Can You Mix Creatine With Pre-Workout? Science Explained

In case you’re critical 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 nasty thought 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 quick and slightly unsatisfying reply is it relies upon—elements such because the substances in your pre-workout and whether or not you’re loading creatine play an element.

On this article, you’ll study what science says about mixing creatine with pre-workout. You’ll additionally uncover the distinction between these dietary supplements, the perfect 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 assume they’re the identical.

In actuality, nevertheless, creatine and pre-workout are fairly completely 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 may as well take up it from meals like red meat, fish, and eggs. Your physique shops this creatine in your muscle tissue, the place it helps generate adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the first supply of mobile energy. 

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

Particularly, they boost power and energy, accelerate muscle progress, improve endurance, improve recovery, and extra. 

Pre-Exercise

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

Can You Combine Creatine With Pre-Exercise?

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

But when your pre-workout incorporates caffeine, issues get extra sophisticated.

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

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

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

Four high–quality studies have appeared on the results of blending creatine with caffeine throughout a creatine “loading section” (a interval once you take a big each 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 individuals mixed creatine with caffeine.

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

1. Creatine helps muscle tissue chill out quicker, which allows you to generate excessive quantities of pressure shortly and repeatedly. Conversely, caffeine slows this course of, which can negate creatine’s advantages.
2. Taking massive doses of each dietary supplements may cause gastrointestinal points that make it onerous to carry out at your finest.

Whereas these outcomes are attention-grabbing, we are able to’t essentially apply them to individuals taking smaller doses of caffeine and creatine, particularly since research also reveals that utilizing caffeine instantly after a creatine loading section has a optimistic affect on athletic efficiency.

Furthermore, studies have shown 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, resembling beta-alanine and whey protein, making it unclear what produced the advantages—the creatine, caffeine, or the mix of all of the substances.

A 2022 study 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 some other measure, together with general muscle acquire, power, or endurance.

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

Conclusion

Ought to You Take Creatine Earlier than or After Your Exercise?

There’s no benefit to taking creatine proper earlier than you practice. In contrast to caffeine, creatine doesn’t provide you with a right away vitality increase or sharpen your focus. As a substitute, it really works by build up in your muscle tissue over time.

Subsequently, 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 along 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?

Pre-workout dietary supplements, however, are blends of a number of substances like caffeine, beta-alanine, and l-citrulline, designed to reinforce focus, vitality, endurance, and general exercise efficiency.

Sure, you may take further creatine, nevertheless it may not be mandatory. 

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

Likewise, should you’re loading creatine or need to take a better dose, further creatine could also be essential to hit your goal.  

FAQ #3: Does creatine provide you with vitality like pre-workout?