Myth or fact

After your workout is the best time to take creatine

Short answerYes, but

By GyroscopeUpdated November 14, 20265 sources

Yes, but only slightly, and it makes little difference in practice. A small 2013 trial found a lean toward taking creatine right after training instead of right before, and the difference wasn’t statistically significant. What fills your muscles is the total you take each day, so the best time is the one you’ll stick to.

Why people believe it

Timing feels like it should make a difference. Protein has its famous “anabolic window”, and protein.guide covers whether that holds up. The idea that creatine after a workout gets into muscle better sounds logical, and there’s one study people quote, which is where the “yes” comes from.

It’s like watering a plant

You can water a houseplant in the morning or the evening. Over a week, what keeps it alive is how much water it gets, and whether you remember. Watering at the perfect hour while forgetting half the days kills more plants than watering at a random hour every day.

The 2013 trial

Jose Antonio and Victoria Ciccone recruited 19 recreational bodybuilders, men who trained about five days a week. Each took 5 g of creatine a day for four weeks, either right before training or right after. On the two rest days a week, they took it whenever they liked.

After four weeks, the after-workout group had gained a little more lean mass, 2.0 kg against 0.9 kg, and a little more on the bench press, 7.6 kg against 6.6 kg. But by the standard statistical tests, the difference between the groups wasn’t significant. The authors used a second method, called magnitude-based inference, which judged after-workout as “possibly more beneficial”. In 2018 the statistician Kristin Sainani showed that, at small sample sizes like this one, the method raises the rate of false positives to two to six times that of the standard tests, and concluded it “should not be used”.

It’s an interesting result, but it was 19 men for four weeks, and nobody measured how much creatine got into their muscles.

Why the daily total wins

Caffeine hits within the hour and wears off. Creatine works by filling your muscles over days to weeks and keeping them full. In 1996, Hultman’s group showed that 3 g a day raised muscle creatine by the same 20% as a loading week, just more slowly. Once your muscles are full, a daily 3 to 5 g keeps them there, and they take about a month to drain after you stop.

That means the scoop you take today barely changes how full you are today. What changes it is whether you took one yesterday, and the day before, and every day last month.

Does taking it with food help?

A little. The International Society of Sports Nutrition notes that taking creatine with carbohydrate, or carbohydrate and protein, appears to increase how much your muscles keep, though it hasn’t been shown to improve performance more than creatine alone. A meal is an easy way to get both, and a meal you never skip is the easiest way to remember.

What about morning or night?

Pick whichever fits your day, since the daily total is what counts. If it’s with breakfast, take it with breakfast on rest days too.

What about in coffee?

That’s fine. The first creatine trials gave it dissolved in hot tea, because it dissolves better warm. Drink it soon after mixing, since creatine slowly breaks down in warm liquid. The coffee myth covers whether caffeine gets in the way.