Supplements: Creatine and Everything Else
Introduction
The sports supplement industry moves billions of dollars on an attractive idea: that some product exists which speeds up what training does slowly. The reality is considerably more boring and considerably cheaper.
Of the hundreds of products available, barely a handful have solid evidence, and all of them together contribute far less than sleeping well and training consistently for a year.
No supplement compensates for a bad plan. And the best of them costs about as much as a weekly coffee.
What actually has support
Creatine
It's the most studied sports supplement in existence, with hundreds of trials and decades of use. It's also among the cheapest.
What it does: it increases phosphocreatine stores in muscle, the fuel for short intense efforts. The result is small but consistent improvements in strength, power and muscle mass when it accompanies training.
How to take it: 3 to 5 grams daily of creatine monohydrate, every day, at any time. No need to cycle it or take breaks. The loading phase — 20 g daily for the first week — only brings the effect forward by a few days; it can be skipped.
On the form: monohydrate is the one with the evidence. The "advanced", pricier versions haven't been shown to be superior.
Adverse effects: in healthy people the safety profile is very good, even with prolonged use. It can produce an initial gain of a kilo or two of intramuscular water, sometimes mistaken for fat. The belief that it damages the kidneys is not supported in healthy people; with pre-existing kidney disease, do consult.
One point usually omitted: it works less in people whose stores are already high, typically from eating a lot of meat. And a percentage of people respond little or not at all.
Protein powder
It isn't really a supplement: it's food in a convenient format.
It helps if you struggle to reach your daily protein requirement with normal food. If you already reach it, it adds nothing. Meta-analyses show the benefit appears when it covers a shortfall, not when stacked on top of adequate intake.
There's no narrow anabolic window: what matters is the daily total.
Caffeine
Solid evidence as a performance aid, at doses of 3 to 6 mg per kilogram before effort. It's covered in caffeine and athletic performance.
Vitamin D, iron, B12: only if deficient
These aren't performance supplements: they're corrections of a deficiency. Supplementing without a deficiency improves nothing, and with iron it can be harmful. They're detected with a test, not a hunch.
What isn't worth it
BCAAs and branched-chain amino acids. Very popular once, and the later evidence was unfavourable: if your protein intake is adequate, they add nothing. They're incomplete, expensive protein.
Fat burners. Effects are minimal or nil, and some products have contained undeclared stimulants.
Glutamine. No demonstrated effect in healthy people who train.
"Natural" testosterone capsules. Nothing sold without prescription raises testosterone to a clinically relevant degree in men with normal levels.
Complex pre-workouts. What works inside them is the caffeine. The other fifteen ingredients rarely have support, and many come in token doses.
Collagen for joints. The evidence is preliminary and far less conclusive than the marketing suggests.
Multivitamins as routine. In someone eating reasonably varied food, they show no benefit.
The contamination problem
An issue that deserves more attention than it gets: sports supplements are loosely regulated in most countries.
Independent analyses regularly find products whose actual content doesn't match the label, and a percentage containing undeclared substances — including stimulants and steroids. For anyone competing under anti-doping control this is a direct risk; for anyone at all, it's a health risk.
Practical recommendations: prefer brands with third-party certification (Informed Sport, NSF Certified for Sport), distrust "proprietary blends" that don't specify doses, and be suspicious of any product promising fast results.
The correct order of priorities
Worth stating as a scale, because advertising inverts it:
1. Training consistently and progressively. Contributes 80 %. 2. Eating enough, with adequate protein. 3. Sleeping well. 4. Only then, supplements — and of those, creatine and caffeine are nearly all there is.
If the first three aren't sorted, no product will compensate. If they are, creatine will give you a small, real improvement.
Common mistakes
Starting with supplements. Buying protein powder in your first week of training is investing in the wrong order.
Expecting visible effects. Creatine isn't something you "feel". It shows up in your training log after weeks.
Cycling creatine. Unnecessary. Take it every day, including rest days.
Confusing dose per serving with effective dose. Many products list valid ingredients in quantities that do nothing.
Supplementing micronutrients without a test. The most common route to spending on something useless or, with iron, counterproductive.
Before taking anything
Consult if you have kidney or liver disease, if you're pregnant or breastfeeding, if you take chronic medication, or if you're a minor. And if you compete under anti-doping control, check every product against the current list and prioritize certified ones.
Conclusion
Of the whole catalogue, what the evidence genuinely supports fits into two names: creatine monohydrate and caffeine, plus protein powder if you don't reach your requirement with food.
If you're going to buy something, buy that: 3 to 5 grams of creatine monohydrate daily, from a certified brand, every day. It costs little, has decades of research behind it, and it's the only thing on the shelf that will show up in your training log two months from now.
References
- Kreider, R. B., et al. (2017). ISSN position stand: Safety and efficacy of creatine supplementation in exercise, sport, and medicine. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 14.
- Morton, R. W., et al. (2018). A systematic review, meta-analysis and meta-regression of the effect of protein supplementation on resistance training-induced gains in muscle mass and strength. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 52(6).
- Guest, N. S., et al. (2021). ISSN position stand: Caffeine and exercise performance. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 18(1).
- Wolfe, R. R. (2017). Branched-chain amino acids and muscle protein synthesis in humans: Myth or reality? Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 14.
- Maughan, R. J., et al. (2018). IOC consensus statement: Dietary supplements and the high-performance athlete. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 52(7).
- Antonio, J., et al. (2021). Common questions and misconceptions about creatine supplementation. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 18(1).