Creatine Monohydrate is, without a doubt, the best form of creatine you can buy. Monohydrates and HCL have the exact same benefits but HCL is substantially more expensive.
Perhaps you just started working out. or maybe perhaps you’ve been working out for a substantial amount of time already. Either way, this next situation could be true for you. Picture yourself you’re working out in the gym and you have what we gymgoers affectionately call the “pump.” We refer to it as the pump because physically that’s what it feels like. Anybody who has worked out before knows that whenever you work out your feel pumped up in a way. Your muscles feel bigger because they are and you feel stronger and almost more confident than usual. There’s something special about whenever you finish a long and hard set. You stand up and you’re exhausted from it but you look down at the weight and you’re proud of yourself.. You see what you’ve just accomplished and you see what you just did. This small or some might say insignificant act is not so insignificant. You pushed yourself harder and further than ever before today. This time in the gym you did more weight than you ever have and possibly more reps as well. Either way, whenever you work out you feel the pump. This pump gives you an artificial feeling of being bigger and more muscular than you are typically just walking around. So then you go home that night and within the hour your muscles have “deflated” back to their normal size and you don’t feel as if you’re a superhero walking among men any longer. So that night whenever you go to sleep you think to yourself “Wow that was a great feeling, I was bigger than ever today. When I work out tomorrow I should push myself even harder to see how far I can come.” This thought process might not even occur, it could even go undetected in the subconscious. Either way, you begin to realize that tomorrow you can be something more than you were today, even if that progress is minute. These tiny changes begin to add up over the course of weeks, months, and even years. This process is commonly referred to as “chasing the pump” among the gym community. Put simply this phenomenon is an individual chasing the feeling of being bigger than they are normally or feeling more strong or more confident than usual. The individual is chasing who they can be tomorrow. The journey of self-improvement.
Naturally, after an individual feels this increased confidence and strength the next most logical step is wanting to achieve whatever goal they have set for themselves quicker. Inevitably you start to research and see how you could possibly do that and how you could reach your goals quicker than a year. Who knows how quickly you can lose that 20 pounds, or how quickly can you put that same 20 pounds on your bench press for example? This is where supplementation comes into play. Bound to be the first thing that you’ll see to increase performance in the gym will be different types of supplements. There are many different types of supplements from protein powders, pre-workout, vitamins etc. but the one that will without doubt stand above the rest at first glance will be creatine. The next thing you know you read a convenient article that tells you that creatine can help boost the strength and muscle size in an individual by up to 5% annually. This statistic at first seems relatively unimpressive but then you think to yourself, “Well, I want to work out for the next 10 to 20 years that really adds up doesn’t it?” Of course, it does. 5% over the course of 10 years will add up to an additional 50% muscle gain. Now that is a very impressive statistic. Perhaps the next thing you notice is that there are different types of creatine and particularly different forms of creatine. There are creatine pills and creatine powders and then there are also creatine monohydrate and creatine HCL. I already covered the difference between creatine powder and creatine pills you can feel free to check out that post anytime it would certainly be interesting that those of you who are considering buying these supplements. Today however today I will be discussing the particular details of creatine HCL and creatine monohydrate and in particular which one is better.
So...who takes the cake. Monohydrate VS. HCL
- There is NO benefit to taking HCL over standard monohydrate
- HCL is substantially more expensive that monohydrate.
- BOTH types of creatine have the same effect. An additional 3-5% muscle gain annually
Surely the biggest question at the forefront of your mind is, which is better, creatine monohydrate or creatine HCL? The answer is actually pretty simple, but I’ll give a slightly more detailed answer. Both of these types of creatines are in function the same thing. They both do the same thing in the human body and are used to accomplish the same process. Both of these supplements are used to increase muscle gain and muscle strength as I mentioned earlier by 3-5% annually depending on the person obviously. This can be way more or way less depending on the person and how long they’ve been training. Creatine is a derived form of protein. Just like protein creatine is found most commonly in meats and some vegetables such as beans. Creatine is one of those types of supplements that is very difficult to get in a diet, but if you do get the correct amount it can be very beneficial. As I mentioned earlier. to get the proper amount of creatine from food a person would need to eat countless pounds of chicken or steak each day. Due to many different reasons, this can become very impractical for any person to eat that much in a day. The biggest factor in creatine’s value over normal nutrition is its convenience factor as well as its monetary value. You can buy a bottle of creatine for anywhere from $20-$50 depending on the size and that is much more efficient and can last you much longer than buying grocery items. With just a few Scoops a day of creatine, you can meet your needed requirements and be on your way. this will only take less than a minute out of your time.
All right, all right I know what you’re saying. So great, we know what creatine does but surely there must be some sort of difference between HCL and monohydrate or they wouldn’t exist right? There wouldn’t be two different forms of it if they both serve the same purpose. Well, in actuality that statement is somewhat true. The difference between the two is irrelevant as long as you have creatine stores present in the body. This means that if you do ingest creatine consistently there is no benefit to HCL over the normal monohydrate. The main reason you might see creatine HCL being popularized and advertised by people is predominantly just a marketing scheme. It’s just a way for companies to overcharge an individual for a new exciting supplement. So, is that it? Are there any cons? The answer to that question is yes. There is one predominant con to creatine HCL when compared to creatine monohydrate. As I mentioned creatine HCL will most likely be marketed as just a new exciting supplement so therefore they’ll charge you more for it. Despite the fact that you don’t need to take as much creatine HCL as you would creatine monohydrate this takes no real influence over the price of these two supplements. In the end, creatine HCL is much more expensive than creatine monohydrate even though they both offer the same benefit.