Can creatine be used pre-contest?

This answer highlights how much misinformation there is out there...

Also, unlike answers given by "wanna be" experts and companies who also happen to sell a different form of creatine than creatine monohydrate, this is not an opinion, it's a factual response...

Some people and companies have convinced much of the weight-training public that creatine somehow makes you look “soft”. But creatine is stored in muscle, along with the associated water, so how could it affect the area between muscle and skin? My opinion is that it can’t!

The theory is that because creatine makes you “retain water” that somehow this water finds its way into the area between the skin and the muscle, thus blurring muscle definition. Some unethical companies even state that their "magic" creatine formulas don’t cause bloating!

Well, I finally got irritated enough with all of this to call in some academic heavyweights who I’ve worked with in the past to put this issue to rest!

...and I haven’t just asked a few guys who have done a couple of studies on creatine, I talked to Dr Paul Greenhaff and Dr Mark Tarnopolsky – these guys have conducted well over 100 published scientific studies on creatine and have both been studying the creatine molecule for 20 years!

These guys have actually patented cutting-edge ways to use creatine for building muscle and treating diseases! They perform biopsies on research subjects (which is the process of removing muscle tissue from the body) and use scientific procedures that I can’t even pronounce to look at that muscle and to find out exactly where creatine goes and what it does when it enters the body!

Here’s Dr Greenhaff’s response...

“You are correct. The vast majority of creatine is stored in skeletal muscle and it is cleared from the blood relatively quickly following ingestion. Based upon this, it is difficult to understand how creatine would increase subcutaneous water content.” [Note: ”subcutaneous” basically means "under the skin"].

Dr Tarnopolsky’s response is slightly more technical but in agreement with Dr Greenhaff's...

He first notes the balance between interstitial fluid volume and its equilibrium with plasma and points out that if creatine caused bloating in this way, users would experience severe bloating for 6 - 8 hours after ingestion. This doesn’t occur.

He then points out that the first 4 – 7 days of creatine use may cause water retention in the muscle (the effect we want when we use creatine), this actually causes a diuretic (water-shedding) effect at about day 10 of creatine use and virtually no creatine can be stored in fat cells.

So there you have it from two of the most knowledgeable creatine researchers in the world.

So take creatine right up to contest time...unless you want to lose muscle, lose strength and (according to Dr Tarnopolsky) possibly lose the diuretic effect and actually look more puffy!