Modern bodybuilding is hard to imagine without sports supplements, in particular, without creatine. Learn how to properly load creatine in bodybuilding. Nowadays, the most popular among athletes are two regimens for the use of creatine. The most commonly used methodology is that there are two phases: download and support. During loading, five servings of the supplement are taken during the day, the weight of which is 5 grams. The loading phase lasts from 5 to 6 days. After that, the athlete enters the support phase, taking 5 grams daily.
The second regimen involves taking 3 to 5 grams of creatine daily. The duration of such a course is one month. During this period of time, the concentration of the substance in the muscle tissues approaches the maximum. Today we will talk about whether loading creatine is necessary in bodybuilding.
Scientific evidence for creatine supplementation
With the intake of creatine, such a situation has developed that none of the schemes for its administration described above has any scientific justification. They were created by athletes based on practical experience. In fairness, it should be noted that the use of a maximum of 5 grams of the substance is justified by the fact that creatine can produce an osmotic effect, causing an upset of the gastrointestinal tract.
By and large, even a dosage of five grams is quite large. This is due to the fact that the body is able to independently synthesize no more than one gram of a substance during the day, using the amino acid compounds arginine, glycine and methionine for this. Also, about one more gram of creatine enters the body along with food.
Creatine, which is not required by muscle tissues, is excreted from the body by the kidneys. You can find recommendations on the network to use high dosages of creatine, which significantly exceed the recommended ones. Such recommendations are explained by the high intensity of training and body weight, suggesting that the larger the athlete, the more creatine his body stores and uses. This is a very simplified position and in some ways even erroneous. Probably, these specialists do not know that muscles are able to store a strictly defined amount of a substance. The more you take it, the more creatine will be excreted by the kidneys from the body.
There are also questions about the use of creatine loading in bodybuilding. Scientists recently conducted a study in which 20 football players and hockey players took part. The subjects were divided into groups, each of which consisted of 10 athletes. For a week, they consumed 0.1 gram of creatine per kilogram of body weight and a placebo. As a result, athletes consumed an average of 6 to 8 grams of the supplement. Urine samples were taken before the start of the experiment and one week after its completion. As a result, it was found that one day after taking creatine (the supplement was dissolved in 500 milligrams of warm grape juice to achieve the required concentration and subsequent absorption), about 46% of the substance was excreted from the body.
The exact reasons for this have not been established, but scientists have suggested that it is possible that the muscle tissue of the athletes contained a sufficient amount of creatine, which caused such a rapid excretion of additionally taken creatine. However, there is also the possibility that the body is not able to take in more than a certain amount of the substance and the excess creatine has been excreted.
The results of the study described above suggest that when using the popular regimens of the supplement, most of the creatine ingested will simply be removed from it. At the moment, there is only one way out of this situation - to control the amount of the supplement taken, and its dosages should not exceed more than 0.1 grams per kilogram of body weight.
At the same time, such a recommendation raises a large number of questions, the answers to which are still not capable of science. Scientists say that if an athlete weighs 80 kilograms, then he needs to take no more than 8 grams of the supplement at a time. This is eight times the body's daily creatine production capacity. With almost one hundred percent certainty, we can say that most of the substance will be converted and subsequently excreted from the body.
Judging by the research results available today, the second seems to be the most optimal regimen for taking the supplement. As mentioned above, it assumes a daily intake of no more than 5 grams of creatine for a month.
If you use the creatine loading scheme in bodybuilding, then when you use about 25 grams of the substance during the first five or six days, most of it will definitely be excreted from the body. In the future, when the athlete enters the support phase, a significantly smaller amount of the substance will be excreted.
As you can see, the question of the correct use of the supplement by athletes is very relevant. But at the same time, loading with creatine in bodybuilding, despite the popularity of this scheme, does not seem to be the most effective. The point here is precisely the loss of a large part of creatine due to the body's inability to absorb more than the required dose.
Of course, the athlete must independently choose the method of taking the supplement, but the results of the study mentioned above should not be discounted. While the situation is such that it makes no sense to take more than five grams of the supplement. Although it must be admitted that bodybuilding training can be more intense and the need for creatine will increase.
Research on creatine continues and it is likely that scientists will soon be able to give an accurate answer about the required dosage of the substance. While there is no such information, it is worth using about 5 grams of the supplement daily.
For more information on loading creatine in bodybuilding, see this video:
