Endurance Athletes - Just Say No to Creatine Supplementation

What is creatine? creatine is a molecule found inside muscle cells, in its active state creatine is bound to a phosphate molecule and is thus present in its active form inside muscles cells in the form of creatine phosphate.

When the muscle cells, do work, contracting, pumping ions, etc, muscle cells expend chemical energy in the form of ATP. To use ATP, the ATP gets broken into two molecules, ADP, a phosphate molecule, and in the process release energy. Each muscle cell has a very limited supply of available ATP and to continue to work past a second or so the ADP in the muscle needs to be “recycled”, rebind with a phosphate molecule and thus convert back to ATP.

There are a number of systems which allow for the recycling of ADP, creatine phosphate is one such system. Creatine phosphate works like a capacitor or battery for the cell, during moments of exceptionally high ATP demand. During anaerobic metabolism, creatine phosphate will bind in a one to one ratio with ADP to convert ADP back to ATP and release a creatine molecule. Later when there is excess ATP, ATP can combine again with the creatine to reenergize the creatine molecule and rebind a phosphate ion to it. The problem, or catch with the creatine energy system is that it is only capable of providing enough energy for a few seconds of exertion, and it takes hundreds of seconds to recharge.

Thus for the endurance athletes, who's primarily operating aerobically the creatine energy system goes entirely unused and further since the creatine energy system provides such a minute length of energy, the benefit from any increase due to additional creatine will also be minute. What is an extra 1 second of available energy? Where the cost, in terms of increased muscular weight due to the added creatine is always present leading to some research which shows endurance athletes perform poorer when subjected to creatine supplementation then subjects who didn't supplement with creatine.