Creatine for endurance and mixed sports - performance, recovery and body composition 🔍

A review of the most up-to-date evidence.

Creatine Supplementation in Endurance and Mixed-Sport Contexts: A Scoping Review of Performance, Recovery, and Body Composition

Study Details

This new review included 38 RCTs on creatine in endurance and mixed-sport contexts, focusing on performance, recovery markers and body composition 📚

Aiming to establish if it is actually useful 🧐

Here are the key findings ⬇️

Key Findings

⚡ Creatine was most consistently linked with favourable changes in repeated-sprint performance and high-intensity power output

🏁 The strongest practical fit appears to be sports with repeated surges, sprint finishes, accelerations or power-endurance demands

🚴 Benefits were reported across some cycling, swimming, rowing and canoeing/kayaking protocols, but findings were not uniform across studies

🫀 Evidence for steady-state aerobic capacity, longer time trials and endurance-dominant outcomes remains limited and inconsistent

🧬 Recovery findings were mixed, with some studies showing reductions in inflammatory markers such as CRP and TNF-α, but muscle damage markers were inconsistent

💪 Creatine may support rapid ATP resynthesis during short, intense efforts via increased phosphocreatine availability

⚖️ Most studies used a short loading phase of around 20 g/day for 5–7 days, sometimes followed by 2–5 g/day maintenance

⬆️ Small increases in body mass or estimated fat-free mass were common, but these may largely reflect water retention rather than true muscle gain

Conclusion

Overall, the evidence supports a targeted, context-dependent role for creatine rather than a universal endurance performance benefit ☝️

Is it for everyone? No. Can it be useful? Yes.

Reference

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42280321/

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