I recently turned 15, and I have been lifting for about half a year now. I’m about 5’ 11 ‘’ and weight close to 200 pounds. I play varsity football, and work out all year long about 6 days a week. I’ve always been told to use muscle milk which I did, and eat right, but now I’m starting to have second thaughts about the product and quit using it all together and replaced it with pure creatine.
I decided not to load up incase my body could not take it, so I intake around 15 g a day and have been doing it for about two weeks now, and i truely can not tell a difference in my body size, but i am getting less tired and putting up decent weight. Should I still use ceatine to replace the muscle milk or should i combine the two along with something else?
you can use both if you’ve got the money. I’d suggest 5-10g of creatine/day. You really don’t need any more than that. Muscle milk is a different type of product altogether. Why do you have second thoughts about it? I personally prefer a different MRP protein, but I know lots of people like muscle milk.
The reason you don’t need any more creatine than 5-10g/day (usually only 5g) is that your cells eventually get saturated with creatine. When that happens they can’t use any more, so any additional creatine is just wasted into the toilet. You’ve reached saturation, so just maintain from there.
[quote]dav52id wrote:
I recently turned 15, and I have been lifting for about half a year now. I’m about 5’ 11 ‘’ and weight close to 200 pounds. I play varsity football, and work out all year long about 6 days a week … Should I still use ceatine to replace the muscle milk or should i combine the two along with something else?[/quote]
At 15 years old, creatine isn’t at the top of the list for supplements you should be considering. Protein powder - sure (but not Muscle Milk), a quality fish oil like Flameout - sure, Superfood (when it comes back in stock) - sure. That’s about it.
Even if you’re training six days a week, and I’d like to know your exact training plan, I don’t generally recommend creatine for teens (ha, that kinda rhymes). It’s not dangerous by any means, it just isn’t necessary at this stage of the game. Want the effects of creatine? Have two roast beef sandwiches for lunch (on whole wheat, extra tomatoes).
[quote]Chris Colucci wrote: At 15 years old, creatine isn’t at the top of the list for supplements you should be considering. Protein powder - sure (but not Muscle Milk), a quality fish oil like Flameout - sure, Superfood (when it comes back in stock) - sure. That’s about it.
Even if you’re training six days a week, and I’d like to know your exact training plan, I don’t generally recommend creatine for teens (ha, that kinda rhymes). It’s not dangerous by any means, it just isn’t necessary at this stage of the game. Want the effects of creatine? Have two roast beef sandwiches for lunch (on whole wheat, extra tomatoes).[/quote]
Listen to Chris, he just offered some of the best advice I’ve seen for someone your age.
Remember, kids your age will be convinced that they need supplements to make good progress, but the truth is you don’t.
[quote]HK24719 wrote:
Chris Colucci wrote: At 15 years old, creatine isn’t at the top of the list for supplements you should be considering. Protein powder - sure (but not Muscle Milk), a quality fish oil like Flameout - sure, Superfood (when it comes back in stock) - sure. That’s about it.
Even if you’re training six days a week, and I’d like to know your exact training plan, I don’t generally recommend creatine for teens (ha, that kinda rhymes). It’s not dangerous by any means, it just isn’t necessary at this stage of the game. Want the effects of creatine? Have two roast beef sandwiches for lunch (on whole wheat, extra tomatoes).
Listen to Chris, he just offered some of the best advice I’ve seen for someone your age.
Remember, kids your age will be convinced that they need supplements to make good progress, but the truth is you don’t.[/quote]
Yup, Grow! Premium Quality Whey, Flameout, and Superfood, would be excellent supps to fuel and promote recovery from a solid workout plan at your age. In addition to you eating plenty of healthy food as well.
i dont think muscle milk is actually a bad idea for a 15 year old, because it contains more calories than pure protein and has slow-absorbing casein in addition to the whey. the newer formula also has fiber (possibly a reaction to the reformulated Metabolic Drive)
just be sure you’re not getting an older tub of muscle milk with glycocyamine, they dont expire until the end of this year so some is still on the shelf. the newer stuff has eliminated this ingredient, thankfully
[quote]Tagio wrote:
i dont think muscle milk is actually a bad idea for a 15 year old, because it contains more calories than pure protein and has slow-absorbing casein in addition to the whey. the newer formula also has fiber (possibly a reaction to the reformulated Metabolic Drive)[/quote]
While I don’t think it’s the worst thing in the world, he can do far better than a product with so much canola oil – the whole lean lipids concept is just a marketing gimmick. He’d be better off just adding olive or coconut oil to a high quality protein powder or MRP.
The real point as someone mentioned earlier is that he doesn’t need these products at his age. Getting 15 yr. olds to feel like they need supplements to get bigger and stronger is a mistake. They are much better off learning how to eat to make gains, rather than rely on supplements.
I agree that he could do better than Muscle Milk, but it’s better than no protein powder source, and it certainly isn’t going to hurt him if he’s training as hard as he says he is. My personal choices are Metabolic Drive and Optimum Whey. Unfortunately, I use mass quantities of powder every day, so I rarely get Metabolic Drive because it would be insanely expensive to get 10 lbs of that stuff compared to the whey. If you didn’t use that much, you could definitely use the Metabolic Drive.
In my personal opinion, creatine is just about to the status of protein powder and fish oil as far as supps go. In other words, I consider it a staple. He doesn’t need it, no, but considering how cheap it is to buy powder that’ll last 10 months, why not? I certainly do subscribe to the “less supplements is better” for the young athlete or beginner, but I’m going to say that creatine is very useful to just about anyone. Hell, they’re researching its benefits for certain clinical treatments of neurological/muscle disorders. You don’t even need to be an active person.
If you need a casein shake, get Metabolic Drive, otherwise…use whey. I’m looking forward to opening my tub of Grow! Whey for the first time. 5 days left on the V-diet!
[quote]Aragorn wrote:
In my personal opinion, creatine is just about to the status of protein powder and fish oil as far as supps go. In other words, I consider it a staple. He doesn’t need it, no, but considering how cheap it is to buy powder that’ll last 10 months, why not? [/quote]
Because he’s only 15 years old and it’s a big mistake for guys this young to begin to rely on supplements.
Frankly, I don’t think a 15 yr. old will even notice a difference from creatine anyway with everything else that’s going on in their body.
I realize that a lot of people that post in this section are supplement junkies, but step back and think about this for a moment. Yeah, it’s fun gain a few pounds of water while taking creatine, but does anyone with any real experience think it makes sense for a young guy like this to use it?
You do know that muscle milk and creatine are not products that do the same thing? As in, you cannot “replace” muscle milk with creatine. They are two completly different substances.
As much as I think muscle milk is crap I’d hate to see someone ditch protein powder for creatine.
[quote]Nominal Prospect wrote:
Supplementation makes sense for people who have their diet and training in order, regardless of age. If he has those things in check, then he is no different than anyone else who could benefit from supplementation.[/quote]
I disagree with this logic. Because he recently turned just 15 and he has six months of questionable training experience (still waiting for details on that), using creatine now would be, at best, simply unnecessary. Streamlining his workouts and improving his whole-food intake will result in solid progress.
The mid-teens are a tricky time when it comes to training. For the most part, it’s better to be conservative with kids when it comes to training intensity, and creatine is a supplement that can help to boost intensity (in terms of training heavier.)
My weight traning workouts consists of anything from bench, incline bench, power cleans, olympic power cleans, squats, front squats, hang cleans, and all the other sub exercises that go along with the usual football weight-training.
My workouts also consist several speed and agility drills.
I’ve considered my age in the factor of relying on supplements, but my body is not your average 15 year-old’s body and since I am so young and competing with guys twice my size, i need something to help me keep up in size and weight.