Thirty-Four Years On: Where Creatine Is Really Heading

I was back on the Science for Sport podcast with Richard Graves this week for part two of a conversation we started earlier this year. There's just too much unfolding right now to squeeze into one chat.

For anyone who missed part one: I've been involved with creatine since 1992, when I helped bring it into the professional sports world at the Barcelona Olympics. That story started with my own background as a professional racing cyclist… brutal hours in the saddle, 7,000 to 9,000 calories a day just to keep going. Out of that world I launched a sports nutrition brand called Maxim, which is still going strong three decades later. Maxim's connection to British Cycling led to the British Olympic Association asking us to supply the team heading to Barcelona, and that connection is what brought two researchers to my door, Dr Roger Harris and his co-professor, five days after my daughter was born, with a one-kilo bag of a compound nobody had heard of and a research paper showing a 1-3% performance improvement.

Creatine didn't exist as a supplement at that point. We turned that powder into effervescent tablets, got it to some serious athletes ahead of the Games, and some of them went home with gold medals. A journalist got wind of it from inside the Olympic Village, we scrambled to get him the real story in 48 hours, and it broke worldwide. From Barcelona to Atlanta (just four years), creatine adoption among Olympic athletes went from a handful of people to an estimated 92% of athletes across all disciplines. That's how fast this thing moved once the door opened.

So that's where it came from. The question Richard and I dug into this time is: where is it going?

In elite sport, we're in marginal-gains territory now. Creatine's performance benefits are proven and well understood. The gains left to find there are the 0.01% variety… real, but not where the exciting story is anymore.

The real breakthroughs are happening in everyday human health

Research is building around creatine's role in cognition, brain function, and recovery from concussion. There's emerging work on eye-hand coordination, on fatigue and alertness, and on how creatine might help people cope with sleep deprivation and shifted circadian rhythms… think England's squad managing time zones at this summer's World Cup, or shift workers and emergency responders whose bodies are constantly fighting their own clocks. It plays a very different role than a coffee. Caffeine gives you a jolt and then drops you; creatine works at a cellular energy level that's deeper and more foundational.

Ageing is where this gets really important

Creatine production falls off a cliff as we get older; down roughly 70% by your sixties compared to your teens and twenties. Given that, I believe you should be taking creatine through your entire life, not just during your competitive years. The dosing question people overcomplicate constantly: you don't need a loading phase or 20 grams a day. Three grams a day, every day, and your muscles will be fully saturated by around day 28. Then you just maintain it. Forever.

Youth sport is where we get the most questions, by far

Parents ask us constantly whether creatine is a steroid, whether it's safe, whether there are side effects… and honestly, these are the same questions we were fielding back in '92 and '93. That's exactly why education has to lead everything we do. Context matters enormously with young athletes, and we've been working closely with nutritionist Dan Richardson, who's out there talking to schools, coaches, parents, and kids directly, translating the science into language that actually makes sense to the people asking.

We've also just launched something new; our first product since 1992, and it's not a supplement you'll ever buy directly. It's a creatine ingredient technology, the kind of thing other brands build into their own products, a bit like GORE-TEX in a jacket or an Intel chip in a laptop.

Thirty-four years after Barcelona, it still feels like we're at the start of something rather than the end of it. I told Richard I'm up for a part three, and I mean it; there's a lot more of this story still to tell.

We all rise together,

Steve Jennings | Co-Founder + CEO, Jenerise