Creatine: the loading phase myth

You do not need to load creatine. 5 g a day, every day, forever gets you to the identical saturation point in about three to four weeks, with none of the bloating and none of the wasted powder.

Where loading came from

The 1990s research that put creatine on the map used a loading protocol — around 20 g a day split into four doses for five to seven days, then 3–5 g a day thereafter. It worked. Muscle creatine stores went from roughly 120 mmol/kg to near the 160 mmol/kg ceiling in under a week.

What got lost in translation is that the follow-up work showed a straight 3 g daily dose reaches the same ceiling in about 28 days. Same endpoint. Same performance benefit once you are there. The only difference is how fast you arrive.

So when is loading worth it?

Genuinely narrow cases:

• You have a competition in under three weeks and you are starting from zero.
• You are running a short training block and want the effect inside it.
• You are in a study where the researcher needs saturation by a fixed date.

If you are training for the next several years — which is most people reading this — arriving three weeks earlier is not worth the trade.

What loading actually costs you

• GI discomfort. A 5 g dose is well tolerated by almost everyone. A 20 g dose causes cramping, bloating and loose stools in a meaningful share of people. Split into four 5 g doses this improves, but you are still asking your gut to move four times the load.
• Wasted powder. Above roughly 5 g there is no more room in the muscle. The excess is excreted. A week of loading burns about 100 g extra — roughly a fifth of a 500 g tub — for a result you were getting anyway.
• Water weight, faster. You will gain 1–2 kg either way as creatine draws water into the muscle cell. Loading front-loads that gain into a week, which is alarming if nobody warned you.

The protocol we actually recommend

1. 5 g of creatine monohydrate a day. Every day, including rest days. This is not a pre-workout ingredient, it is a saturation supplement.
2. Timing is irrelevant. Morning, with food, in your shake, whenever you will not forget it. Consistency is the only variable that matters.
3. Buy monohydrate. HCl, ethyl ester, buffered “kre-alkalyn” and the rest have never beaten monohydrate in a head-to-head. They cost more. Micronised monohydrate is the same molecule ground finer so it mixes better — that is a legitimate small improvement and usually costs almost nothing.
4. No cycling. There is no receptor downregulation to avoid. Stopping just lets your stores drain back down over about a month.
5. Drink normally. Creatine slightly increases your water requirement. It does not require a special hydration protocol.

Two things worth saying plainly

Creatine is not a steroid and it does not damage healthy kidneys. That claim traces to a misreading of blood creatinine levels — a supplemented person shows a higher creatinine reading without any change in kidney function. Decades of trials in healthy people show no harm. If you have existing kidney disease, ask your doctor, as you would about anything.

Around 20–30% of people are non-responders. If your diet is already heavy in red meat and fish, your stores may sit near the ceiling before you supplement, so there is little left to fill. That is not a defective product, it is a full tank.

The value maths

A 500 g tub of plain monohydrate at 5 g a day is 100 servings. Even at R400 that is R4 a day for the most evidence-backed legal ergogenic aid available. If you load, that same tub gives you 96 days instead of 100 and you feel worse in the first week.

Every creatine product on this site shows its cost per serving next to the price. Sort by it. The answer is usually the plain unflavoured monohydrate in the biggest tub, and that is fine.