View Full Version : do you cycle your creatine?
MMASTAR
12-09-2009, 12:45 PM
Just curious how many guys cycle there creatine and how many use constantly.
cycle...give the kidney a break
3-6 months ON/OFF
_Ragnar_
12-09-2009, 01:05 PM
I use it constantly.
ubcpower
12-09-2009, 01:05 PM
been running it for 6 years straight
Ritch
12-09-2009, 02:31 PM
No. Sometimes i may take weekends off because I just tired of constantly putting supps down the hatchet... But I know it dosen`t affect my results. 10 grams on trainining days, 5 grams on non training days.
Danger
12-09-2009, 04:29 PM
I do 5g ED and then take a month(ish) off every time I empty a can of it.
CanadianIron
14-09-2009, 12:38 AM
I take it off cycle, if i take it while im running a cycle I get insane muscle spasms at night and cant drink enough.
devo09
14-09-2009, 12:53 AM
1. creatine doesn't cause ANY additional stress to your kidneys, so throw that crap out the window
2. There isn't really any need to cycle creatine at all, when you take it your body's intramuscular creatine phosphate stores will decrease. But that doesn't matter because your supplementing with creatine so your still raising your overall creatine phosphate stores
3. To canadianiron, sorry man but that is such a load of crap lol. Creatine won't do anythign for "muscle spasms" or bigger "pumps" or anything like that. Supplementing with creatine simply increases your short term energy capacity (maybe gets you an extra rep on bench press, etc)
CanadianIron
14-09-2009, 01:14 AM
You can call it a pile of crap but within a day or so of taking crea mono im spazzing out of control. Total sucks up a ton of water. Muscle spasms are one of the most common side effects to creatine.
dremen
16-09-2009, 07:13 PM
3. To canadianiron, sorry man but that is such a load of crap lol. Creatine won't do anythign for "muscle spasms" or bigger "pumps" or anything like that. Supplementing with creatine simply increases your short term energy capacity (maybe gets you an extra rep on bench press, etc)
Ummm where do you get this shit from. Im off cycle right now and the pumps im getting from my wal-mart creatine are insane.
I've not had any in the last 2 days and when i hit the gym today my pumps were 1/4 what they are when i have creatine in me.
You have no idea what your talking about.
devo09
16-09-2009, 09:41 PM
Ummm where do you get this shit from. Im off cycle right now and the pumps im getting from my wal-mart creatine are insane.
I've not had any in the last 2 days and when i hit the gym today my pumps were 1/4 what they are when i have creatine in me.
You have no idea what your talking about.
which "wal mart" creatine are you talking about?
YES, I do know what I'm talking about...why don't you try to look up what creatine ACTUALLY does in your body, it won't produce a better "pump" although I guess in your case where you don't know what the hell your talking about it could produce a placebo effect :)
Wait..is it the six-star creatine?
Creatine do NOT need to be cycle.
Why you say the "Pump" you get from creatine are insane.
Creatine does not provide any "Pump" it resplanish the adenosine triphosphate level in your muscle fiber. So creatine is a kind of fuel for muscle.
It has been proved in recent studies that it does not increase water retention or muscle cramping.
You guys must be on CELL TECH!
Canadian Protein.com
17-09-2009, 05:21 PM
Might take a few weeks off here and there but for the most part I stay on...Love the stuff!
10 grams on training days, 5 grams on non training days.
Do you guys use CEE or MONO? I dont believe in CEE myself, but im still using a bulk blend 10g dextrose 2.5g CEE 2.5 MONO daily
what you guys think?
dremen
17-09-2009, 06:43 PM
which "wal mart" creatine are you talking about?
YES, I do know what I'm talking about...why don't you try to look up what creatine ACTUALLY does in your body, it won't produce a better "pump" although I guess in your case where you don't know what the hell your talking about it could produce a placebo effect :)
Wait..is it the six-star creatine?
Creatine makes your tissue retain more water and with more volume in your muscles you get larger pumps. Why do you think a persons weight goes up quite a few pounds just a few days after starting creatine?
Im down 6 pounds since i stoped taking creatine 3 days ago bub so don't ****ing tell me what im talking about.
Placebo effect my ass the scale and the workouts are all the proof i need so take your smart ass attitude and get ****ed:ne
How much water can I expect to hold on a clean diet? If that can be answered even...
I just started taking creatine.
O-Train
17-09-2009, 07:07 PM
How much water can I expect to hold on a clean diet? If that can be answered even...
I just started taking creatine.
If the water retention is directly related to taking creatine than your diet won't matter assuming your water intake remains high. A guy your size, I'll guess 5-8lbs although that's a guess.
dremen
17-09-2009, 07:24 PM
How much water can I expect to hold on a clean diet? If that can be answered even...
I just started taking creatine.
About a week into creatine my weight is up 8-10 pounds.
I take some in the am, pre-workout and post-workout with my carb drink.
smukker
17-09-2009, 08:47 PM
dont mean to be hijacking but do you guys notice rank hangover while on creatine?? When i take it and ever just have a few, not even get wasted but i get the morst horrible hangovers the next day? Is this common?
dremen
17-09-2009, 10:06 PM
dont mean to be hijacking but do you guys notice rank hangover while on creatine?? When i take it and ever just have a few, not even get wasted but i get the morst horrible hangovers the next day? Is this common?
Why are you drinking bro, tisk tisk.
Hangovers are dehidration of the body, mainly the brain fluid.
If you go out drinking make sure you drink 1 litre of water right before bed. You will feel better.
Na you guys just won't undersand ...
In fact, skeletal muscle is made of over 70% water. So let's say you got here 10 lb. of muscle this mean in fact that 7 lb. is water. So the gain of muscle you will made, whatever if it's on creatine or not, will be 70% of water. Creatine does not affect the body's percentage of water, the gained is normal and proportional in terms of fluid content. So taking creatine does not provide water retention and it's normal you can gain so much in short time. It is simplistic and irresponsible to attribute gains in body weigth to transient water retention.
Watson el examined the effects of 1 week of creatine supplementation on hydration status, thermoregulation, and incidence of heat illness in dehydrated men exercising in a hot environment. Body mass and sweat losses during exercise were not different between conditions
So please , stop say things like it need to be cycled and it provide water retention or dehydratation.
If the water retention is directly related to taking creatine than your diet won't matter assuming your water intake remains high. A guy your size, I'll guess 5-8lbs although that's a guess.
Damn. Didn't want to hold that much lol. I'm playing football and don't want any extra weight!
CanadianIron
18-09-2009, 12:43 PM
Na you guys just won't undersand ...
In fact, skeletal muscle is made of over 70% water. So let's say you got here 10 lb. of muscle this mean in fact that 7 lb. is water. So the gain of muscle you will made, whatever if it's on creatine or not, will be 70% of water. Creatine does not affect the body's percentage of water, the gained is normal and proportional in terms of fluid content. So taking creatine does not provide water retention and it's normal you can gain so much in short time. It is simplistic and irresponsible to attribute gains in body weigth to transient water retention.
Watson el examined the effects of 1 week of creatine supplementation on hydration status, thermoregulation, and incidence of heat illness in dehydrated men exercising in a hot environment. Body mass and sweat losses during exercise were not different between conditions
So please , stop say things like it need to be cycled and it provide water retention or dehydratation.
Study or no study, the DAY I take creatine when im on an AAS cycle, i cramp like a mother ****er. My forearms go nuts if i flex them and i pretty much have to sleep with my legs straight out. This only happens if I load up a bit of creatine mono. If creatine had no effect on the way your body uses water, they wouldnt tell you to drink more. I doubt the guy doing the study did it on people taking equ, dbol, test, deca, tren etc...
Taking creatine and not increasing your water intake causes dehydration. Therefore, i dont see how you can say creatine doesnt cause dehydration. Its kind of like saying "Guns dont kill people, holes through their heads do."
Well .. effectively, those sutides have not been tested on druged people. As I'm not an expert on AAS I can't really officialy prononced myself on what's happening to you here. But, I might expect that like you body can assimilate more protein for exemple while on AAS, I guess it's the same with creatine. Creatine is a mediator of some of the androgenic effects and androgens are among the hormones that can force the entry of creatine into muscle cells. In addition, the increase in testosterone level increase the muscle sensitivity to the anabolic properties of creatine in addition to enhancing the creatine buildup in muscle fibers and so increasing creatine muscle store. Plus, since your on AAS, your muscle protein synthesis will be more elevated and your body will likely consume creatine at a faster rate, even more, on AAS you train more harder, stronger and often so it's more quickly depleting your creatine phosphate level giving you less ATP level and less androgenics effects.
Like I said before too, taking creatine does not cause dehydratation and this have been proved many times in study so I won't start a debate on that
jsv22
18-09-2009, 01:56 PM
the verdict on creatine cycling isn't out but available findings indicate that the effects of Cr supplementation may decrease during prolonged supplementation (2–3 months)(Derave et al., 2003, Eijnde et al., 2003, Olsen et al., 2006). Therefore, it might be an option to interrupt 2–3 month periods of daily creatine intake with washout episodes of about 4–5 weeks to restore the responsiveness of muscle to creatine supplementation (Vandenberghe et al., 1997).
Na you guys just won't undersand ...
In fact, skeletal muscle is made of over 70% water. So let's say you got here 10 lb. of muscle this mean in fact that 7 lb. is water. So the gain of muscle you will made, whatever if it's on creatine or not, will be 70% of water. Creatine does not affect the body's percentage of water, the gained is normal and proportional in terms of fluid content. So taking creatine does not provide water retention and it's normal you can gain so much in short time. It is simplistic and irresponsible to attribute gains in body weigth to transient water retention.
Watson el examined the effects of 1 week of creatine supplementation on hydration status, thermoregulation, and incidence of heat illness in dehydrated men exercising in a hot environment. Body mass and sweat losses during exercise were not different between conditions
So please , stop say things like it need to be cycled and it provide water retention or dehydratation.
lol nice man, you sound like a real expert in this field...you think were ****ing idiots around here? and your watson reference is a fail...participants were dehydration by 2% BM (decreases exercise performance by about 20%) then completed an 80-minute exercise heat-tolerance test (33.5 degrees C)? what's your point?
acute creatine ingestion has repeatedly been shown to elevate total body water and intracellular fluid but had no effect on extracellular water. The most common effect of creatine supplementation found in the literature has been a change in body mass, but this finding does not seem to alter exercise sweat rates (as was found by Watson). With creatine supplementation there is no detrimental effects on thermoregulatory or hydration variables, including body temperature regulation, percentage of dehydration, urinary hydration measures, plasma volume, or sweat losses (from Lopez et al., 2009. available at http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=19295968)
The most common cause of cramping for athletes is related to sodium
Ok give me your ref on that
here mines
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You said that Furthermore, results from earlier researchers noted osmotic fluid shifts within as few as 3 days of creatine supplementation
Please continue reading the whole paragraph only of just part of National Athletic Trainers' Association research.
jsv22
18-09-2009, 03:00 PM
part of that paragraph got chopped when I put the sodium part in (with the reference from the article)….i meant to take that sentence out too since I didn’t want to hijack the thread...
those references are from the article i just posted above by lopez et al.
O-Train
18-09-2009, 03:18 PM
Damn. Didn't want to hold that much lol. I'm playing football and don't want any extra weight!
It was just a guess. Generally you'll hold water within the muscle so you'll just feel/look a little fuller/more pumped. 5lbs of water is nothing really. You could lose that from sweating in 1hr.
Glad you chimed in jsv22. I knew there was some research regarding creatine cycling, I could just never find it.
Lately I've done 3-4 months on and 1 month off. Usually just 5g creatine monohydrate/day. Although for the start of the new "cycle" a loading phase would speed things up. I think even 10g/day for a couple weeks would help. I wouldn't want to use more but that's a personal preference.
dremen
18-09-2009, 05:59 PM
I don't give a shit about any studies that have been done or what other people think in regards to creatine.
All i know is im lifting natural right now and when i use creatine my weight SHOOTS up 10 pounds and non of my pants fit at all. I feel bloated all over and my skin looks puffy or full.
When i stop creatine i piss almost every 20 minutes for the first 24 hours and my weight goes back down to normal.
Creatine makes me retain a shitload of water and it makes my pumps bigger.
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