Creatine and old guys

[stickman]

Coach

In PPST, you spend a page or two saying that creatine supplementation will improve performance over the long term. In particular, you suggest that one of its benefits is reduced recovery time.

In your experience, is this effect also seen in older guys? I am ~44, genetically challenged, 6'1", 193 lbs, 23% body fat. Been training for about a year with reasonable results - squat has gone from ~60 lbsx5x3 to 230x5x3. Still roughly linear on the squat and deadlift, but have not been following the program as closely as suggested (kids, travel, sickness, work, injuries, kids, work, tax returns, injuries ...). Am still enjoying myself but would love to cut my recovery time down if at all possible. Is creatine supplementation still a reasonable way for me to go?

Thanks!

- Stickman (the moniker came from when I was skinny fat. Ought to change it now that I am just fat ...)

[Mark Rippetoe]

This may come as a shock (since you apparently did not use the search function), but I have no experience with creatine. It's just not something I've used very much. We'll axe.

[grubinski]

Some guys say it decreases their sex drive (see Google). I found that to be the case for me. At 50, my drive is getting marginal enough ... I dropped the Creatine. YMMV.

[Bif]

...Is creatine supplementation still a reasonable way for me to go?

Well, I can relate one 54yo man’s experience to you if you care to read (the price is right anyway).

I’ve never been much into supplementation, even protein powder. I take a bunch of vitamins, workout consistently and that’s about it. I had always thought that creatine was some kind of anabolic, but after seeing it mentioned A LOT on the message boards, I decided to look into it a bit. I discovered that to the opposite of my initial misunderstanding, creatine supplements were not “drugs”, so to speak, but rather a naturally occurring compound in the body. I also read that there were no known side effects, so that eased my mind quite a bit.

I started taking creatine in 2008. Now in my 50s, I reasoned that it might not be a bad idea to take a NATURAL supplement that could aid in the recovery process. I found that it did indeed help. Now bear in mind, when I say “help” I mean that I felt more ready for each workout; I’m not talking about increasing my poundages as if I were ingesting drugs. I seem to recover better while taking my creatine supplements; this allows for more productive workouts.

I went along like this for months, and then started to wonder if perhaps I wasn’t experiencing a placebo effect. To satisfy my curiosity, I stopped taking it for a couple of months, while keeping the workout schedule the same (I train 5 or 6 days a week, by the way). I discovered that without the creatine I needed to sleep more. Bear in mind that I get up at 4am to train (I have a home setup – easy access). I could feel it getting harder and harder to drag my bones out of the rack that early. OK, experiment over; I went back on the creatine and sure enough, I didn’t seem to need as much sleep. I’m sold.

How should one take creatine supplements? Creatine comes in powder and capsule form; I simply buy the capsules from puritanspride.com online. The caps come in 700mg size; I take 4 of those a day, so almost 3 grams a day. One bottle of those is one month’s worth. I don’t stress over the timing of it; I simply ingest all 4 in the morning at breakfast (after I train) along with my other vitamins. If you wanna get anal about it, just Google “creatine supplementation” and you’ll find a gazillion different ways to completely beat the subject to death. I can’t be bothered. I suppose if you were a world-class something-or-other, these tiny differences might matter, but the only thing at which I’m world-class is changing the channel. I’m just looking to recover from daily workouts at 54yo – so far, so good. My weights are steadily increasing and I’m living to tell of it.

I am a sample of one, so take my experience for what it’s worth. I have a sedentary job and feel that, contrary to conventional wisdom that says I should be backing off since I could be Methuselah’s little brother, I want to work out MORE to counter the effects of aging. Since I have the easy access to weights, and enjoy the daily training, I’m sold on creatine.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do!

~ bif ~

[stickman]

OK, so I finally tried the search function and found this from Lon Kilgore:

“Continuing use of creatine for long periods helps recovery in between exercise sets that take less than 30 seconds. This is its main advantage, higher quality 2nd and 3rd sets. I'm not aware of research examining more sets than that”

If I understand this right – long-term creatine use helps recovery between sets, when the recovery period is 30 seconds or less (not when the set is 30 seconds or less). So it does not help recovery between work outs. And by the sound of it – is unlikely to help much if you are doing strength training with recovery between sets of 3 – 4 mins.

Did I get that right? If so that answers my question and it ain’t the Elixir of Youth for aging strength trainees. Just have to suck up being old, durn it !!!

[Bif]

Some guys say it decreases their sex drive (see Google). I found that to be the case for me. At 50, my drive is getting marginal enough ... I dropped the Creatine. YMMV.

Ummm, no, that was not the case for me. Girls look just as pretty as ever and still elicit the desired response

[Bif]

OK, so I finally tried the search function and found this from Lon Kilgore:

“Continuing use of creatine for long periods helps recovery in between exercise sets that take less than 30 seconds. This is its main advantage, higher quality 2nd and 3rd sets. I'm not aware of research examining more sets than that”

If I understand this right – long-term creatine use helps recovery between sets, when the recovery period is 30 seconds or less (not when the set is 30 seconds or less). So it does not help recovery between work outs. And by the sound of it – is unlikely to help much if you are doing strength training with recovery between sets of 3 – 4 mins.

Did I get that right? If so that answers my question and it ain’t the Elixir of Youth for aging strength trainees. Just have to suck up being old, durn it !!!

All I know is what I wrote in my prior post. I feel it helps me plain ol' recover better from my workouts. I don't use stopwatches; I just fucking lift weights. Why not try it for yourself and see if you get a boost? It's not expensive.

[rdp]

OK, so I finally tried the search function and found this from Lon Kilgore:

“Continuing use of creatine for long periods helps recovery in between exercise sets that take less than 30 seconds. This is its main advantage, higher quality 2nd and 3rd sets. I'm not aware of research examining more sets than that”

If I understand this right – long-term creatine use helps recovery between sets, when the recovery period is 30 seconds or less (not when the set is 30 seconds or less). So it does not help recovery between work outs. And by the sound of it – is unlikely to help much if you are doing strength training with recovery between sets of 3 – 4 mins.

I read Lon to be talking about sets that last 30 seconds or less, not recovery periods of 30 seconds or less. If nothing else, he uses "take": "sets take," while "recovery takes."

There must be some way of getting Lon to answer this.

I've been taking creatine for about a month. It seems to help, but I haven't done any sort of double blind test so it could be placebo effect. No downside or ill effect to taking it, as far as I can tell. 5 grams of powder/day.

[hbriem]

Creatine seems to give me about 1 rep in the 2-5 range, 2 in the 6-10 range.

I finished mine and haven't bought any so I'm not on at the moment but need to go buy some. I never bother with "loading". I just take 1 tsp/day with a little water, then wash it down with more water. Dissolving it takes much too long.

It's passed a lot of double-blind tests. Pretty much the only legal supplement that has.

[stickman]

Gonna order some today. What the hell - I need something to cheer me up. Yesterday I had my son video my squat form. What I thought were legal squats turn out to be 3/4 squats. Now I have to take about 80lbs off my work set. Dohhh! On the bright side - I guess that explains the pain in my quads and the patelar tendinitis I've been getting recently.