Recovery Time & Creatine

As I said in an earlier post, I’m 74 years old.  Been swimming all my life.  Took a break of about 10 years after high school but have managed to fit swimming in here and there over the years. 

The last 16-17 years more regularly.  I try and do two kilometres three times a week.  Doesn’t always happen but I stay active otherwise if I can’t do this. 

The last three years I have noticed that I’ve been slowing down a bit.  The biggest problem is recovery time.  If I do a really intense workout, it takes me much longer to be properly rested for the next swim.

My son told me about this video a few weeks ago.  I knew nothing about creatine before this.  If you are an athlete, you may think this is odd but, there you go. 

I eat pretty well, never any fast food and cook almost all my meals.  Very few packaged goods. 

I watched the video - it’s very long, three hours.  But I wanted to get as full an understanding as possible. 

What is Creatine?

It is a compound made up of three amino acids: Arginine, glycine and methionine.  It is an energy source for the muscles and the brain.

In less than 24 hours of taking it, I was amazed.  I will mention that it is quite possible that there could be some sort of placebo effect here.  

The Results

Over the last couple of years, I’ve been doing a one thousand metre swim in anywhere from 18 minutes 25 seconds to 18 minutes 50 seconds.  After taking 5 grams of creatine twice a day for one day, I did same swim as usual.  Eighteen minutes flat.  I didn’t feel like I was going any harder and certainly didn’t expect such quick results.  My next swim a couple of days later, same speed.  Additionally, after my 1000 metre warm up, I generally to some HIIT (high intensity interval training).  For each 100 metre swim, i was normally doing anywhere from 1:35 to 1:40.  (One minute and thirty-five seconds at best.)

My second swim, I did six one hundred metre swims.  Times ranges from 1:31 (one minute/31 seconds) to 1:33 (one minute/33 seconds).  It has been three or four years since I was able to do times like this.

Several swims later my times are still much faster than they were over the last three years or so.

As I said, it’s long, but if you take the time, the video here is worth watching. 

There is certainly controversy about creatine.  What doesn’t these days.  I am a big supporter of the idea that not everything works for everyone.  We are all different. 

We have to figure out what works for us as individuals.