Nutrition
Ten years ago, creatine questions came from one type of client. Male, lifting, wanting to know if it would make him bigger.
That’s not the conversation anymore. Now, people from all walks of life are asking: should I be taking creatine? BUT there are some misconceptions…
A lot of coaches are answering these questions with vague answers, a lack of deep understanding or worse, a confident opinion they can’t support.
Creatine is the most researched supplement in sports nutrition; there is no excuse for guessing. But the research has expanded well past strength and hypertrophy, and the popular conversation has run further ahead than the evidence has. Your job as a coach is sorting the three categories: what’s established, what’s promising but early, and what’s marketing.
Creatine increases the amount of phosphocreatine stored in muscle. Phosphocreatine regenerates ATP (adenosine triphosphate – the energy carrying molecule in your cells) during short, hard efforts. This boost, means more work before fatigue, which over months means more accumulated training volume…which means more positive change.
This mechanism produces reliable outcomes:
Creatine monohydrate has been studied for decades, including continuous supplementation trials running several years, with no demonstrated harm to kidney or liver function in healthy people. It is not banned, not a steroid, and permitted under WADA. It’s important to understand this, as a common concern amongst populations is: “but is creatine safe for me to take?” Yes, yes it is.
Monohydrate is the most studied, the cheapest, and the form used in nearly every trial you’d cite. Micronised monohydrate is fine, it just dissolves better. Purity-certified monohydrate is a reasonable quality choice.
If a client wants to spend four times as much on a form with no supporting outcome data, that’s their call. But, as a coach, it’s important to be able to offer your client knowledge-backed recommendations when it comes to their general supplementation.
This is where coaches over-complicate a simple thing.
Maintenance: 3 to 5 grams daily. That saturates muscle stores in roughly three to four weeks. Larger clients sit at the upper end, and body mass based dosing of around 0.1 g/kg per day is a reasonable adjustment for very large or very small individuals.
Loading is optional. Around 20 grams daily, split across four doses, for five to seven days, gets you to saturation in under a week instead of a month. Then you drop to maintenance. The end point is identical. Loading just gets there faster, with slightly more risk of GI discomfort.
Load if there’s a reason. A client with a competition in three weeks, or someone who wants to feel something quickly enough to stay compliant. Otherwise skip it and take 5 grams a day. Consistency is key.
Timing barely matters. There’s weak evidence favouring post-training. Again, consistency matters enormously more than the clock. The best time is whenever the client will actually remember.
Cycling off is unnecessary. There’s no evidence of tolerance or downregulation requiring a washout. Stores simply return to baseline over four to six weeks if you stop taking creatine, so there is no need, keep it in daily.
This is where the public conversation has outrun the science, and where coaches need to be most careful with their language.
The brain uses creatine, brain creatine stores can be modestly increased with supplementation, and energy availability affects cognitive performance.
What the emerging research suggests is that creatine’s cognitive effects show up mostly under stress. Sleep deprivation and mental fatigue. In rested, well-fed young adults, effects are small or absent. Vegetarians and vegans, who start with lower baseline stores, appear more responsive.
Important practical detail: brain creatine uptake is slower and less complete than muscle uptake. The doses used in cognitive research are often higher and the durations longer than standard strength dosing. Someone taking 5 grams for lifting is not necessarily dosing for cognition.
What to teach your clients? The research on creatine and cognition is genuinely interesting but not backed up enough, yet. The strongest signal is under sleep deprivation and stress. So, we can utilise creatine to our benefit in these circumstances. It’s not a reason to take creatine on its own, but it’s a reasonable bonus if you’re already taking it for training.
Meta-analyses of creatine plus resistance training in older adults consistently show greater gains in lean mass and strength than resistance training alone.
For a coach working with clients over 50, that’s a straightforward and well supported conversation. Sarcopenia is the outcome that determines independence in later life, and creatine is a cheap, safe addition to the training that addresses it!
Women are under-supplemented with creatine, and it’s largely down to a myth coaches have failed to correct.
The facts worth knowing:
That last point is the one that matters. “Creatine makes you bloated” has kept a generation of female clients off the single most effective legal supplement available, based on a misunderstanding of where the water goes. Creatine does not make you gain visible body weight in the ways many females misconceive, and don’t contribute to fat gain.
Say it plainly, expect the scale to move in week one, and prepare the client for it so she doesn’t panic and quit.
Safety questions you will get
“Will it damage my kidneys?” There is no evidence of harm in healthy individuals. But, it is worth knowing why the myth persists: creatine supplementation raises serum creatinine, which is a marker used to estimate kidney function. A client can return a blood test that looks concerning while having entirely normal kidney function. Tell clients to mention creatine use to their doctor before testing. Anyone with existing kidney disease needs medical guidance, not coaching guidance.
“Is it safe for teenagers?” Statements from sports nutrition bodies are broadly supportive for adolescent athletes under appropriate supervision. In practice, that decision involves parents and ideally a medical professional, not you alone.
“Do I need to drink more water?” Standard adequate hydration is fine. There’s no evidence creatine causes dehydration or cramping, and some evidence points the other way.
Creatine is one supplement. Your clients will ask about a dozen more and most coaches will not confidently be able to offer guidance. If you want to develop your knowledge around supplementation, we’ve got you covered.
The Clean Health Certified Nutrition Coach certification includes a dedicated module on the science of supplementation, covering what the evidence actually supports, how to evaluate a claim, and how to have these conversations with clients without overstepping your scope. It sits alongside applied nutrition programming, coaching psychology, client retention and the business skills to build a practice around it!
Stop guessing when a client asks. Get qualified to answer.
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