Should You Supplement with Creatine or Beta Alanine?

Ever since our culture has become infatuated with the athletic, strong and muscular or lean, powerful and toned look, we have been searching for the best way to get there. Since training and proper diet can only get us so far, scientists discovered how to isolate the parts of food that can help our performance synthetically. Ever since then companies have been cashing in on supplements of every variety, with some being heavily tested and others being developed on anecdotal evidence alone.

Even to this day we are discovering new molecules that can make athletes bigger, faster, and more powerful. In this article we will be discussing one of the most popular bodybuilding supplements to ever be used and somewhat newer supplement that isn't getting the love it deserves in this industry (and why you should be using both of them).

What Is Creatine and Why Should I Use It?

While creatine is made in the body and found in various foods we eat, supplementing with it will increase the amount of phosphocreatine in our body above baseline. An increased amount of phosphocreatine will elevate the amount of energy our body can produce and use in the form of ATP. An elevation in ATP will lead to faster sprints, higher jumps and stronger lifts in the gym. Of course, creatine will not give you any kind of benefits to the degree of anabolic hormones but over time the benefits of creatine will be seen in the form of improved performance and more musculature.

It is important to mention that ATP is better at improving powerful, high-intensity work in the range of 0-60 seconds or 1-10 reps. While it can still have minor benefits for endurance athletes ranging from increased mental performance and bone strength, the power output will be limited (most professional endurance athletes still supplement with creatine though).

What is Beta Alanine and Why Should I Use It?

Beta alanine is a lot like creatine. Coming onto the bodybuilding scene a bit later, this supplement was also not accepted at first. It wasn't until studies came out proving its benefits that bodybuilders and athletes of all types began to use it religiously. If you don't think you’ve ever used beta alanine but you’ve taken pre-workout that made your fingers tingle, you have indeed taken it (but usually not with a clinically effective dose, but we will talk about how much you should take later). This sensation known as paresthesia is harmless and is usually what lifters use as a judge to see if their pre-workout is working.

When taken, beta alanine is covered into carnosine (not to be confused with L-carnitine, a completely different supplement) in the body, a molecule that acts as a lactic acid buffer that will decrease fatigue and increase performance. Whenever you feel the burn during a lift or a cramp in your side during cardio, this is lactic acid building up and buffering this issue with beta alanine will help you push further and harder. Since most individuals will not have a large amount of lactic acid built up during low rep bench press or short sprint intervals, beta alanine is most effective at a later point in a workout.

Between 60-240 seconds of exercise or 10-50 reps will produce the most lactic acid and therefore will be buffered effectively when taking beta alanine, letting you perform an exercise longer until lactic acid makes it impossible to continue. Taking short rest periods between low rep work or high-intensity training will compound lactic acid and therefore will still be benefitted by beta alanine though, helping improve performance over time and even muscle mass as well.