Creatine vs. Other Performance Boosters: Which One is Right for You?

Since its discovery, creatine has been the gift that keeps on giving for fitness enthusiasts and serious athletes alike. Initially prized due to its role in accelerating muscle growth and recovery in the aftermath of a workout, creatine has now been proven to enhance the strength and output of muscles in most people right from their very first dose, and even before a workout has even begun. 

This is to say nothing of the added benefits creatine provides that are wholly unrelated to muscle function, like enhanced cognitive function, reduced mental fatigue, and even the alleviation of depression symptoms. 

The acknowledgement that creatine can also be advantageous when taken before or during workouts has resulted in several people now opting to take it before or during their workouts, with some supplement manufacturers and beverage companies even slipping it into pre-workout formulations and energy drinks to provide customers with an added boost.

Here’s the thing: As a direct performance booster, is this really the best use of your daily creatine ration? More to the point, given creatine’s other valuable functions in your body, should you be using it as your go-to performance booster, or are there other physical stimulants and energy optimizers that you should consider leaning on more heavily, either instead of creatine, or alongside it?

Creatine as a performance booster

If you’re not aware of how creatine prepares your muscles for action, an ingested dose of supplemental creatine saturates your muscle tissue to an extent that is essentially impossible through non-supplemental means. 

Most of the early research on creatine focused on its capacity to accelerate muscle protein synthesis, thereby repairing muscle fibers that had been damaged and enervated by the exertions of exercise, and helping to prepare them for a fresh round of training and performance the next day.

However, the practical function of creatine comes from the boost it provides to the ATP-phosphocreatine system, which aids the efficiency of muscle contraction, and lengthens the time and capability of your body to perform explosive movements. 

Perhaps the best example of this is an all-out sprinting situation; creatine may boost the length of time that your sprinting may feel effortless prior to the accumulation of lactic acid by up to two seconds.

In many athletic competitions, this two second period can easily bridge the gap between defeat and victory, and in a training setting, the consistent performance of one to two additional reps with heavier weight per workout over time can lead to dramatic improvements.

Other Popular Performance Boosters

The answer to whether or not creatine can improve your workout quality is a resounding yes. Not to be outdone, several other supplements are also consumed either individually or collectively for the sake of either upgrading workout quality, ensuring workout preparedness, or motivating your mind and body to commence a workout that you would otherwise prefer to skip. 

Each of these supplements are popular with at least some segment of the fitness training populace, with a few often being consumed for reasons that have nothing at all to do with fitness.

HMB

The role of beta-hydroxy-beta-methylbutyrate (HMB) as a pre-workout supplement needs to be studied even further. In its primary role, HMB is taken as a supplement to minimize muscle wasting, resulting in a reduction of muscle tissue lost through working out, and greater overall muscle gains during each training-recovery cycle. In this capacity, HMB has performed superbly in medical settings, and it also partners well with creatine to expedite lean muscle gains.

Very little research has been conducted to explore HMB’s functionality when taken prior to a training session. However, there are study results indicating that pre-workout HMB also leads to a reduction in some damage markers in muscle (1). Hypothetically, this could mean that HMB can help to preserve the optimal functionality of muscles at the very moment of physical exertion, helping you maintain a higher workout quality for a longer period of time.

Caffeine

The world’s most frequently ingested stimulant is also the foundation of many pre-workout supplements, and this is simply because it has been proven to work. The International Society of Sports Nutrition’s position on caffeine is that it improves “muscular endurance, movement velocity and muscular strength, sprinting, jumping, and throwing performance, as well as a wide range of aerobic and anaerobic sport-specific actions.” (2)

Moreover, the source of the caffeine doesn’t even seem to matter to any significant extent, as the ISSN further states “energy drinks and pre-workout supplements containing caffeine have been demonstrated to enhance both anaerobic and aerobic performance.”

The key seems to be to consume caffeine in the recommended doses of between 3-6 mg per kilogram of body weight, with doses of 2 mg/kg being considered too low to elicit a meaningful effect, and doses of 9 mg/kg being associated with harmful side effects.

Given these outcomes, the combination of creatine and caffeine seems to be a natural partnership with respect to pairing supplements intended to improve training productivity. 

Ashwagandha

While testosterone support supplements usually contain a mixture of several supplements, ashwagandha is becoming one of the most popular supplements to include in these products. The reason for this is simple: It has been demonstrated to work.

The present prevailing theory behind how ashwagandha works is that it is said to influence the body’s neuroendocrine hormones, resulting in a simultaneous reduction of cortisol — which improves protein homeostasis — and an increase in testosterone. This combined effect is believed to reduce the degradation of muscles while simultaneously elevating energy levels and muscle performance.

In a series of studies monitoring the conditioning effects of ashwagandha on cardiovascular performance, the data indicated that the supplement enhanced the VO2 max of both athletes and otherwise healthy adults. (3) Also, in studies focused specifically on strength enhancement and muscle growth, training while taking ashwagandha was shown to significantly boost strength levels and post-workout muscle size. (4)

L-Citrulline and L-Arginine

Once you delve into the list of ingredients commonly featured in pre-workout powders, you’re often dealing with ingredients that reinforce the role of caffeine to prepare the body to perform at an optimal level. Still, the majority of these ingredients are helpful even when consumed without caffeine, or any other supplements.

One of the common ingredients in pre-workout powders is L-citrulline, which is an amino acid that is principally credited with boosting nitric oxide levels. When nitric oxide levels increase, blood vessels widen, and blood flow improves. As a result, supplementation with L-citrulline is expected to contribute to improved nutrient delivery to muscles, thereby improving muscle performance.

Taken in isolation, there may be limited value to taking L-citrulline, as studies often indicate limited immediate benefits to taking L-citrulline on its own. Yet, when combined with other supplements and ingredients, the NO-boosting properties of L-citrulline would be expected to optimize the transportation and uptake of those nutrients, meaning that it can play a valuable support role in helping other supplements to do their jobs.

The role of L-arginine is nearly identical to that of L-citrulline from an exercise performance standpoint, because of its ability to increase blood vessel diameter and improve blood flow. (5) Also, studies involving L-arginine have more closely linked its influence to improved performance outcomes in aerobic and anaerobic performance tests. (6)

L-Carnitine

As a case in point as to why some amino acids are best when used collaboratively, L-carnitine is one of the amino acids that benefits from the work done by L-citrulline. It plays a major role in energy production, because it rests inside of skeletal muscle and other tissues, and hastens the production of stored body fat as energy.

Due to L-carnitine’s role in fatty acid metabolism, it is viewed as a supplement that can prompt a more immediate burning of body fat as an energy source, while rushing that energy to cells more quickly than they would otherwise travel. Obviously, when consumed in conjunction with an amino acid like L-citrulline, L-carnitine is able to accomplish its task even more quickly.

On top of its role in accelerating the usage rate of fat, L-carnitine has shown an ability to increase maximum power and lifting volume in a study pool consisting of resistance trained men. (7) It has also been proven to boost muscle mass and exercise tolerance, although the pool of study participants used to demonstrate this trait consisted of test subjects more than 100 years old. (8)

Phosphatidic Acid

Another supplement increasing in use as a muscle boosting agent is phosphatidic acid. It has been recommended that people taking phosphatidic acid should split its consumption into pre- and post-workout doses in order to capitalize on its multiple benefits.

Phosphatidic acid is valued for its role in muscle signaling, and can optimize the release of energy, induce the boost in testosterone levels, and trigger the release of growth hormone. As such, it can play a crucial role in assisting the body during both performance and recovery. This dual means of aiding trained muscles has made the use of phosphatidic acid beneficial at all times, but particularly as a bookend to training sessions.

In a study of strength-trained males, the athletes assigned to the phosphatidic acid group experienced significant increases in lean body mass, along with strength increases specifically in one-rep-max performance on the leg press and bench press. (9)

Beta-Alanine

Another amino acid that has been conclusively tested to the point that the International Society of Sports Nutrition has issued a position on it is beta-alanine. This amino acid has been shown to increase the muscle concentration levels of yet another amino acid — carnosine — which has buffering properties during muscle exertion, and slows the symptoms of muscle fatigue. 

As such, the ISSN recommends that beta-alanine be taken in doses of four to six grams per day to produce these desired effects. Specifically, the results of multiple studies indicate that beta-alanine is most effective at improving endurance levels in physical exertions lasting from one to four minutes. (10)

A simpler way of interpreting this data is that beta-alanine is very effective at boosting anaerobic endurance, and its value as a fatigue-reducing amino acid can potentially extend the viability and efficiency of your muscles as their strength is preserved over the course of resistance-training workouts.

Bioperine

Given the ubiquity of black pepper, it’s surprising to many people that its extract form could be so advantageous as a preworkout supplement. While bioperine can do many things within the body, one of its critical benefits from a supplementation standpoint is the assistance it provides to other supplements by boosting their bioavailability and increasing the rate of their effectiveness.

For this reason, bioperine is often mixed into pre-workouts and other supplement formulas in order to optimize the performance of the other supplements contained within them. More to the point, there have even been instances of bioperine being pre-mixed into creatine supplements to supposedly accelerate the pace at which creatine reaches the blood and muscle tissue, and contributes to the success of a workout.

Better than Creatine?

To be clear, none of the performance boosters included in this review are capable of doing precisely what creatine does, or replicating its effects. The human body’s ability to store and utilize creatine as a muscle-enhancing and energy-buffering reservoir is so unique that any supplements that produce a seemingly similar outcome in terms of energy production are accomplishing that goal through entirely different means.

All of this is to say that all of the supplements listed here, while effective, are incapable of replicating creatine’s advantages in the specific ways that creatine produces them, with saturation quantities of creatine in muscle tissue producing compound effects at a rate than the other supplements typically can’t compete with.

Again, this is simply a review of creatine’s benefits as a direct booster of muscle performance, and does not take into consideration creatine’s unmatched reputation as a non-androgenic tool for muscle recovery and growth.

Better with Creatine?

Perhaps the better question to ask would be, are these  supplements better at performing their tasks when creatine is operating alongside them? The answer to this question in virtually all cases is yes, but for different reasons in each case.

While compounds like caffeine are direct nervous system stimulants that improve alertness and muscle responsiveness, amino acids like L-arginine and L-citrulline can prepare a pathway to expedite creatine’s effects. 

At the same time, L-carnitine can play a role in selecting which energy source your body taps into, while assisting creatine with the reduction of muscle fatigue. Then there’s HMB, which mitigates muscle damage in a way that creatine can’t, and makes the function of creatine more efficient, on both the front and back end

The bottom line is that if there’s no pressing need to limit yourself to only one supplement, why do it? Understandably, some people may have sensitivities to one or more supplemental ingredients, but if you’re not in that number, there’s no reason why you can’t prepare for your workout by taking creatine alongside one or more additional supplements to boost your muscle performance into the stratosphere.

Better Together

While none of these performance boosters are better than creatine on their own, none of them need to be. This is because there are multiple ways to improve physical performance, and creatine doesn’t need to be the sole contributor to a high-functioning body. 

Sources

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