The tutor generally discusses creatine, including how it can enhance high-intensity performance.

Creatine is an amino acid that can be consumed from food (mainly animal protein) or made by the liver.

Creatine is also a favourite performance-enhancing supplement among athletes engaged in strength training. www.bodybuilding.com lists it as the number-one supplement for faster muscle gain. (Whey protein is number 3 on the list.)

Creatine’s function seems well documented and easy to explain, as follows:

Creatine, in the muscles, gains a phosphate, becoming creatine phosphate. During rest, a store of creatine phosphate is accumulated.
To release energy required to contract, a muscle cell breaks a phosphate from an ATP molecule. The ATP becomes ADP.
The creatine phosphate hands its phosphate over to the ADP, converting it back to ATP, which can once again be broken down for energy release.
Once its creatine phosphate store is depleted, the cell turns to other energy pathways; the advantage of the creatine phosphate is expired, not to be useful again until after a period of rest.

From rest to heavy exertion, the muscle cell’s ATP stores might last only a few seconds; with the regeneration provided by the creatine phosphate, a few more seconds of fresh energy can be gained. After about 10 seconds, the help from creatine phosphate plummets; within two minutes, it’s virtually gone. The creatine phosphate won’t be replenished without a rest period.

So, for athletes trying to improve power, creatine can help. Perhaps a perfect example is football: six to fifteen seconds of intense action, followed by a rest period while the players reset for the next down.¹ Tennis can also follow such a pattern. Of course, weight lifting and sprinting are two other activities to which creatine could offer benefit.

Endurance athletes, who experience few periods of rest, if any, during their events, will likely not gain noticeable performance benefit from creatine supplement.

Many studies have been done on creatine; it seems no harmful effects have been proven, if it is used within generally accepted guidelines.² It has been recommended that an athlete should only take it once past puberty.²

Sources:

¹www.rice.edu

²www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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