Creatine and pre-workout are popular fitness supplements that enhance athletic performance and help improve your lifts, reps, and endurance.
Creatine is a major supplement used by various athletes and gym-goers, while pre-workout is a staple of gym culture.
Creatine supplements consist of a single ingredient: pure creatine monohydrate. In contrast, pre-workout supplements can contain multiple ingredients, including but not limited to:
- Stimulants: for focus and extra energy.
- Vasodilators: for post-workout muscle pumps.
- Nootropics: for mental acuity.
- Amino acids: for performance and recovery.
- Bioavailability agents: for better absorption.
There are many types of pre-workouts, including natural ones, with various ingredients, balances, and qualities. In this comparison article, “Pre-workout vs. Creatine,” we will discuss the similarities, differences, safety, risks, and side effects.
Creatine vs Pre-Workout: Similarities and Differences
First of all, it is important to mention the quality of the products we are purchasing. It’s essential to buy high-quality supplements to ensure that we are getting exactly what we are paying for.
For example, low-end creatine supplements may include additional ingredients that can harm your health. Similarly, pre-workouts contain multiple ingredients, and it is important that these supplements are made of quality components.
To give a short answer to the main topic, “Creatine vs. Pre-workout,” if we had to choose one supplement, creatine definitely comes out as the winner.
You will find many places recommending pre-workouts, but please understand that most of these places sell the supplement themselves.
There are many problems with pre-workouts, but there are also some benefits to taking them. We will discuss everything thoroughly, along with the advantages and disadvantages of supplementing with creatine.
Before we begin, a very good and healthy pre-workout option is sea salt and raw honey, as it gives a quick energy boost before the workout and supports electrolyte balance, hydration, and muscle cramp prevention.
Differences Between Pre-Workout and Creatine
Composition:
- Pre-Workout: A combination various ingredients, such as caffeine, beta-alanine, BCAAs, L-citrulline, taurine, and sometimes sugars and carbs. Ingredient may vary from one brand to another.
- Creatine: Creatine monohydrate is a single ingredient supplement. Although some creatine supplements include additional ingredients, we advise against purchasing such products.
Primary Purpose:
- Pre-Workout: Boosts energy, focus, endurance, and overall workout performance. Suitable for short-term, fun and exciting performance.
- Creatine: Increases muscle strength, power, and mass over the long term. produces ATP in muscle cells.
Mechanism of Action:
- Pre-Workout: Driven by stimulants like caffeine to increase alertness, confidence and energy. Beta-alanine reduces muscle fatigue, and L-citrulline can improve blood flow to muscles.
- Creatine: Increases the phosphocreatine stores in muscles, regenerates ATP (adenosine triphosphate), the primary energy carrier in cells. Improves weightlifting and sprinting performance.
Usage Timing:
- Pre-Workout: Take 20-30 minutes before exercise.
- Creatine: Can be taken at any time of the day, including pre or post-workout.
Safety and Research:
- Pre-Workout: High doses of stimulants can cause side effects, some ingredients are under-researched.
- Creatine: Well-researched and widely regarded as safe for long-term use. Creatine has a well-documented safety profile.
Who Should Use It:
- Pre-Workout: Ideal for those needing an extra energy boost or increased focus during their workouts.
- Creatine: Suitable for anyone looking to improve overall strength, muscle mass, including both beginners and experienced athletes.
Summary
Pre-workouts make individual workout sessions fun and enjoyable. They can give you an extra boost of energy and confidence, helping you complete heavy lift sessions.
Creatine focuses on long-term results and delivers solid growth in terms of muscle mass and improved performance. Creatine is the most well-researched supplement. If we had to choose only one, creatine is the definite winner.
What is Pre-Workout? Who Should Take It?
We already mentioned that a pre-workout contains many ingredients, including stimulants, vasodilators, nootropics, amino acids, and bioavailability agents.
Now, let’s discuss what each of these terms means and explain the ingredients in layman’s terms.
Pre-workouts are mostly packed with caffeine, BCAAs, creatine, L-citrulline, beta-alanine, taurine, sugar (carbohydrates), and many more, depending on the company you are buying from. Be mindful of what you are purchasing, ensure the quality is reliable, and check if the ingredients are what you are looking for.
Each ingredient serves its purpose and helps in a certain way during your workout. Let’s dive into the main pre-workout ingredients and see what their purposes are.
Caffeine
Caffeine is one of the driving forces of pre-workouts. On average, each scoop of pre-workout will contain between 150-300mg (some may contain up to 400mg) of caffeine, which is equivalent to three cups of coffee.
Caffeine works well to boost your mood, increase focus, and enhance confidence during your workouts. If you are an early riser and go to the gym early in the morning, caffeine can be incredible for you as it will sharpen your focus and make the whole workout much more enjoyable.
The problem with caffeine is that you build tolerance quickly. If you work out three times a week, you may find that caffeine no longer works as it once did. This may require taking pre-workout in larger quantities.
There have been many reports where people become dependent on the pre-workout’s caffeine content, meaning they no longer enjoy their workouts without the initial boost.
As for the side effects, caffeine toxicity is something you might experience or have probably heard of. If you are a regular caffeine consumer and take an extra scoop of pre-workout with large caffeine content, you might experience a caffeine overdose.
High-quality caffeine is a superfood. Studies have shown that it increases blood flow, improves power and endurance in your muscles, clears your head, and makes you razor sharp.
BCAA
BCAAs (Branched-Chain Amino Acids: leucine, isoleucine, and valine) are great supplements that are also used as a standalone pre-workout supplement.
BCAAs can be naturally obtained from sources such as red meat, fish, eggs, chicken, milk, yogurt, cottage cheese, almonds, lentils, tofu, and many more. BCAAs can be obtained from both meat and vegan sources.
Your pre-workout may also include exclusively meat-derived BCAAs or vegan options, so make sure you read the label to ensure you are getting what you are looking for.
If you have a somewhat good diet and regularly eat protein-rich meals, supplementing with BCAAs is not necessary, as you can easily get the daily requirement from simple foods like a 300g chicken breast.
There are still quite a lot of benefits to BCAAs. For example, BCAAs reduce muscle breakdown during exercise, help with muscle soreness, improve muscle growth, boost appetite, and aid in managing multiple diseases.
BCAAs are quite beneficial and a healthy supplement but not entirely necessary.
Creatine
Creatine is an important component of pre-workouts and is considered a super supplement due to its major benefits and extensive research and documentation.
Creatine helps with muscle cell energy production (adenosine triphosphate), builds muscle mass, improves high-intensity performance, reduces tiredness and fatigue, speeds up muscle growth, and helps prevent and treat multiple diseases and neurological disorders (e.g., Parkinson’s disease).
There is very little to no downside to creatine as it is quite safe and is naturally produced by our bodies daily. What you need to be mindful of is proper hydration and not overdosing on creatine.
If you have pre-existing gastrointestinal issues, specifically kidney problems, consult with a healthcare provider before starting any type of supplement.
As with BCAAs, creatine can be naturally obtained from food sources like red meat, herring, salmon, tuna, milk, and cod. On average, creatine can be taken up to 5g a day (the optimal dose depends on your weight), but it can be quite hard to get there by eating only natural foods.
For example, 1kg of steak contains around 5g of creatine, which is the daily supplementing dose, but eating or affording 1kg of steak a day can be difficult for many.
L-citrulline
L-citrulline is naturally made by your body. It is mainly produced from glutamine. L-citrulline is not used to make proteins, but it helps with the formation of nitric oxide and the expansion of blood vessels. Additionally, it releases growth hormone and insulin.
L-citrulline has not been studied enough, and there are no studies to back up the claim that it can improve athletic performance. It is also not known exactly how it affects your body and its functions.
However, there is logic behind how supplementing L-citrulline could help performance. As L-citrulline helps with the formation of nitric oxide (NO), it expands your blood vessels, meaning your muscle tissues receive more oxygen and nutrients.
One of the studies conducted on the effectiveness of L-citrulline showed that supplementing L-citrulline by oral consumption increased the delivery of various substances to muscle tissues in rats.
The NIH (National Institutes of Health) has stated that the effectiveness of L-citrulline in boosting athletic performance is conflicting and unreliable. Another study has shown that L-citrulline was ineffective in improving endurance-type performance.
L-citrulline can be obtained from natural sources, with watermelon being the main source. Vegetables like cucumbers, pumpkin, and squash also contain L-citrulline.
Supplementing L-citrulline can be problematic as it is unknown whether it is safe for human consumption in high doses on a regular basis. If you decide to purchase a pre-workout that contains L-citrulline, make sure that you get less than 5 grams per scoop.
Beta-Alanine
Beta-alanine is another naturally occurring compound that is used by our bodies to produce carnosine. Athletes supplement with beta-alanine to boost performance and strength.
Beta-alanine is a non-essential amino acid and is not used by our bodies to synthesize protein. Multiple studies show that supplementing with beta-alanine can increase the production of carnosine by 80%.
As beta-alanine increases the levels of carnosine, it reduces the acid levels in your muscles during exercise, leading to less fatigue.
Beta-alanine is a well-researched supplement and has been proven to be effective during workouts. To give you a simple explanation, it makes those last two reps hard instead of very hard.
Beta-alanine can be obtained from natural sources like meat, poultry, and fish. If you already eat a healthy, protein-rich diet, there’s no need to supplement with extra beta-alanine.
However, beta-alanine is mainly effective for endurance training and does not increase strength, contrary to popular belief.
Beta-alanine is relatively well-researched and proven to be effective for exercises that last no longer than a couple of minutes. Beta-alanine can increase exercise capacity and endurance.
One important side effect of supplementing with beta-alanine is the histamine response, or small tingles, which has been reported by many. Make sure you monitor for this and be mindful of any adverse effects. High doses of beta-alanine may cause paresthesia.
Taurine
Supplementing with beta-alanine depletes taurine, so it is wise to supplement taurine if your pre-workout already includes beta-alanine.
Taurine can also be obtained from natural food sources like scallops, beef, shrimp, chicken, turkey, tuna, breast milk, and seaweed.
Taurine is made in your liver, so taurine deficiency is quite unlikely. Supplementing with taurine has shown promising results in mice; however, the same results haven’t been replicated in humans.
Nevertheless, taurine plays an important role in our bodies. Supplementing with taurine hasn’t shown any results strength-wise but is promising for recovery and as a post-workout supplement, as it reduces oxidative stress (but doesn’t reduce inflammation).
In short, pre-workouts that have taurine as an ingredient do not offer much, and we can’t stress this enough: do not buy supplements that have multiple, unknown ingredients; only purchase ones that have a few trusted compounds.
Sugars and Carbohydrates
Pre-workouts can include different types of carbs and sugars, so we can’t discuss them one by one, but as a whole, healthy carbs and sugar, particularly raw honey, are great for pre-workouts.
Who Should Take Pre-Workout?
Pre-workout is for anyone who goes to the gym or exercises regularly. Our advice is to purchase pre-workout from reliable sources with ingredients that will actually benefit your health and progress.
If you need caffeine in your pre-workout, maybe first try drinking a cup of coffee before your workout to see if it is sufficient. The primary ingredient you should be looking for in your pre-workout is creatine, so you might as well purchase that directly.
What is Creatine? Who Should Take It?
Creatine is a well-researched, well-documented, safe, and reliable super supplement that can improve your athletic performance, help you build muscle, and aid in recovery.
Instead of purchasing pre-workout, we would advise getting creatine directly. If you are interested in how creatine compares with BCAA, read our article about Creatine vs. BCAA to understand the differences, similarities, and the superiority of creatine.
Creatine is safe for health and daily consumption. Just make sure not to overdose and to stay hydrated. Creatine is a naturally occurring compound in our bodies. You can obtain creatine from foods like red meat, salmon, tuna, herring, milk, and cod.
Supplementing 1-5g of creatine daily is very much okay. Just make sure you are taking appropriate amounts in relation to your body weight. Use this formula for simplicity: Maintenance Dose = Body Weight (kg) × 0.03g/day.
Example: For a 70kg individual, the formula will look like this: 70kg × 0.03g/day = 2.1g/day.
If you have any gastrointestinal issues, stay away from both creatine and pre-workout supplements. Consult with your healthcare provider before starting any new supplement.
Who Should Take Creatine?
Creatine is for everyone; you can take it as a beginner or an experienced gym-goer. You can take creatine at any time of the day, even before bed.
If you are looking to purchase creatine, make sure that you are getting a high-quality product with no extra ingredients. Ensure that the only ingredient is creatine monohydrate.
Conclusion
In the debate of Creatine vs. Pre-Workout, creatine is the obvious winner. Pre-workout supplements have many ingredients, some of which are not well-researched, and their effects on our bodies are unknown.
If you plan on purchasing a pre-workout supplement, try to find a high-quality product that has as few ingredients as possible.
On the other hand, creatine is the most well-researched supplement and is proven to be safe and effective. If you are looking for that extra kick and motivation before your workout, try drinking a cup of coffee or eating a tablespoon of raw honey with a sprinkle of sea salt.