the last month I've been taking creatin every single [Music] day there are a whole list of benefits linked with taking it if you're a bodybuilder weight or powerlifter I can do this all day all right cheers but what about if you're a [Music] cyclist haven't been sick yet but kind of close in this video I'm on a mission to find out more about this legal supplement and find out for my myself if it will make me ride any [Music] faster oh they're going to be sick I've never taken creatin before and despite hearing about it spoken on as a sports supplement I'm coming at this totally blind cuz I want to discover if this is potentially a supplement that's worth taking for as cyclist and also whether in hindsight this would have benefited me as a pro cyclist to start with this is a relatively cheap and legal Sports supplement to take what is key about it is that it's linked to improving your performance across short burst of activity creatine is naturally produced in the body and it's stored in the muscles as phosphor creatin and you can actually find creatin present in many foods including milk fish mollis red and white meat so it's already probably part of your diet phosphocreatine is a key part of your body's immediate Energy System it's used for really intense burst of power between sort of 10 and 30 seconds so theoretically by supplementing with creatine you can increase your body stores of creatin and therefore that phosphor creatin can be replenished quicker between these intense efforts therefore increasing your performance across such short durations of effort sprinting strength efforts and anything that really involves a lot of power look in general cycling is an endurance sport when you're riding on the road but Pro cycling and racing when you're riding for performance reasons it can be a different story cuz whilst a lot of the time you're riding like [Music] this there's plenty of times when you're riding like [Music] this now though I am trying creatin previously a daily loading dosage was recommended for taking it 5 to 7 Days of 20 to 25 G it's been shown that that is no longer necessary and my month of taking creatin has consisted of a low daily dose of 5 G so the truth is as a pro I I really never considered taking creatin I I think it's because I Associated it with like bodybuilding or going to the gym and I was really really worried about the risk of contaminated supplements maybe this played into it too just just really was not worth it but also you know crea's got quite a big reputation in terms of putting on weight and the water retention as a result of taking it and for a cyclist for me in that moment that's that's like cryptonite whether that's right or wrong in terms of weight being a good thing or a bad thing to put it on separate issue but at the time that that did stop me stop me trying this but I have been taking it now for 3 weeks I've been taking a daily dose of about about 5 G I've been looking into the research there's so many positive effects that can arise potentially from taking this not just on the bike so I am going to be interested to see if it translates to a power [Music] Improvement to find out what the current research and knowledge is on creatin from an endurance standpoint and also find out where my own precon ceptions on this supplement originated from I caught up with Dr Sam Shepard head of sports science at Precision Fuel and hydration yeah I think the traditional perception of creatine is it's essentially for strength-based athletes for people who are going to engage in high intensity type activities sprinting for example and also those who maybe looking for aesthetic benefits so bodybuilders and things like that and that's additionally where creating has been used and probably that perception has essentially changed over the last few years and maybe over the last 20 years I would I would suggest we've learned more and more about creatine and and it's well it functions in the body but its potential other roles in in health and performance so outside of Simply providing a substrate to regenerate ATP it has a number of other potential roles in the body so for example we know that or it has anti-inflammatory and antioxidant capacity so it could be useful as a tool to improve the recovery following exercise we're reducing the the cell damage that we can create during some of the exercise and and creatine might help offset some of that and we also know that creatine can support glucose uptake into sceletal muscle as well so it can help us resynthesize or regenerate those glycogen stores a little bit faster after we've engaged in Hard Exercise so that's another aspect of recovery that it might be able to support support with there's also evidence to show that it can improve cognitive function so again if we're thinking in the context of sports then we obviously want to think about making decisions quite quickly particularly during bike racing we're in the pelone we might need to create go with a break we need to make a decision under fatigue and that's where creatine could also support a role as well so we're looking much more outside of the traditional way that Crea team might support ATP regeneration but also some aspects of recovery and COG function as [Music] well so far then creating for me seems like a bit of a no-brainer I'm a month in now coming as the end of my my creatin journey I'd say the only side effects I could potentially talk about is bloating which has come if I've taken it in the middle of the day with a coffee definitely felt a bit of discomfort for an hour or two in those cases but then I've move my dosage to the evening haven't had any issues there potentially notice a tad bit of weight again very very small less than a kilo although my weight does fluctuate somewhat but one or two kilos it's really really hard to say to be honest I'm interested though to see a monin how Crea affects my power so I've gone back you can see on screen now my power values when I was a pro when I just retired and also this year for very kind of short duration efforts 5 Seconds 15 seconds 30 seconds 1 minute 5 minutes to get all plotted on a kind of power curve chart there today I'm heading out and I'm going to see how my power today Compares will creatin allow me to up my game those real high intense efforts and I'm really curious also slightly apprehensive cuz basically this is going to hurt about to hit it hard folks see how we get on [Music] 3 2 one and [Music] oh been a while since I've blowing out the cobes like [Music] [Music] that I going to be sick 1 minute down just a 5 minute effort to go haven't been sick yet but kind of close woo well that hurt getting home now going to download all the data off my wooo plot it back into that chart and see how it Compares see what conclusions I can initially draw before heading to the gcn ACT and turo test track creatin going up against the best okay so I've got back from my effort and I've been going through my results you should be able to see them on screen now in a kind of power curve and you can see where my efforts once loaded with creatin fits into my all-time personal best power values it's really interesting actually to look at the results because they're quite High actually for 30 second and a minute more than I've ever done since I retired as a pro cyclist my 30C power is actually pretty comparable to what I was doing as a pro and my minute power especially is the best I've done since I retired it does start to drop off there though once you get to that 5 minute effort and best I've done all year but not the best I've done as a as a GCM presenter and a good bit of what I did when I was racing as a pro so there's a lot to kind of draw from that it's it's really interesting I mean 30 seconds power is nearly 200 Watts more than I've done since I retired as a pro cyclist which is surprising surprising but I'm looking at creating from an endurance standpoint and for that I really want to do a longer effort one slowly recreating so I'm going to recover for a bit and then going to head to the gcn test track so I got to admit I was pretty Blown Away by those numbers I wasn't expecting that much of a jump visibly if I'm honest but now I'm really interested to see how that translates to kind of a real world effort because it's all well and good putting down power for short durations but it's about how they match up on the road bike on a longer effort that really matters especially if you're considering a race sort of effort too um so I've come back to the gcn test track where I have put beetro as a supplement through its Paces sodium Bob I have got some runs laying down now it's time to do my best effort and see how it Compares so loaded with creatin [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh man still hurts like it always does ah time to take a little breather look at the old data draw a few conclusions when we look at the scientific literature it's fairly mixed um and particularly in terms of endurance performance so there was a a nice recent sort of uh review article that kind of collectively looked at the the evidence to date and made some suggestions about yes it might potentially be useful under certain circumstances and in certain individuals who engage in endurance performance actually when there was uh and this was about a year ago as well there was actually a systematic review and metaanalysis conducted and so a systematic review essentially synthesizes all the evidence that we have in the literature to date and the meta analysis aspect kind of looks at that in a statistical Manner and comes to a conclusion so it clubs all that data together what is it telling us to date and the unfortunately the the outcome of that wasn't too positive the the sort of headline takeaway was that creating monohydrate supplementation didn't or wasn't actually effective for improving endurance performance now when you look at the studies that were included in that metaanalysis they have various dosing protocols there's different performance tests that have been used like time to exhaustion or a time trial performance and so there's probably a little bit too much noise in the literature to come to a convincing um statement one way or the other at this point in time so I think looking beyond that literature and looking on an individual basis and at some of the benefits that creating might provide to endurance athletes as we've talked about so that you know improve recovery um maybe improve cognitive function then it seems that or there's an opportunity to potentially use creatine as a as a tool for endurance performance in in some individuals for sure some of the other issues in terms of maybe kidney function being um poorer or affected by um excessive use of creating or prolonged use of creatine doesn't seem to hold true in the literature either so I think it's fairly safe to to use consistently and we see that often with athletes as well right I'm back at GCM meab base I've had time to analyze my effort and also kind of think about my my own conclusions on creating really interesting because let's start with that longer effort on the GCM test track I was slower not my previous personal best power's also slightly down so 400 wats average 40 minutes and 7 Seconds seconds time um so that is a little bit slower than sodium bicarb and beetroot when I tested those supplements on the same course now conditions on the day they weren't as good bit colder road service wasn't as good either after a bit of rain but still power was down and personally I didn't feel quite as good on that longer effort so not a huge amount to take away from that but when I look at those shorter efforts and those shorter power values of 30 second power especially minute power especially that was quite a big eye opener for me actually in terms of how much I was actually able to improve my power going back a few many years there as well um and that is an area of my cycling which has always been my weakness too especially when I look at when I was racing as a pro I really struggled when there was a lot of sprinting a lot of stop start action and I always was trying to work on that so should I have taken creating then after what I've learned throughout this video yes I would have done and I think it would have helped me work on that area of my cycling which would have really benefited me across all areas of racing for the everyday cyclist would I recommend taking creatin for performance reasons probably not but I think there's nothing wrong with it either I think personally I feel that the drawbacks of Crea in terms of um water retention weight gain not as much as people think the the potential risk to your health in terms of kidney function that's kind of been shown to be disproven too and when you look at all the research around creatin there's so many potential benefits out there and you don't need that huge loading dose anymore either it's a very small minimal dose and it potentially has a wide range of benefits for everyone so for me at the end of this video hearing all the information on it speaking to experts I would continue taking Crea it now and I feel that it would benefit my cycling and my health in general so that is my own conclusion I'm not saying that everyone should go out and start taking creatin um but for me this has changed my view on this supplement but let me know in the comments section down below what you think have you ever taken creatin what do you think of this supplement has it worked for you did you not like it did you have effects which kind of put you off taking it um always love to hear from you always love to hear from you in the comments let me know what you think of this video if you did enjoy it please give it a thumbs up if you found it useful thanks for watching I'll see you on the next video