I have spent ten years telling cyclists that creatine was for bodybuilders. That it would make me heavier on the climbs. That endurance athletes had no business with it. I came up through a French-system, old-school racing background where every gram was the enemy and a tub of white powder in the gym bag was a confession.
That position no longer survives the data. Mine, and everybody else's.
Listen to the full conversation on the Roadman Cycling Podcast →
I ran a thirty-day experiment on myself. Five grams of creatine monohydrate a day, mixed into my post-session recovery shake. No loading phase. No cycling on and off. I tracked weight, sprint efforts, perceived exertion on long climbs, and how recovery felt the morning after a smashfest. The results were not what fifteen-years-younger me expected, and they line up almost exactly with what the published research has been saying for two decades.
This is the companion piece to that episode. If you have been ignoring creatine because someone told you in 2009 it was a gym-bro supplement, this is the article I would hand you.
The Bit Most Cyclists Have Wrong
Here is the gap between what most amateur cyclists think creatine does and what the evidence actually shows.
Most cyclists think creatine adds bulk muscle. The research says creatine adds water inside the muscle cell, increases stored phosphocreatine, and lets you regenerate ATP a fraction faster on short, maximal efforts. That is a different thing. You do not turn into a German track sprinter on five grams a day. I can confirm. Thirty days in I still had what my co-host Sarah politely calls noodle arms.
Most cyclists think creatine destroys aerobic performance because of the extra weight. The research says aerobic output does not change. What changes is your relative power-to-weight on long climbs, because the scale ticks up by 1 to 2 kg for the first two weeks. That is fixable with timing. Pure climbers can plan around it. Everyone else gets a meaningfully better top end with no aerobic cost.
Most cyclists think creatine causes cramps and dehydration. The research is the opposite. Creatine pulls water into the muscle cell. If anything it helps with thermoregulation in heat, which is why it is starting to show up in protocols for athletes racing in tropical conditions. The cramp-and-dehydration myth came from gym-locker-room conjecture, not from a controlled trial.
That is three of the four big pre-conceptions, dismantled by the literature itself. The fourth — that it is "basically a steroid" — is so wrong it does not deserve more than a line. Creatine is naturally produced in your body. It is in red meat and fish. It is on the World Anti-Doping Agency permitted list. The International Society of Sports Nutrition position statement classifies it as highly effective and very safe for both performance and health applications. It is the most-studied legal supplement in sport. End of.
What the 30 Days Actually Looked Like
Week one was nothing. Genuinely. I felt the same on the bike, no superhero quads, no bulging veins. I was almost disappointed. The marketing of creatine for the last twenty years has been a bit overhyped. Reality was quieter than that.
Week two the scale moved. Up 1.5 kg in fourteen days. That is roughly two full bottles of water hung on the bike. I did the mirror test. No extra fat anywhere visible. Just water held inside the muscles. The published research puts the typical first-fortnight gain at 1 to 2 kg, almost entirely intramuscular water, and that is exactly where I landed.
Day ten was the inflection point. I went out and did my regular hill repeat session on our local 10-minute climb out the back of Howth. The long grind up the climb felt heavier — that water weight is real and you do feel it on a sustained gradient. But there is a 30-second kicker at the top, a punchy little ramp where I have always struggled to hold 800 watts. I hit it that day expecting more of the same. I held 850 to 900 watts on the head unit, peaking at 900 in the closing seconds. That is the highest short-term power I have hit in years, and it was the first time I felt the supplement was actually doing something.
By week four the 5-second sprint power was up about 5% on a like-for-like comparison with the four weeks prior. The repeatability of short efforts had improved as well — I could hold the quality of 10-second intervals across more reps before the drop-off. That is the phosphocreatine system doing exactly what the textbook says it should. Your muscle's natural phosphocreatine stores last 10 to 15 seconds at maximal effort. Supplementation increases the size of that battery, so you hit higher peaks and recover them faster.
Twenty-minute steady efforts on the longer Wicklow climbs felt unchanged. Heart rate was the same. Perceived exertion was the same. If anything the long climbs felt fractionally slower because of the extra water weight, which is exactly what you would expect. Creatine does not touch aerobic capacity. It was never going to.
The Mechanism, in One Paragraph
Your muscles run on ATP. ATP is the battery for muscular contraction. The fastest way to regenerate ATP during the first 10 to 15 seconds of a maximal effort is via phosphocreatine — picture it as the charger that recharges the battery. Your body stores phosphocreatine naturally. It also makes some, and you get some from red meat and fish. Supplementing with creatine monohydrate increases those stores by 20 to 40%. More stores means a bigger battery for short, sharp efforts. That is the whole story. Everything else — the glycogen-storage uplift when taken with carbs, the muscle-water effect, the small recovery and inflammation signals in some studies — is a knock-on of that core mechanism.
Who This Actually Suits
Match the tool to the job. That is the rule.
If your racing is decided by short, sharp moments — crit racers, track sprinters, road racers who win on the finishing kick or surviving a surge over the top of a climb — creatine offers concrete, well-documented benefits. The studies in cyclists show small but real improvements in final-sprint power after long road-race simulations. One study showed an 18% sprint-power lift at the end of a simulated triathlon. The effect is most visible exactly where most amateur racing is decided.
If you are riding ultra-distance events, multi-day bikepacking, or you are a pure climber where every gram matters and your race is steady-state, the value drops sharply. The water weight may actually cost you on the hill climb champs or a stage race with a summit finish. The maths is simple — pull the supplement four weeks out of a key climb-heavy event and let the water weight wash off.
Two groups get an outsized benefit and should think about this hardest. Masters and older cyclists who are losing lean tissue with age — creatine helps protect muscle mass and strength as you age, which is its own kind of performance benefit on a forty-year horizon. And vegetarian or vegan cyclists, who tend to start with lower baseline creatine stores from diet, often see a more pronounced effect from supplementation than someone who eats steak twice a week.
For the older-athlete case in particular, the Joe Friel companion piece covers the broader strength-and-muscle-preservation argument that sits underneath all of this.
The Protocol I Would Actually Recommend
Five grams a day. One scoop. Mixed into a post-session recovery shake or any drink you take consistently. No loading phase. No cycling on and off. Saturation arrives in 3 to 4 weeks. Loading is faster, not better, and it is the part of the protocol that causes most of the gut-related complaints riders have. Skip it.
Buy a batch-tested, sport-certified product. Informed-Sport, NSF-certified, that level of label. Creatine monohydrate is the form with the most data behind it — the fancier formulations have very little additional evidence. A reputable tub costs around $15 and lasts you two to three months.
Tell your coach you are taking it. Log the start date and the dose in TrainingPeaks — our partner — alongside your weight, your sprint numbers and your perceived exertion on long climbs. Four weeks of clean before-and-after data on your own training settles the question better than any internet forum will.
The Verdict
After thirty days I am keeping it in. Not all year. I will run it through base and strength blocks where the punchy efforts matter, and I will pull it four weeks out of any event where the water weight would cost me on a sustained climb. That is a deliberate, calendar-led use of a well-evidenced supplement. It is not a magic powder. It is a turbo for the short efforts, with a known cost in body weight, used at the right time of year for the right kind of rider.
If you have been avoiding creatine on the strength of a 2009 forum post, the science has caught up. Run your own thirty days. Track it properly. And let the data tell you whether it earns a place in your routine.