Post Workout

[Musclehead24]

I take creatine right after my workout. Can I drink a protien shake right after the creatine as well?

[EricT]

As long as your having a quick absorbing type of protein (I vote for a whey isolate) and some high GI carbs in WATER then you can take your creatine right off the bat. You can do it all together but then you'll want a bigger shake (fairly dilute) so it would be best to spoon the creatine into you mouth and wash it down with the shake.

Or you can just do the carbs first with the creatine and follow that in a little bit with the protein. Just keep in mind you need plenty of water with creatine.

[jean0063]

You should take dextrose with your creatine to boost your insulin, that will help the absorption of the creatine. Take your proteine 20 to 30 minutes after, isolate protein will be more adequate. After that you can eat another meal of high protein 1 hours after your shake.

[EricT]

Nah, bro, you can do it that way but it's not necessary. Like I said it's a choice but either way is really fine. The whey mixed with carbs will work just fine. It's been shown to. Remember that protein can affect insulin too.

As long as it's all in a nice dilute solution and is aborbed quickly you're going to get a heck of an insulin response and then you'll get the protein AND the creatine delivered to your muscles as soon as possible.

Now, on a technical standpoint dextrose mixed with whey, especially islolate, will most likely work Better. Dextrose by itself really doesn't perform as well. The protein will actually help emptying in the stomach in this case so you get a better outcome. BUT if mix it half and half with malto that's a better way to do carbs only with the creatine. Even then you can put the protein in. I wouldn't wait as long as twenty minutes to half an hour to get my postworkout protein. I'd take out the postworkout creatine before I'd do that if I thought it was necessary, which it isn't.

I'm assuming this is creatine mono. If it's CEE or something that doesn't need a carrier none of it matters and you'll be fine.

[Kane]

If you're taking mono, then won't your high GI carbs take care of the insulin spike and your transport? I usually use grape juice as my transport for creatine. I'll spoon the mono into my mouth and wash it down with grape juice and then chug my protein shake, all done immediately post workout (within 10 minutes of the workout). Would this not work the same? (I'm using an isolate thats fairly dilluted with water)

[TALO]

Personally I take my creatine before my workout with a BCAA drink. Then after my workout I slam a protein shake with a bit of glutamine.

[EricT]

Kane what your doing is exactly the same kind of thing I'm saying. It's fine and pretty much the same thing I do. I mix all of my stuff together in a dilute solution because to me it's all going in the same place anyway. But either way it makes no difference. I will say that grape juice alone will actually work better than dextrose alone, btw.

TALO I like creatine pre too. I actually take some pre and post, the idea being that the creatine along with the protein (and carbs) have a sort of sinergistic effect. So what I like to do is take half the creatine pre and half post. But it's 6 of 1 and a half dozen of the other. I thing all the ways are fine. I'm just like you, I'm going to slam that protein after a workout. I like bcaa's as well but do them pre and post in the same way when I can.

[Scorcher2005]

Same here Eric, half (5g of mono) before a workout w/ some protein and half later w/protein. I use grape juice right now as the transport, sometimes i use apple or some funky flavor like apple orange pinneapple.


And I've had bad results spooning creatine in my mouth instead of mixing it. I think it doesnt get spread out enough and sits in my stomach in a lump...and well, i feel the effects about 45 min later...NOT GOOD :-/

[EricT]

Yeah, Scorcher I know what you mean. That really comes down to not having enough liquid with the creatine. If your drinking a small shake all at once there is absolutely no reason to spoon it in your mouth. People worry that a little might settle to the bottom but you shake it or stir it up and slam it, so big deal. Then if you follow that with your second thing like Kane with plenty of liquid your good to go.

The only legitimate reason to spoon it in to your mouth is if you make one really big mixture like I do. You don't want to drink a really big one all at once so you spoon it in with the first half and you drink the second half more slowly. That way you don't take the chance of it degrading, settling to the bottom...and your shake tastes better.

One little point on this is that I think some people like to do too MUCH of everything for post workout. The idea of immediately post is to get some fast absorbing stuff to your muscles while you have the oppurtunity. It's better to use just enough protein and carbs and get them there fast than it is to try to load up on anything at this point. A lot of people use up to two scoops of protein, for instance, and think about it.....the more stuff you put in your stomach the slower it will all empty. So too much kind of defeats the purpose of all this "fast absorption" talk.

Of course malto and dex are better for all this because you can control the amount of carbs. But you know all this talk and the only reason I still use mono is because I have about ten million tons of the stuff I'm trying to use up then I'll just use CEE.

[Scorcher2005]

I got LOTS of mono too...then on to experimenting w/ CEE :-)