Many people are taking creatine without really knowing how to use it to get real value from the money you’re spending on the supplement. The first mistake, and very common, is taking creatine only on training days. The key idea is that creatine does not work as a one-off “pre-workout”, but works best when you keep the muscle creatine stores elevated consistently.
Why take creatine every day? Because creatine works mainly by muscle saturation. When you take it daily, the muscle stores remain elevated. If you only take it on the days you train, the stores can stay relatively high for a while, but you are not maintaining the simplest and most consistent strategy to preserve saturation. That’s why it’s normally recommended to take 3–5 g of creatine monohydrate every day, including rest days, best alongside a meal to improve absorption. And remember that taking more than that dose will not make it work better; moreover, the only thing you can achieve with an excess is stomach discomfort and wasting more money.
The second mistake, and this one is very common, is that creatine pulls water into the muscle cells, thereby boosting protein synthesis and its performance. But if you don’t drink enough, you can dehydrate the rest of the tissues, and you increase the risk of cramps, kidney problems or stomach issues. Drinking water helps the body properly manage that increase in intracellular water.
How much water? Multiply your weight by 40 and you’ll have the milliliters of water you should drink daily. For example, if you weigh 70 kilograms, 40 x 70 = 2780 ml.