Creatine and Cycling

Zorba

Hi all

Just wondering does anyone use creatine here before or during or after training/racing and find it's helps or maybe tried it and found it didn't help ?

rubadub

Creatine is really for sports requiring bursts of energy, sprinting, rugby, weightlifting. Endurance sports do not really call for that, e.g. marathon runners, tour de france. However I expect mountain bikers might need it, going up a really steep hill requiring a burst of energy.

I found it helped my commuting cycling- taking off at lights etc, but it could have been just general weight training, or even placebo.

Raam

I was taking whey protein last year for a while just for the calories. I found that the stuff just went right through me. I'm not going to bother this year.

ba

i had always thought of taking something like this. just to hold onto my weight, or even to increase it slightly. i understand there are products specifically for 'bulking up'. is it recommended with cycling, particularly when cycling 10hrs a week?

Raam

ba wrote: »

i had always thought of taking something like this. just to hold onto my weight, or even to increase it slightly. i understand there are products specifically for 'bulking up'. is it recommended with cycling, particularly when cycling 10hrs a week?

Thats why I was taking the whey. To be honest, I don't know how effective it was. I found it was impossible to eat enough to replace all the calories I was expending. 8 hour cycles through Wicklow really leave you hungry

rubadub

Creatine will add "water weight" to your muscles. I think you can gain around 7lb by just holding water in your muscles. So if you have spent €5000 on a bike trying to get it as light as possible then I dont know why you would want to add 7lb of water onto your body. This might only be an issue for competitive cyclists. While a rugby player might want more mass for momentum reasons, and prefer water, rather than just fat. A bodybuilder will take creatine to bloat out the muscles, but it also will help their lifting ability and hence stimulate more muscle growth. A powerlifter or boxer who might be in a weight division would usually stop taking creatine prior to a contest to drop the water wieght. The average go who just wants to look have decent naked does not really care if that is water in his muscles, or "real muscle", they are not overly concerned with strength, sort of comparable to a woman getting a boob job. A gymnast might train in a specific way to NOT add muscle, to have a high strength to body weight ratio.

I know mates who would say not to take it as all it does it is add water to muscles and no strength, and when you stop taking it the water goes again. But if 2 twins were to start lifting on the same diet, one taking creatine, then the creatine twin will put on say 7lb of water, BUT he will be lifting more, recover faster, so in a years time if he stops taking creatine, yes his mass might drop 7lb as he loses the water weight, BUT he should be bigger than the other twin since he should have put on more muscle anyway due to better lifting ability.