Food for (vegetarian) climbers part 3: creatine

I promised to be a bit faster with this third post on food for veggies and to keep it shorter than the previous one. So here it is, within a few days and all about creatine. Luckily, the story on creatine is much shorter. I have to admit though that I cheated a bit: most of it was written already before publishing the previous post. Anyway, here we go.

About creatine

So for starters, what's creatine? It is an amino acid that our own body produces constantly. As all vertebrates produce creatine, we consume it when eating meat, raising creatine levels significantly above levels that our own body can produce. Consequently, vegetarians - like me - usually have lower creatine levels than meat eaters. Without dwelling into scientific details, let me explain why creatine can be important for athletes. Remember the three different systems that produce ATP - the fuel in our muscle cells - that I discussed in part 1? The 'phosphagen system', providing ATP at high rates for a short duration, needs creatine phosphate. It's the fastest energy supplying mechanism and the first our muscles will resort to. A higher level of creatine phosphate means a bigger capacity of the phosphagen system. And the body needs creatine to form creatine phosphate (open door, isn't it?). Additionally, creatine is believed to speed up the recovery process after training. In summary, effects of increased creatine levels are:

• An increased capacity of the fast energy supplying phosphagen system during high intensity exercises and therefore an increased ability to perform them. That means a few more push ups or bench presses per set if you're into that. By increasing the training volume you can handle (imaging doing the same number of exercises, but with a few more moves/repetitions in every single set), creatine will help you build up muscles. For climbers it could also mean an increase in power endurance. The more creatine phosphate we have stored in our muscles, the more very hard (crux our boulder) moves can be done relying on the phosphagen system before the glycogen lactid acid system has to take over and the pump clock starts to tick. In other words: higher creatine levels will increase strength, power and to some extent (indirectly) power endurance.
• Creatine is osmotically active and will draw more water into your muscles. This will make you heavier. It also aids in the regeneration and recovery of muscles. Faster recovery means that shorter rest periods between training session suffice and more training is possible (this relies on more effects than just water being drawn into the muscles).

Opinions collide on whether this is good for climbers or not. I'd say for climbers two effects of creatine supplementation are interesting: an increase in strength, power and anaerobic endurance and faster recovery, allowing more training. The third effect is less favorable: an increase in weight, partly due to water retention and partly due to the additional muscle mass your body might start building up if you milk the extra few reps that the extra creatine allows you to perform. As ultimately the strength-to-weight ratio is what matters in climbing, it becomes a trade off: will the additional weight drag you down or will the increased power and power endurance launch you to the next level? This balance will be different for everybody. The only way to find out if it works for you, is giving it a try. Finally I should mention that there are non-responders to creatine supplementation. Some people notice strong effects, some don't. Again, you'll have to try and see how it works for you. Nevertheless it is reasonable to assume that in a low-creatine diet (like a veggie diet) stronger effects from additional supplementation can be expected than in a high-creatine diet.

Legendary Wolfgang Güllich and Kurt Albert have pushed the bounderies of sports climbing like few others and make most climbers look like twigs. The strength to weight ratio of Güllich was good enough to climb the world's first 9a nevertheless... Simply looking at this picture makes me feel much less worried about my weight again.

As a vegetarian, I was inclined to expect a response to creatine supplementation. I spent days reading about possible side effects and health risks associated with it. It turned out that after being popularized in the early 90's (after reportedly paving the way to some Olympic gold medals), creatine became the most studied food supplement for athletes and stood all tests and scrutiny. Some early reports of kidney damage and other health effects were later discredited and in 2004 the EFSA (European Food Safety Authority) published a report stating that a long-term oral intake of 3g creatine per day is risk-free. Curious about the results of the trade off between strength and weight and puzzled by the low training volume I could handle, I decided to give it a go. I ordered a can of high quality, pure creatine and started taking the prescribed daily 4g supplement.

Initial results of my increased creatine intake

In the first week of supplementation, I didn't notice any difference in my training. But towards the end of the second week, the first results were undeniable. I could clearly hold up better in my antagonist & fitness workouts and I could do significantly more hard bouldering within a short training session. Additionally, my (perceived) strength increased. That's all rather vague, unquantified and subjective, but here are some numbers to chew on: in the second week I was able to increase the additional load I could carry in a typical deadhang session on my fingerboard by 7 kg. That may not sound like a lot, but those familiar with deadhang training will know that (provided you're not new to hangboarding) gains here usually are very small, come tediously slowly and require inhuman patience and persistence. Clearly my strength to weight ratio had increased (as predicted by several studies, I measured a weight gain of about 1 kg in the first two weeks).

Weeks later I measured some more weight gains: adding up to about 3 kg in total. I think it's mostly gains in bigger core muscle groups that I regularly address in my training. Although my perceived strength and power increased, I also got the rather subjective and unquantifiable feeling that my power endurance suffered a bit, probably due to the additional weight. As it pushed me past the psychological barrier of 80 kg, I started trying harder to achieve a small caloric deficit and over nearly two months I lost about 2 kg again. I am almost back at my old weight now, but obviously I would have been lighter had I done the same without creatine supplementation. Focussing on power endurance training for a few weeks restored my power endurance to a level I haven't had the entire season, so overall I feel like the additional creatine gave me the sharp edge I missed before and hasn't given me significant disadvantages in the end. But again: most of this is hard to quantify and quite subjective.

In conclusion

Among many other nutrients, proteins and creatine affect climbing performance and our ability to endure and recover from hard training sessions. A vegetarian diet is prone to be low in both without some extra attention. Although it's relatively easy to consume plenty of proteins while refraining from meat for most, vegetarians have to rely only on the creatine their own bodies produce. I turned out to be a responder to creatine supplementation (but there are plenty of accounts of non-responders as well). I feel stronger and fitter during training, but haven't really had the chance to test these perceived gains on real rock. I'll let you know when I do. Based mostly on the deadhang statistics, it seems my strength to weight ratio has increased, tipping the balance to the beneficial effects of creatine. It might be different for you though. There's only one way to find out. That is, if you care to bother.

I would recommend a vegetarian diet to everyone. For me it has made weight control much easier and made me feel healthier. Cooking and eating became more interesting and it has affected my eating attitude positively. But with or without meat, making varied meals from clean, unprocessed ingredients is what's most important. For me starting to eat veggie simply triggered a change of mindset regarding food. I'll stick with it for sure, because it makes me feel good and healthy. But during periods of hard strength and power training I will supplement (just a bit of) extra proteins, as it seems to help my body recover. And for now I'll keep supplementing some creatine as well for the reasons described above. After a while I do intend to stop it briefly though and see what difference that makes. Despite all guidelines, studies and good advice about eating, the way an individual body responds to eating habits remains unpredictable, making dieting above all a matter experimenting. Only through trial and error you can find out what works for you and what doesn't. If you suspect that an eating habit is holding you back somehow, simply change it for a few weeks and evaluate the results. You might end up pleasantly surprised, just like me.