Take creatine before and/or after workout?

[Ruhl]

Is it best to take all of the creatine before training or to split the dosage in half: some before and after training?

 

[Bryan Haycock]

Take it before training. The increased blood flow to working muscles during exercise has been demonstrated to increase creatine uptake into muscle tissue "if" creatine is in the blood stream at the time.

 

[marcus]

Bryan, how do you feel about high GI carbs before training? Lyle speculated in a thread on mfw that taking a carb drink during training might by counterproductive for muscle growth, since it blunts the normal training induced cortisol response:

Quote[/b] ]wrt: during workout nutrition, I recall one abstract showing that sipping a carb drink kept insulin higher and cortisol lower during training. This *might* be expected to impact on growth. Then again, cortisol mediated breakdown of myofibrils appears to be *required* for growth to occur (i.e. you need an overall increase in protein turnover to adapt the skeletal muscle). Studies usingg high dose anti-inflammatories suggest that blocking the normal post-workout inflammatory response (i think it was PGF2a which is involved in catabolism) prevented growth.