Although creatine allows an athelete to work out harder for an increased amount of time, the negatives which it can cause outweigh the benifits. After interviewing two atheletes that participated on Division 1 tracks teams at Stanford and Cal as well as a Division I soccer player who played for Stanford neither of these two atheletes recommend Creatine for highschool atheletes. Studies have shown that Creatine weakens tendents relative to your stregnth due to overuse. Weakened tendants for an athelete would cause a greater risk for injury, which is the last thing an athelete would ever want. Similarly, Creatine causes muscle cramps which could kill an atheletes hopes of competing at the top level. If Creatine is not taken properly, it causes dehydration which leads to poor preformances. Although Creatine will increase you speed, since speed is defined by stride frequency times stride length, the problem is spirinting is about fluidity so as you get bigger and bigger it is a lot harder to maintain your flexibility. Therefore, again it is harmful because you won't have a fluid stride, which will unltimately slow your speed down. This could cost you your chance at successfully winning your competition.

"Creatine causes muscle cramps, muscle tears, torn biceps and hamstring pulls." When you take Creatine, your body lacks Calcium, which greatly limits muscle movement, which leads to tears and other painful injuries which set back an atheletes goals and plans. (Creatine Will Build Muscle, But You May Not Want To Play The Price) Besides calcium depletion, another problem with Creatine is that atheletes don't understand how the drug works. There is a loading phase as well as a maintnacne phase. Oftin times atheletes tend to ignore the maintnance phase and keep loading in hopes of getting bigger. In short, creatine is a quick fix so you can get bigger in a short amount of time. Naturally, your body creates and stores two grams of Creatine. You already have one gram of Creatine; therefore, it is asking your body to process too much Creatine if it needs to process another two grams. It will be similar to overloading which will cause liver problems in the end because not all the Creatine will be processed. The bottom line is there is no point in using creatine because you can obtain the same results by lifting more with a higher intesity you can achieve the same results. A health study was done with Creatine and 72 Division 1-A football players. While the study showed that their was no harmful benefits with Creatine use, it also shows their was no advantage for the atheletes taking Creatine. (Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, March 2001).

Creatine is unfair because it gives some atheletes an advantage over the average atheletes. Therefore, if you want to "level the playing field", it wmight be wise to not allow the usage of Creatinte for highschool athelets. However, if high school athelets are afraid of fairlure, the quickfix is what they are looking for; therefore, they don't care about the ethics behind the drugs, they just want a quick fix that will hopefully lead them to success and therefore praise by parents, coaches and teammates.

Since Creatine is so new to the market, I was unable to find any tables and charts.

Creatine Will Build Muscle, But You May Not Want To Play The Price: This website addresses the negative aspects of creatine. It talks about atheletes and their injuries which they have suffered from using Creatine.

Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, March 2001: This was a study of 72 Division I-A football players and the study showed that their was no benefit or deterant using Creatine.

www.riekes.org This is an organization that help young atheletes achieve their atheletic goals through hard work and deication to a sport.