Creatine - anyone using it to enhance their meet performance?

Per, All people, not many however, I know who took creatine didn't get performance improvement, but got the side effect - a bad cramping during a workout in the water. Personally I found it make your swim less relaxed and cramps were so bad :shakeshead: . Dmitri

I don't understand... Isn't a fastskin performance enhancing? Isn't it unfair if everyone doesn't use one? Just taking it to an abstract herre...not looking to call anyone a cheat.

There are potential health implications with performance enhancing substances/drugs/supplements. AFAIK, there are no health issues with Fastskin suits...well maybe financial health. I don't know if this is the reasoning or not, but it's the only way I have been able to make sense of it.

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: This thread has certainly reinforced my hatred of milk for the last few decades. No residual guilt left whatsoever. I do love cheese. Not sure the mold is good for allergies though. Donna: What did you do? Cold shower or giantic ice tub? I don't think I could do it. I have stuck an ankle and shin in a large bucket of ice water and ice and it was almost unbearable. But effective. The risk of water retention and other nasty side effects outweighs any possible benefits of creatine any day for me. But I'm sure there are many that disagree. I agree that going from warm or hot water into cold or ice water initially is painful (feels like a hammer and a thousand needles), but the benefit for increasing circulation is just plain magical. I did both and not every workout. We usually knew ahead of time when Coach was going to try to turn us into fast dolphins, so we, actually, looked forward to the hot/cold showers or ice baths because the relief of tired muscles came quickly. We didn't have to do this very long at all; 3 to 5 minutes max.

coaches and trainers in the past have urged me to hope on into the ice bath tubs but I just can't. I don't think it's the cold water really thats a problem for me--i use to do polar bear swims and such, but just bad memories of being sick when I was little and having to sit in our bathtub at home with freezing water and ice cubes from our ice cube tray floating all around...talk about ways to make you kid even more miserable haha...

I had to do that once, Morgan, after I got a serious sunburn while sailing (wasn't paying attention :shakeshead:). My back was scorched and I had to periodically lay in a bathtub filled with bags of ice. It felt great and numbing on my back, but the rest of me was shivering violently. Let's just say I'm known around my home now as the sunscreen police.

shivering violently Don't go to Penn State football games underdressed. 2005's PSU/OSU game in happy valley was ~40s and drizzle; 12 hours outside. It took an hour of hot shower to stop shaking. Back to topic - Back when I was in college (not so long ago), I noticed a bunch of athletes in school were using a supplement (i forget which), and I wanted to improve my swimming, so I started looking into it. I asked a family friend, ***, about it; he was a decathlete who missed out on the 1980 olympics and is now a champion for anti-doping. He emailed me at least 2 articles daily for a week on the supplement, all stories of the bad side effects. I decided it was not worth the risks and just started going to more practices, trying to eat a little better and work harder in practice. I'm happy to report that was a good decision. And I don't suffer from drug-related ED. :banana:

Just wondering. We have a little debate in our club if it is effective or not for swimmers. I know 100 - 200 m athlete sprinters use it frequently, so it might be interesting for at least 50 m distances in the pool. Comments anyone? /Per Really I think that the use of Creatine is too much of a grey area right now. Here in Ireland you really only see the likes of power lifters and people trying to bulk up using it. The effects are unclear at the moment and there has been some incidents in Irish sports that are possibly linked to the use of supplements. As a fitness instructor I try to shy people away from using anything unless its natural. Maybe I`m wrong but I just don`t think its good to trick around with the body like that.

I had to do that once, Morgan, after I got a serious sunburn while sailing (wasn't paying attention :shakeshead:). My back was scorched and I had to periodically lay in a bathtub filled with bags of ice. It felt great and numbing on my back, but the rest of me was shivering violently. Let's just say I'm known around my home now as the sunscreen police. ouchers..yeah I got myself sunposioning a few times...now I am crazy about sunscreen...but the ice baths I had to take were for extreme fevers...107s...when I was little I would just randomly get fevers like that and my parents would shove mortin down my throat and shove me in the ice bath..and if that didn't work it was off to the hospital. :mad:

As a fitness instructor I try to shy people away from using anything unless its natural. Is there anything un-natural with creatine? It is a natural ingredient in meet I have been told. Is then taking vitamines also a grey area? Just curious... /Per