Can You Mix Creatine With Pre-Workout? Science Explained

In the event you’re severe about gaining muscle and power, you in all probability take creatine and pre-workout. Nonetheless, you could have heard that taking these two dietary supplements collectively is a foul 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 moderately unsatisfying reply is it relies upon—elements such because the substances 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, the very 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 you can even take in it from meals like crimson meat, fish, and eggs. Your physique shops this creatine in your muscular tissues, the place it helps generate adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the first supply of mobile power. 

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

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

Pre-Exercise

A pre-workout complement, or “pre-workout” for brief, is a sports activities vitamin complement taken earlier than coaching to reinforce power ranges and focus.

Pre-workout normally accommodates a mixture of substances, reminiscent of caffeine, theanine, citrulline malate, and beta-alanine.

Can You Combine Creatine With Pre-Exercise?

Whether or not you possibly can combine creatine with pre-workout largely depends upon one factor: caffeine.

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

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

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

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

However analysis exhibits that’s not all the time the case.

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

Right here’s a abstract of their outcomes:

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

Scientists are nonetheless uncertain why that is, however there are two main theories:

Creatine helps muscular tissues calm down quicker, which lets you generate excessive quantities of power rapidly and repeatedly. Conversely, caffeine slows this course of, which can negate creatine’s advantages.
Taking massive doses of each dietary supplements may cause gastrointestinal points that make it arduous to carry out at your greatest.

Whereas these outcomes are fascinating, we are able to’t essentially apply them to folks taking smaller doses of caffeine and creatine, particularly since analysis additionally exhibits that utilizing caffeine instantly after a creatine loading section has a optimistic influence on athletic efficiency.

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

Nonetheless, the dietary supplements in these research additionally included different performance-boosting and muscle-building substances, reminiscent of beta-alanine and whey protein, making it unclear what produced the advantages—the creatine, caffeine, or the mixture of all of the substances.

A 2022 research revealed 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. Nonetheless, the distinction in muscle progress was small, and the creatine-only group didn’t outperform the placebo in another measure, together with total muscle acquire, power, or endurance.

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

Conclusion

The proof that caffeine blunts creatine’s advantages is weak. If it occurs in any respect, it’s possible solely a problem throughout a creatine loading section.

Thus, you’re in all probability protected to combine creatine with pre-workout powder containing caffeine, offered you retain the doses reasonable—not more than 350 milligrams of caffeine and 5 grams of creatine.

This needs to be sufficient to expertise a efficiency increase with none abdomen discomfort which may hinder your coaching.

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 direct power increase or sharpen your focus. As an alternative, it really works by build up in your muscular tissues over time.

Due to this fact, a prudent strategy 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 together with your post-workout meal or protein shake.

This manner, 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?

No, creatine and pre-workout aren’t the identical. 

Creatine is a single ingredient that helps improve power, energy, and muscle progress by boosting your physique’s ATP manufacturing. 

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

Sure, you possibly can take additional creatine, nevertheless it won’t be crucial. 

Most pre-workout powders comprise a small quantity of creatine—normally not sufficient to succeed in the optimum every day dose of 3-to-5 grams. In case your pre-workout has lower than this quantity, including additional creatine will help make sure you get all the advantages. 

Likewise, in the event you’re loading creatine or need to take a better dose, additional creatine could also be essential to hit your goal.  

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

Not precisely. Creatine doesn’t present the identical rapid increase in power and focus that you just get from a pre-workout containing stimulants like caffeine. 

As an alternative, creatine helps your muscular tissues produce extra power over time by rising ATP manufacturing, which boosts power and endurance throughout high-intensity bodily duties like weightlifting.