Creatine, and why it's in steak

Your body makes creatine. Your liver and kidneys put together about a gram of it a day from three amino acids, and it is stored in your muscles as a very fast source of energy, the kind you burn in the first ten seconds of anything hard.

You also eat it, if you eat meat. There is roughly a gram of creatine in a decent steak, about the same in a piece of salmon, and none at all in anything that grew in the ground. Which is why people who eat little or no meat, and older people whose muscles hold less of it, tend to run lower than the rest of us.

The creatine in the Summit Stack is creatine monohydrate. There are newer, dearer forms with impressive names, and none of them has been shown to do anything monohydrate does not, so we bought the one the research was done on.

At three grams a day, creatine increases physical performance in successive bursts of short-term, high intensity exercise. That is the wording the regulator allows and it is a fair summary of what it does. Topping up the stores lets a muscle recharge its fastest fuel a little quicker between efforts, so you get the extra rep, the harder last sprint, the stronger last set, and the training adds up faster. We believe it is the single most useful thing anyone who trains can add, and the cheapest. We also believe it is not just muscle that runs on it. The brain uses creatine too, which is one reason we wanted it in a stack for people over forty and not just for the lads in the gym.