Do you want to achieve the best sports performance and are you curious whether the use of a creatine supplement can help you achieve your Calisthenics goals or other sports goals? Then discover in this blog:

• What is creatine?
• What is the effect of creatine?
• The benefits of creatine
• Creatine and Calisthenics
• When and how much creatine to take?
• Creatine pre or post-workout?
• The different types of creatine
• The side effects of creatine

We use creatine daily as Calisthenics athletes and have very positive experiences with it. Do you not know which creatine is best, why you should use creatine, or do you want to know more about its effect, use, and side effects? Or which creatine we use ourselves? Find out in this blog!

Creatine is a substance that is found naturally in muscle cells, produced in your kidneys and liver, consisting of the amino acids glycine, arginine, and methionine, and is involved in the energy supply of your muscles. Your body produces 1 to 3 grams of creatine per day. In addition, a small amount of creatine is obtained from (red) meat and fish. If you want to get a lot of creatine, you should eat an unhealthy amount of fish and meat. That is why you can choose to use creatine as a supplement.

But why would you want to get more creatine? What is it good for? Creatine is an energy source that is used when you perform a high-intensity exercise. For example, think of weightlifting, pull-ups, or lifting something heavy. Thanks to the creatine in your body, you can sustain a maximum effort for between 8 to 12 seconds. What happens if you use extra creatine? You get tired less quickly, you can do more repetitions or you can continue an exercise for longer. So very effective!

Creatine is used to provide the muscles with an energy source: a substance called ATP (Adenosine Triphosphate). As soon as you perform an explosive exercise, this substance gives you an energy boost. However, ATP is already gone from the muscles within a few seconds. Your body then switches to a different energy supply. The substance ATP must first be replenished.

By using creatine as a dietary supplement, ATP is produced faster. ATP is also produced by carbohydrates and fats, but that takes more time. Do you exercise regularly or do you do heavy workouts and do you want your muscles to recover faster and do you want to get more energy from your muscles? Then make sure you get enough creatine so that the ATP levels can recover faster and do their job!

Benefits of Creatine

• Provides the muscles with energy
• You get tired less quickly
• Explosive power increase
• You can do more reps
• You can handle heavier workouts
• You build muscle mass faster
• You recover faster
• Reduction of muscle damage

Creatine is widely used in the fitness and bodybuilding world because, for example, you can bench press more weight or do more repetitions, but is creatine also suitable for Calisthenics? Certainly!

At Calisthenics many exercises involve explosive movements for which you need a lot of energy in one go. For example, think of:

• the pull up
• the muscle up
• the handstand push up
• the L-Sit to Handstand
• many more Calisthenics exercises

To get the most out of these exercises, it is therefore definitely recommended to use creatine, so that you can perform explosive movements more easily, do more repetitions and recover your muscles faster. By giving your body that extra push, extra microtears are created, or tears in the muscles, so that your muscles grow (in size and strength) once these tears are repaired. This allows you to build muscle mass faster and achieve your Calisthenics goals faster.

Creatine is best taken daily as a supplement. Your body needs time to build up creatine. When supplementing creatine, people often speak of a loading phase.  Do you want to experience the positive effects quickly? Then choose a fast loading phase and take 0.3 g per kg body weight p/d for 5 days in a row. Do you weigh 75 kg? Then it will be 22.5 gr per day. Spread this over the day. A fast loading phase allows you to reach the maximum creatine level faster. After these 5 days, you switch to a maintenance phase of 3 to 5 grams per day. It makes no sense to take even more creatine, this leaves the body through the urine and costs the body energy to clear it up.

You can also choose to take 3 to 5 grams of creatine per day from the start, instead of beginning with a fast losing phase. After 30 days, the muscles are saturated. You will notice that you can perform more reps or keep up an exercise for a few seconds longer. 

It is recommended to use creatine in phases as the body gets used to using creatine. For example, use it for 4-10 weeks and then 4 weeks off. When you stop taking creatine, it takes about 4 weeks before the amount of creatine is back to the old level. However, there are still discussions about the frequency and amount of creatine use.

Unfortunately, it is not the case that when you take creatine before a workout, you immediately experience positive effects. It really takes time.

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Creatine pre or post workout?

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There are different opinions about taking creatine before or after exercise. Basically, it doesn’t matter that much, as long as you do it on a daily basis. There have been no studies showing any results to take if before or after a workout. You can take it after your workout to replenish supplies that run out during your workout.

How should you take creatine?

Creatine is tasteless and can be taken with water, but also with milk or juice. We always opt for a pure variant of creatine, so no flavors. This prevents the unnecessary consumption of sweeteners and flavorings.

Creatine and proteins

In addition to creatine, make sure you also get enough protein. Proteins are crucial in building muscle mass and strength. In this blog, you can read everything about the importance of proteins, protein powder, and our recommendations. For optimal results, you can take creatine with a protein and carbohydrate shake.

Creatine has no serious side effects and is safe to use. Creatine is one of the most researched and scientifically studied supplements. Claims about creatine are therefore endorsed by the European Food Standards Agency.

Creatine can cause water retention in the muscles because creatine is a molecule that attracts water. This will increase your weight slightly. That is no problem. However, do you want to stay at a specific weight or get shredded/train dry quickly? Then this will be a negative side effect for you. However, you should consider the positive effects that creatine will give you. Creatine ensures that your muscle mass will be preserved when you are cutting and will give you better training results. We, therefore, prefer to take creatine during dry training, so that we do not lose muscle mass and strength, regardless of the fact that we retain a little more water.

Furthermore, creatine can cause stomach problems. Are you experiencing this or other problems? Then try a lower dose or stop taking creatine supplements.