Out of the 1000s of supplements that have flooded the market in recent years, creatine stands out as the world's number one bodybuilding supplement.
Discovered nearly a century ago, creatine has been shown to aid in all aspects of health, disease, performance and body composition!
If you're not currently taking creatine then you should seriously consider it, apart from protein, it should be the first port of call on your supplement protocol.
Here's 5 top reasons why you should be taking creatine...
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Build Muscle
Famous as the world's number one natural muscle builder, creatine has held the crown since sports supplements first started making an appearance. In as little as 5-7 days, creatine can cause visual increases in muscle size both in the mirror and on the scales.
It helps build muscle by a ton of different mechanisms (many of which are discussed below), with these combined it’s no wonder why creatine is top of the list! The rate of muscle growth when supplementing with creatine does vary. This can include helping add a few pounds to some studies where muscle growth has been DOUBLED compared to training alone!
In the most comprehensive research review to date, you can see below that when compared to several other popular supplements, creatine is number one (Nissen et al., 2003).
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Increases Strength
The amazing benefits that are witnessed in muscle growth also extend into strength and power. In a similar fashion, creatine along with caffeine are known as the world's leading supplements for increasing strength.
In a meta analysis, which reviews each individual study on a topic, they found the average increase compared to training alone was around 13LB for Bench Press and 23LB for Squats (Dempsey et al., 2002). Not bad for just a few weeks of supplementation right?
In one of the shortest studies, just 3 days of supplementation was shown to increase acceleration and peak torque (a measure of power) by a huge 13% (Cramer et al., 2003). The research doesn't stop here either, with over 100 studies demonstrating the performance enhancing benefits of creatine supplementation.
With results like these, it’s no wonder the general population think creatine is a steroid!
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Increases Amount of Reps
Along with improving your 1 or 5 rep max, creatine can help bodybuilders with their higher rep work or more specifically, Kris’s hardcore DTP training. This is one of the key ways in which creatine can help you grow, as completing more total reps or volume per session is a key factor in muscle hypertrophy.
In the graph below, researchers assessed the benefits of creatine on bench press multiple set repetitions to failure. All participants performed 5 sets on the bench press until failure and then half of the participants were provided creatine. All participants then returned to the lab to be reassessed, as you can see, the simple addition of creatine increased the amount of reps performed by around 10 - 20% for every set! (Kelly et al., 1998)
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Reduces Fatigue & Improves Performance
For those of you that perform any high intensity sports or do interval based training, then guess what? Creatine can also help you by reducing fatigue and improving performance! This is likely to occur because creatine has the unique ability to improve ATP resynthesis, which is the main fuel source for high intensity exercise.
Several studies have found rapid improvements in all types of activity, including running sprints (Earnest et al., 1997), time till fatigue in cycling (Zoeller et al., 2007), ice hockey repeated sprints (Cornish et al., 2006) and many more!
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Increase Anabolic Hormones and ATP
Aside from the performance enhancing benefits of creatine, it can also help transform your physique due to the positive changes in anabolic hormones.
These increases include a key hormone known as IGF-1, a key precursor to the potent fat burner Growth Hormone (GH). Along with GH, creatine can also help stimulate several other key molecular pathways that help your body lay down new proteins, or in other words, new lean muscle!
Along with hormonal increases, one of the main mechanisms behind the success of creatine is its ability to increase ATP. ATP is the primary energy source for the body, like gas in your car, without ATP we would not function or survive.
During exercise, our ATP stores become depleted within about 7 - 12 seconds, at this point, performance will decrease slightly. This is why you can only sprint flat out, or lift the heaviest weight possible for 10 seconds or less. However, by taking creatine you can increase your ATP stores slightly and also help replenish them faster during exercise.
This is a two fold benefit- both increasing your starting stores and your ability to re-synthesize ATP faster will help you perform better, for longer!
Add in Creatine HCI Today
If you want to reap some of the excellent benefits creatine has to offer, try supplementing with Creatine HCI. Creatine HCI is the most advanced form of creatine available, maximising digestion and absorption rates and therefore providing you with the best benefits!
- Improved digestion, therefore helping to avoid gastrointestinal issues such as bloating, gas and cramping which may occur with other forms, especially when loading.
- No water retention.
- No loading phase, instant saturation!
- Highly concentrated, therefore a much smaller amount is required compared to other forms.
Learn more about KAGED MUSCLE CREATINE HCI now.
