Should Cyclists Take Creatine?

Creatine is a popular dietary supplement because it’s safe, legal, and boosts athletic performance.

Creatine’s stellar reputation with athletes makes it a foundational supplement for power sport athletes like weight lifters and football players, but what about us cycling folk?

Should creatine have a place in the world of shaved legs and skinny arms?

That’s the general question explored in a new review article titled: “Creatine supplementation and endurance performance: surges and sprints to win the race.”

In this journal club post, we’ll look more closely at creatine while offering specific recommendations for how and why you may want to utilize creatine in your training.

Let’s jump in.

Creatine & Cycling

Creatine’s utility in cycling isn’t widely studied, but evidence points to a few mechanisms by which it may improve your pedaling:

1. Creatine may improve time to exhaustion in a time trial.
2. Creatine may improve sprint and anaerobic performance.

In short, creatine doesn’t seem to benefit classic endurance performance, but it may help improve your sprint near the end of a race or your ability to recover from repeated sprint efforts.

This graphic from the study highlights the utility of creatine for different exercise intensities.

Why Not?

If creatine may benefit you as a cyclist, is there any reason not to take it?

Here’s a list of why creatine may be ineffective for endurance athletes like cyclists:

1. Creatine increases intracellular and total body stores of water, meaning creatine may increase your mass, proving extra costly for cyclists who climb a lot.
2. Creatine doesn’t seem to improve steady-state exercise.
3. Creatine’s performance boost seems to benefit athletes with more Type II muscle fiber.
4. Females may be less responsive to creatine supplementation.

In short, the scope of creatine use in cycling is more limited since weight increases may offset boosts to sprint and anaerobic performance.

Here’s a checklist to assess whether supplementing with creatine might make sense for you.

Creatine may make sense:

• If you are actively trying to increase muscle mass via strength training (as most masters should be doing) without concern for an increase in mass.
• If you compete in explosive cycling events that are generally flat, like track cycling, criterium racing, road racing, CX, or MTB.
• If you’re interested in experimenting across any discipline without concern for increased mass.

The checklist

If you are interested in experimenting with creatine supplementation, here are a few basics:

• Purchase creatine containing an NSF – Certified Sport designation on the label. This ensures your supplement has been independently third-party tested to be free of harmful or banned substances.
• Creatine requires a “loading period,” meaning increasing creatine stores in your muscles takes some time. The most practical loading strategy is to take about 3-5 grams per day, expecting your creatine stores to be near maximal levels after about 40 days.
• To maintain maximal creatine levels, take 3-5 grams daily.
• Take creatine after your training session, preferably with carbohydrates.
• Track changes in weight to more clearly understand the specific cost/benefit of creatine supplementation for yourself.
• Observe creatine’s potential impact on your fatigued sprint and anaerobic performance; i.e., track your 15-90 second bests in power toward the end of races or challenging training rides. Has your fatigue resistance improved?
• Track, monitor, and further adjust your creatine supplementation based on specific demands of your most important races, i.e., taper creatine supplementation, trying to reduce mass for events with more climbing.

References:

Forbes, S. C., et al. (2023). “Creatine supplementation and endurance performance: surges and sprints to win the race.” J Int Soc Sports Nutr 20(1): 2204071.