performance a little bit extra. And then question number 3 is your age. There are few studies done on adolescents and younger kids, and so I usually just like to take the stance of once you're past puberty, talk to your parents about it, and then you can look into it. Always make sure that you're talking with your doctor and making sure that they know that you're taking creatine.
