Creatine

Many of you know that I've been working out pretty seriously for about a year now. Ever since I started paying for my own gym membership, I've wanted to take advantage of it and get my money's worth from it. I started taking a creatine supplement a few months after I started working out at 24 Hour Fitness. Since I've been researching a lot about creatine for my English term paper, I thought I might share a little bit with you about what I've been learning. Before starting my research about creatine, I did not know much about how it works. All I knew about creatine was that it helped you build muscle faster. I found a great Web site that explained in detail how exactly creatine works. I learned that our muscles require energy (ATP) for movement. Stored in our muscles is a supply of this ATP. Our bodies also have its own supply of creatine. ATP releases a phosphate group in order to liberate this energy. When this energy is used, it changes from ATP to ADP. Our body needs to convert this ADP back to ATP to continue muscle contraction (called ATP synthesis). This is where creatine comes into play. While we are still exercising, creatine donates its own phosphate group to ADP in order to change it back into ATP, thus giving our muscles more energy. By taking a creatine supplement, it will give our muscles more creatine in storage and our ATP supply will last longer before our muscles become exhausted. This means that we will be able to work our muscles for a longer period and thus increase our strength. Well, I hope that this information was interesting to you as it was to me and hopefully you might have been able to learn something from it. If you’re interested to know more in depth about creatine and what effects it might have on our bodies, let me know and I’ll let send you a copy of my term paper.