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One of the most useful supplements you can use to build muscle fast is creatine. To understand how creatine will help you, you first need to understand a little bit about how your muscles get their energy, and how they become fatigued. Muscle cells, like all other cells in your body, get their energy by metabolizing ATP (which stands for adenosine tri-phosphate). This is the fundamental energy molecule in your cells. When you lift weights, your ATP reserves quickly get used up within the first few reps. At this point, if you’re muscle didn’t have a backup plan, it would immediately fail. But it does have a backup plan, several in fact. The first backup plan is creatine phosphate. This is a molecule that has an extra phosphate group on it. This is useful because when you’re body uses an ATP molecule, the ATP molecule looses a phosphate group (as well as the energy that it carries), becoming ADP (adenosine di-phosphate). The phosphate group on the creatine molecule can replenish the phosphate group on the ADP molecule. The molecule is now ATP again and can supply energy to your muscles to do work, such as lift weights. This allows you’re muscles to continue for another few reps. But then you run out of creatine, so you’re muscles have to resort to the second backup plan. This is where the burning sensation in your muscles starts to come into play. In this stage, your muscles begin to burn sugar directly. They convert the sugar into ATP molecules, which are then burned to do work. But, when you’re weightlifting, you can’t supply enough oxygen to your muscles fast enough to completely burn the sugar. So what you are left with is only a fraction of the number of ATP molecules you would have otherwise had, as well as a large amount of lactic acid. This lactic acid is responsible for the burning sensation you feel in you’re muscles when you workout. It also reduces your ability to turn sugar into ATP (because this can’t happen in an acidic environment). This is what makes your muscles fatigued, and eventually makes them give out. Finally, if you’re muscles run out of sugar, they will begin burning glycogen from your liver, or fat from your fat stores. However, during weightlifting, your muscles will fatigue long before you get to this point. The order of these backup systems goes from fastest to slowest. Turning ATP into work is the quickest of the reactions. Turning creatine into work is the second quickest and so on and so forth. This is why creatine supplements are important. Your body always has some creatine in it, but unless you eat a lot of red meat, than you could probably stand to gain by taking creatine supplements. The advantages are pretty apparent, more creatine means lifting heavier weights and doing more reps than you otherwise would have. Since the amount of muscle you build only depends on how much you’re lifting, and not on how much creatine you’re taking, in the long term this increased strength will become permanent. If you only take creatine for a week and then stop, you will not gain any more muscle than you would have otherwise, because you’re increased strength will be entirely due to the creatine. However, if you stick with it for at least 2 months (and then cycle off for a month), you will notice that you gain significantly more muscle than you would have otherwise. Here are just a few important reminders for taking creatine supplements. You want to make sure you stay well hydrated; creatine causes you’re muscles cells to absorb more water from your bloodstream than usual. For maximum absorption, take your creatine with a large serving of monosaccharides (these are found in things like natural juices, or apples), and a serving of protein. Load your creatine for the first 5 days. This means that you want to take a serving of creatine twice a day, instead of once a day. You’re supplement should have instruction son how to load. You also want to cycle the creatine. Stick with the supplementation for 2 months, then go off it for a month, and then repeat. Best of luck with creatine! Hi. I am a hardgainer. That means I have a hard time building muscle. Until recently, I had been skinny my whole life, and it always annoyed me. I developed a method that worked for me to build myself the body of my dreams. Visit my site, http://www.hardgainertips.net in order to read more about my method.
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