Creatine thoughts
I took it for about 6 weeks straight. Stopped two days ago. I ended up taking about 6g/day. I thought it was helping my performance, but I couldn't be sure if that was just psychosomatic. Anyway, results after the whole time indicated it probably wasn't psychosomatic.
Pros:
(i) I gained about 7lb. I'll be interested to see if I lose much/any. I have changed my diet a bit, though.
(ii) I benched a PR - 281lb @ 189lb bw.
(iii) I squatted 340lb x 5 with good form - felt better than I have for a long time (since losing weight earlier in the year).
(iv) I DL'd 363lb x 4 easily, although I screwed up the last rep and tweaked my back. That equated to a PR too. DL has felt really good for me lately. I should've gone for a 1RM.
Cons:
(i) My organs started to feel a bit funny (tender), which is why I stopped. Mainly on my lower left (spleen? kidney?). This worried me a bit. I've been eating lots of protein (for a change ) and that combined with the creatine might've put quite a load on me.
(ii) I coped with the dehydration, but it was kind of a pain at times. I drank a lot.
I'm going to take a month off or so and see how my guts go, and then maybe cycle a month on/month off and see whether I encounter the same problem. If so, I'll stop. Maybe mickey's right . Originally I was intending to cycle 2 mths on/1 off.
I've been doing different training lately, lots of internal stuff, so that's changed my lifting a little bit maybe. It's changed my MA quite a bit too, and maybe forcing me to use some muscles that I haven't before so I don't know what effect that's had and what's been purely creatine. Also, the weight gain obviously affected my lifts a bit.
It's interesting stuff anyway. Unfortunately, I work in 2 week cycles, so if I'm cycling 1 mth on/1 off I'll only go through 1 squat cycle and 1 DL cycle. Makes it kind of hard to push the envelope and compare results. It'll have to be a long term experiment provided I don't get the sore guts thing again.
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