A question that you (and many others) have, is when is the best time to take creatine powder?

There are so many debates about this question with some people making up all sorts of weird and wonderful plans. The truth is; these plans are effectively useless and creatine timing does not matter!

Why do I say that creatine timing does not matter?

Simply really. Creatine does not work like other supplements like caffeine (for example). Where you take something like caffeine and get an instant hit, which then wears of after a while.

Instead, creatine works gradually by saturating your muscle tissue with more creatine. Once you have increased your creatine levels above normal, you then get increased strength and performance.

In order to do this and saturate “or fill” your muscles with more creatine, you have to constantly keep taking it.

In a nutshell; it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you constantly take creatine to load up the muscles. Worrying about taking creatine before or after a workout is really a moot point.

With the creatine timing out of the way. You may now be wondering how long it takes to saturate your muscles with creatine?

Well that depends on the dosage that you are taking. If you take 5g a day everyday, it will take around 3-4 weeks for your muscles to be saturated. Which is quite a long time I think you’ll agree. This is why I say that worrying about taking creatine before or after training, really does not matter!

You can of course do something which is called a “loading phase” with creatine. This is where you take 20g of creatine for a week, to load up the muscles faster.

If you do a loading phase you can expect to see some strength and performance gains in around a week. The problem with this creatine loading phase is that it can cause tummy problems.

If you are afraid of getting an upset stomach, then pass on the loading phase and just use a maintenance of 5g per day. This will give you the exact same results, it’ll just take longer to feel the benefit of the creatine.Whether or not your want to load with creatine, is entirely up to yourself. You could certainly try doing a creatine loading phase and see how your tummy reacts to it.