Can You Combine Creatine With Pre-Exercise? Science Defined

If you happen to’re severe about gaining muscle and energy, you most likely take creatine and pre-workout.

Nevertheless, you will have heard that taking these two dietary supplements collectively is a nasty concept since they counteract one another’s performance-enhancing advantages. 

Is that this true? Are you able to combine pre-workout with creatine? Or is it counterproductive?

The brief and fairly unsatisfying reply is it relies upon—elements such because the elements in your pre-workout and whether or not you’re loading creatine play a component.

On this article, you’ll be taught what science says about mixing creatine with pre-workout. You’ll additionally uncover the distinction between these dietary supplements, one of the best time to take creatine, and extra. 

Creatine vs. Pre-Exercise: What’s the Distinction?

Creatine and pre-workout are two dietary dietary supplements used to spice up athletic efficiency. Due to this similarity, many individuals suppose they’re the identical.

In actuality, nevertheless, creatine and pre-workout are fairly totally different. 

Creatine

Creatine is a naturally occurring compound composed of the amino acids L-arginine, glycine, and methionine.  

Your kidneys and liver produce creatine, and it’s also possible to take up it from meals like purple meat, fish, and eggs. Your physique shops this creatine in your muscle mass, the place it helps generate adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the first supply of mobile power. 

Creatine dietary supplements, comparable to creatine powder and creatine gummies, are widespread amongst athletes and gymgoers as a result of they’ve quite a few muscle-building and performance-enhancing advantages. 

Particularly, they increase energy and energy, speed up muscle development, enhance endurance, improve restoration, and extra. 

Pre-Exercise

Pre-workout normally incorporates a mixture of elements, comparable to caffeine, theanine, citrulline malate, and beta-alanine.

Can You Combine Creatine With Pre-Exercise?

In case your pre-workout is caffeine-free, there’s doubtless no draw back to combining it with creatine. 

But when your pre-workout incorporates caffeine, issues get extra difficult.

On the floor, combining creatine and pre-workout containing caffeine looks like a no brainer: creatine boosts energy, energy, and endurance, whereas caffeine enhances focus and power. 

And since they work in numerous methods—creatine will increase ATP manufacturing, whereas caffeine stimulates the central nervous system—you’d anticipate them to enhance one another completely.

However analysis exhibits that’s not at all times the case.

4 excessive–high quality research have regarded on the results of blending creatine with caffeine throughout a creatine “loading section” (a interval whenever you take a big each day dose of creatine to assist it accumulate in your muscle sooner).

Right here’s a abstract of their outcomes:

Surprisingly, whereas three research confirmed that creatine alone boosted efficiency, none reported optimistic results when individuals mixed creatine with caffeine.

Scientists are nonetheless not sure why that is, however there are two main theories:

1. Creatine helps muscle mass calm down sooner, which allows you to generate excessive quantities of drive rapidly and repeatedly. Conversely, caffeine slows this course of, which can negate creatine’s advantages.
2. Taking massive doses of each dietary supplements may cause gastrointestinal points that make it laborious to carry out at your finest.

Whereas these outcomes are attention-grabbing, we will’t essentially apply them to individuals taking smaller doses of caffeine and creatine, particularly since analysis additionally exhibits that utilizing caffeine instantly after a creatine loading section has a optimistic impression on athletic efficiency.

Furthermore, research have proven that pre-workout dietary supplements containing caffeine and creatine can enhance train efficiency and muscle development.

Nevertheless, the dietary supplements in these research additionally included different performance-boosting and muscle-building elements, comparable to beta-alanine and whey protein, making it unclear what produced the advantages—the creatine, caffeine, or the mix of all of the elements.

A 2022 research printed within the Journal of Dietary Dietary supplements provides one other twist.

It discovered that weightlifters taking creatine alone gained quad muscle, whereas these combining it with caffeine didn’t. Nevertheless, the distinction in muscle development was small, and the creatine-only group didn’t outperform the placebo in every other measure, together with general muscle achieve, energy, or endurance.

Given these outcomes, it’s laborious to argue that caffeine definitively interferes with creatine’s advantages. If caffeine really decreased creatine’s effectiveness, the creatine group ought to have outperformed the placebo throughout all metrics—however that wasn’t the case.

Conclusion

Ought to You Take Creatine Earlier than or After Your Exercise?

There’s no profit to taking creatine proper earlier than you practice. Not like caffeine, creatine doesn’t offer you a right away power increase or sharpen your focus. As a substitute, it really works by increase in your muscle mass over time.

Subsequently, a prudent method is to take pre-workout and creatine individually. For instance, take your pre-workout 30-to-60 minutes earlier than coaching, then take your creatine along with your post-workout meal or protein shake.

This fashion, you maximize the advantages of each dietary supplements with none potential interference.

Or, if that doesn’t suit your schedule, take creatine at any time that works for you—simply keep away from combining it with hefty doses of caffeine.

FAQ #1: Is creatine the identical as pre-workout?

Pre-workout dietary supplements, then again, are blends of a number of elements like caffeine, beta-alanine, and l-citrulline, designed to reinforce focus, power, endurance, and general exercise efficiency.

Sure, you’ll be able to take further creatine, however it may not be needed. 

Most pre-workout powders include a small quantity of creatine—normally not sufficient to achieve the optimum each day dose of 3-to-5 grams. In case your pre-workout has lower than this quantity, including further creatine may also help make sure you get all the advantages. 

Likewise, in case you’re loading creatine or wish to take a better dose, further creatine could also be essential to hit your goal.  

FAQ #3: Does creatine offer you power like pre-workout?