How Long Does Creatine Take to Work?

Your body doesn’t build muscle quickly—so when we talk about creatine supplementation, everyone wants to know: "When does it kick in?"

In this article we’re looking at how creatine works, with a focus on timing: How to take it, how long to take it, when you may expect to start noticing athletic performance benefits, and more. Let's get to it!

Key Takeaways

• How long does creatine take to work? In general, creatine monohydrate may begin to show initial performance-enhancing effects within a week to a few weeks.
• Noticeable gains in muscle mass, strength, and performance typically become more apparent over several weeks to months of steady creatine supplementation and training.
• Loading Phase: Higher doses (20 grams of creatine per day for 5-7 days) can speed up muscle creatine saturation, potentially leading to quicker results.
• Maintenance Phase: After the loading phase, a daily maintenance dose of 3-5 grams helps sustain elevated muscle creatine levels and continues to support performance gains.
• You can skip the loading phase and stick with 3-5 g daily creatine from the start; it will just take longer to achieve the same results with the "maintenance only" approach.
• Individual responses to creatine supplementation vary, with some improving fitness sooner than others, depending on diet, exercise consistency and intensity and genetic potential.
• The effectiveness of creatine is influenced by consistent usage and regular high-intensity exercise or resistance training.

Creatine Benefits Timeline

The following timeline outlines what healthy individuals might expect when taking creatine in combination with a consistent training regimen, with an emphasis on how long it takes to see benefits.

This timeline is based on taking creatine with a "loading phase," which is the most popular creatine supplementation approach among athletes. We'll cover details on the creatine loading phase later in this article.

*Note: This is an approximate timeline. Your results may vary.

Timeline of Creatine Effects - Loading & Maintenance

Week 1: Loading Phase

• Days 1-2: Initially, you may not feel any changes. During these first few days, creatine stores in your muscles are being saturated. It’s important to follow the loading protocol, typically 20 grams per day split into 4 doses, to ensure your muscles start storing creatine effectively.
• Days 3-5: You might start to feel a slight increase in energy during your workouts as your muscles begin to retain more water. This water retention can give your muscles a fuller, more pumped appearance, even if strength gains aren't yet apparent.
• Days 6-7: By the end of the first week, you might notice a mild increase in strength and endurance. Some initial weight gain, around 1-2 pounds, is common due to the water retained in muscle tissues. This is a positive sign that your body is responding to creatine. Some research has found improvements in total work and power output during squat exercises after just 7 days of creatine supplementation.(1)

Week 2: Transition to Maintenance Phase

• Days 8-10: As you transition to the maintenance phase (3-5 grams per day), the benefits of creatine become more noticeable. Your ability to perform more reps or lift slightly heavier weights during workouts increases. This is due to the enhanced ATP production, which fuels muscle contractions.
• Days 11-14: Enhanced recovery times between sets and overall endurance improvements become evident. You may notice that your muscles feel less fatigued, allowing for longer, more intense workouts. This can lead to more effective training sessions and better muscle gains over time.

Week 3: Continued Maintenance

• Days 15-17: Strength gains continue to develop. You might find that you're consistently able to lift heavier weights or perform additional reps, indicating improved strength and endurance. This phase marks a significant improvement in high-intensity exercises, like sprinting or heavy lifting.
• Days 18-21: Performance enhancement in the gym is more pronounced. You experience noticeable improvements in activities requiring short bursts of intense effort. Additionally, there's a slight increase in body weight, typically around 2-3 pounds, due to water retention in muscles.

Week 4: Stabilization

• Days 22-24: Strength and endurance benefits remain consistent. The initial water weight gain plateaus as your body adjusts to the new creatine levels. You maintain the ability to perform at higher intensities and with greater efficiency.
• Days 25-28: Sustained performance benefits are evident. Enhanced muscle recovery and reduced muscle soreness allow for more frequent and effective workouts. The quality and intensity of your weight training sessions are improved, contributing to long-term muscle strength and growth.

By the end of the first month, creatine users may improve strength, endurance, and overall workout performance.

The initial weight gain due to water retention is a normal and positive response, indicating that your muscles are effectively utilizing creatine.

With continued use, the benefits of creatine extend beyond immediate performance enhancements, helping to sustain energy, accelerate recovery, increase muscle mass and maintain it for the long haul.

Did you know? Creatine's energy benefits extend to the brain and it is considered a nootropic supplement.(2) If you feel improved cognitive function at the end of the first month, creatine may be the reason why.

Now let's dig into the finer details of taking creatine: What it is, how it works, how to best use it and what to look for in creatine supplements.

Creatine Monohydrate Supplementation: What Is It?

Creatine is at the center of your muscles’ energy cycle, where it improves energy stores and then helps re-synthesize more while you are training in the gym. Creatine monohydrate is a common form used in supplements athletes take for creatine.

Energy is stored in the muscles—and other areas of the body—as adenosine triphosphate (ATP). This is a high-energy molecule that can be rapidly spent to produce energy, breaking down from tri-phosphate to duo-phosphate.

This process leaves you missing some of the energy from the original ATP store, however. So how does your body re-constitute these ATP for storage and use in future?

It has to borrow more phosphorus from somewhere else.

This is where creatine supplementation comes in. Creatine binds to phosphorus to produce creatine phosphate (CP)—as a way of moving phosphorus to the muscles. This creatine stored in muscles donates phosphorus back to these free ADP, making more adenosine triphosphate.(3)

Did you know? Approximately 95% of your body’s total creatine is stored in muscles as phosphocreatine, also sometimes called creatine phosphate. Taking creatine supplements "tops off" muscles with phosphocreatine.

Creatine builds muscle by raising creatine levels in muscle cells, providing more energy for better performance and recovery.

This doesn’t just happen after training sessions during recovery. It’s happening all the time, and at a rapid pace during exercise.

The idea of creatine supplementation is to increase the existing store of ATP in your muscles during rest, but also to assist in the re-building of these high-energy molecules during exercise—which helps you maintain strength levels for longer.

This is why it’s so important to know when it kicks in: creatine loading isn’t always a fast process, and the results are based on keeping up your intake. You might not see a change in the first few days, so keeping a longer, more realistic perspective is crucial to stick with your program and succeed.

How Long Does It Take for Creatine to Kick In?

When it comes to creatine “kicking in” or how long it takes to "work," we're really talking about when you first start feeling a difference in your workouts.

The time it takes for creatine to work can vary from one to four weeks depending on individual factors.

Some of the variables that will affect how quickly creatine works include:

• Dosage and Adherence: Consistency and accuracy in following the loading and maintenance phases. Taking a larger daily dose does not speed up creatine benefits and may lead to side effects.
• Initial Creatine Levels: Baseline creatine levels in muscles prior to supplementation.
• Hydration: Adequate water intake to support creatine absorption and muscle hydration.
• Workout Intensity: Regular high-intensity training can amplify creatine's benefits. Intensity of exercise performance
• Body Composition: Individual differences in muscle mass and body composition. Body weight can also influence the effectiveness of creatine supplementation, as individuals with higher body weight may require more creatine to see the same effects.
• Genetic Factors: Genetic variations affecting creatine transport and metabolism.
• Age: Younger individuals may respond faster due to higher metabolic rates.
• Overall Health: General health and presence of conditions that might affect metabolism.
• Supplement Quality: Purity and quality of the creatine supplement used.

In addition, if you are taking creatine as part of an overall sports nutrition program (and you should), the other supplements in your stack can work together as a team to bring greater results, faster.

Top sports nutrition supplements may accelerate creatine benefits. We recommend one -- a nootropics-enhanced pre-workout formula -- later in this article.

So how much creatine is required? The average creatine dosage, somewhere around 2.5-5g a day—will usually start to show up in your workouts after 2-4 weeks, depending on how you respond. For the loading phase, it is often recommended to take around 20g of creatine per day for 5-7 days, followed by a maintenance dose of 3-5g per day.

Creatine Loading Phase

The loading phase is a strategy many athletes use for creatine to work faster. It speeds up when creatine supplementation kicks in. Loading involves a short period of extra-high supplementary dose, for a few days, to help replenish stores and beat out the typical slow adaptation process.

How long does it take? The creatine loading phase typically lasts 5-7 days and involves taking 20-25g of creatine daily to rapidly saturate muscle cells with abundant creatine levels. This massive uptick in creatine levels in your diet helps rapidly improve the creatine stores in your muscles and the secondary effects like water retention.

Related Post: How Often Can You Take Creatine?

This loading phase can shorten the time it takes for creatine to work, so you may potentially start seeing results within the first two weeks.

It will especially show up in your water retention, which can spike more easily than your resting creatine stores. However, this does mean an improvement in results, smoothly, over the first week.

During the high-dose loading phase, taking creatine may cause digestive discomfort, cramping, and diarrhea.(4)

These are some significant changes for your body to process and, while the risk and severity are still very safe—it does pose a problem if you know you have a delicate gut response. It requires better attention to hydration, which is going to help your creatine into muscles, as well as reducing its impact on the gut.

Did you know? The International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand on creatine levels endorses loading as the best approach: 5 g of creatine monohydrate (or about 0.3 g/kg body weight) supplemented four times daily for 5–7 days, followed by 3-5 g/day to maintain muscle creatine stores.(4)

A Note on "Low Responders" to Creatine

For some people, neither front-loading nor regular doses seem to have a huge effect. These people keep taking creatine and training, waiting for creatine to work, with little to no benefits noticed.

There are a few times this is possible. First, if you’re one of the few people eating enough high-quality red meat to not be low-creatine, you might not get a significant return from supplementation in the first place. It’s rare but totally possible.

Second, you might be a non-responder. This is probably even rarer—creatine is a pseudo- vitamin, and your body does need it—but some people just don’t note a significant response to creatine supplementation.

Third, you could just be seeing that the real-world applications of a healthier diet aren’t significant. While creatine is a great compound in its own right, you might be limited by other factors like proper calorie, protein, or carb intake that need your attention first.

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Pre Lab Pro® is a pre-workout formula with moderate caffeine plus nootropics and amino acids that balance energy with calm control.

It's the ideal pre-workout for any sport nutrition regimen that includes creatine.

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Final Thoughts

Creatine is a simple and effective supplement for athletic performance and muscle growth. The way you load it and the doses you use affect how rapidly it loads into your muscles, and ultimately, how long for creatine to work.

Taking a creatine supplement consistently is the most crucial step for maintaining high creatine stores and achieving optimal results.

Complementary sports nutrition supplements in conjunction with creatine can amplify your overall gains, too.

And finally, intense resistance training is needed to maintain muscle gains and promote muscle growth when paired with creatine.

Whether you are doing the creatine loading phase or not, the goal is to be patient with the process and stay consistent with supplementation.

Don't focus on "how long does it take for creatine to work?" Instead, focus on taking creatine for the long haul. Creatine benefits will add up with consistent use.