Beta-Alanine: High Performance After 60 Seconds

Beta-Alanine: High Performance After 60 Seconds
Creatine works. Take it consistently and it’ll be there to support your ATP-PCr energy system so you can do more reps.

The trouble is, creatine is kind of like the guy who has attention deficit disorder. He’ll be right on point, concentration-wise, for 20, 30, or 40 seconds, possibly up to a minute, but after that his mind wanders. Same with creatine.

Once your set or session of chosen exercise activity extends beyond 60 seconds, creatine’s not much help. That wasn’t a problem in the past for lifters because they rarely did any lifting or exercise that lasted longer than maybe 40 seconds.

Enter CrossFit. And HIIT 6. And interval training. All these exercise modalities involve 1 to 5-minute long bouts, typically with rest intervals lasting less than 2 minutes. In cases like that, creatine merely sits on the sidelines.

For any activity lasting for longer than 60 seconds or so, beta-alanine beats creatine. It’s a non-essential amino acid that, like a longer-lasting creatine, increases the amount of work you can do at high intensities.