The problem isn't your first sprint

Watch any Sunday league game and you'll notice a pattern. The first twenty minutes look like football. The last twenty look like survival and I can honestly write: been there, done that.

In a study of top-level players, the amount of high-intensity running was clearly lower in the final 15 minutes of a match than earlier in the game (Mohr et al. 2003). Football isn't really an endurance sport or a sprint sport. It's both, stitched together: around 10 km of running per match, with sprints, jumps, tackles and turns on top (Kim 2021) + sometime a little bit of MMA if your opponent is not in a right mood. The moments that decide games – the run in behind, the recovery tackle – run mostly on your fast, anaerobic energy system (Yáñez-Silva et al. 2017).

That's exactly the kind of effort creatine is built for. It's one of only five supplements the International Olympic Committee's expert panel lists as having good evidence for performance (Maughan et al. 2018), and there are now more than 1,000 peer-reviewed papers on it (Antonio et al. 2025). Researchers have been testing it on footballers since the late 1990s. Now we gonna take a look on what they found.

How creatine actually works

First some basics, so you understand the mechanism. Your muscles run on a molecule called ATP. The trouble is that they only store enough of it for a few seconds of hard effort. After that, ATP has to be rebuilt as fast as you're burning it.

The quickest way to rebuild it is phosphocreatine: creatine with a phosphate attached, sitting ready in the muscle. In a short, all-out sprint, phosphocreatine and fast carbohydrate breakdown supply most of the energy. When phosphocreatine runs low, power drops, because ATP can't be rebuilt quickly enough (Gaitanos et al. 1993; Yáñez-Silva et al. 2017).

Think of it as a small fuel tank for sprinting. Between efforts, the tank refills, but football rarely gives you enough time for it to fill completely. By sprint ten, you're running on a half-empty tank. Supplementing gives you a bigger tank, and studies show creatine speeds up the refill between efforts, which limits the drop in power from one sprint to the next (Greenhaff et al. 1994; Wax et al. 2021).

How much bigger? Your body needs roughly 2–4 g of creatine a day, which it covers partly by making its own and partly from meat and fish (Kreider et al. 2025). Supplements raise the creatine stored in muscle by about 20% on average. Some people barely respond, while others see increases of up to around 40% (Forbes et al. 2022). People who eat little or no meat usually start lower and often respond more (Antonio et al. 2025).

Two more effects matter for football. Creatine seems to help muscles store more glycogen, the carbohydrate fuel a 90-minute match burns through (Forbes et al. 2023). It also helps buffer the acid that builds up during repeated hard efforts (Kim 2021).

A note on "loading" before we get to the studies

You'll notice many of the studies below lasted only 5–7 days and used 20 g of creatine a day. That's called loading, and researchers use it for a practical reason: it fills the muscles in about a week, which keeps a study short.

It isn't the only way to get there. A classic study found that 3 g a day for 28 days raised muscle creatine to the same level as six days of 20 g loading (Hultman et al. 1996). A daily 5 g dose is just as effective; it simply takes around 3–4 weeks instead of 5 days (Smith-Ryan et al. 2021). Same destination, slower road.

The slower road has been tested in football too, and it holds up:

• 14 days, low dose: elite youth players on about 2–3 g a day improved peak and mean power by 8% and total work by 7%, similar to what loading studies report, with no weight gain (Yáñez-Silva et al. 2017).
• 16 weeks, in season: Polish elite players on a daily low dose, with no loading phase, improved their repeated sprint test times and power (Zając et al. 2020).
• 6 weeks, 2.3 g a day: a low dose improved fatigue resistance during repeated high-intensity efforts, again without weight gain (Rawson et al. 2011).

For a footballer, the steady approach has real advantages. Loading can cause stomach trouble (Zając et al. 2020), and it's when most of the short-term water weight appears. A season lasts months, not a week, so what counts is taking it consistently (Antonio et al. 2025).

What the football studies show

The most consistent finding is simple: creatine helps players keep their power across repeated efforts. Here are the key trials.

Repeated sprints in trained men. Seventeen highly trained players took creatine for six days. They got better at repeated 15 m sprints with 30 seconds' rest, and their jump height dropped less after a match-like running test (Mujika et al. 2000).

Elite women in a simulated match. Players from Australia's national team did better on repeated sprints and agility during a field test designed to mimic match play (Cox et al. 2002).

Amateur women with plyometric training. Creatine alongside six weeks of jump training led to bigger gains in jumping and repeated sprints than training with a placebo (Ramírez-Campillo et al. 2016).

Pre-season in Brazil. Seven weeks of creatine stopped the drop in leg power that elite players otherwise showed during a hard pre-season (Claudino et al. 2014).

Sixteen weeks in Poland. Researchers at AWF Katowice followed elite players through the second half of a season. The creatine group improved total time and power in a six-sprint running test; the placebo group didn't (Zając et al. 2020).

The big picture

When Spanish researchers pooled nine controlled trials in footballers, the pattern was clear (Mielgo-Ayuso et al. 2019):

• Anaerobic power (sustained, all-out efforts): a large, significant benefit.
• Single efforts (one sprint, one jump, agility, strength): a small, positive trend that didn't reach statistical significance.
• Aerobic fitness tests: no effect.

In plain words: creatine won't turn you into a faster player over one sprint or make your lungs bigger. It helps most when you have to produce hard efforts over and over, which is most of a football match.

What about teenage players?

A fair share of the football research was done on teenagers, and the results look much like the adult ones.

• Dribbling, sprinting and jumping. Twenty male players aged around 16–17 took creatine for a week. They improved in a football dribble test, a sprint-power test and vertical jump compared with placebo (Ostojic 2004). A similar one-week study found better repeated sprints and dribbling in adolescent players (Mohebbi et al. 2012, reviewed in Antonio et al. 2025).
• Low dose, two weeks. Elite 17-year-old players on about 2–3 g a day increased their power output, without the weight gain usually seen with loading (Yáñez-Silva et al. 2017).
• A whole season. A study following 71 female players, including an under-17 squad, found kidney and liver markers stayed within normal ranges across 32 weeks of daily creatine (Garcia et al. 2025).
• Beyond football. Under-16 basketball players who combined creatine with eight weeks of strength training improved more in one of four jump tests than those who trained alone, with no side effects reported (Vargas-Molina et al. 2022). That study had no placebo group, so treat it as a hint rather than proof.

The leading expert review concludes that creatine can improve sport-specific performance in adolescents, but notes that research on teenage girls is thin and longer trials are needed (Antonio et al. 2025; Jagim & Kerksick 2021). The International Society of Sports Nutrition's view is that younger athletes can consider creatine when they're in serious, supervised training, eat a well-balanced diet, stick to recommended doses and have their parents on board (Kreider et al. 2017).

One thing from us: nudge products are made for adults, and the EU-approved creatine claim applies to adults. If you're under 18, have that conversation with a parent, coach or doctor first.

The endurance angle: it's the finish that counts

Creatine has a reputation as a gym supplement, so it's fair to ask whether it does anything for a sport where you run 10 km. A 2023 review of the endurance research gives a useful answer (Forbes et al. 2023).

For steady efforts, like a time trial at an even pace, creatine doesn't reliably help. Where it does show up is in the hard bursts that come on top of long efforts:

• Elite cyclists who rode 120 km had more power in the closing sprints (Tomcik et al. 2018).
• After two and a half hours of cycling, sprint power was 8–9% higher with creatine (Vandebuerie et al. 1998).
• In a test that switched between easy and very hard cycling every three minutes, time to exhaustion rose from about 30 to 36.5 minutes (Rico-Sanz et al. 2000).

That stop-start pattern, long stretches of moderate work broken up by bursts, is basically an essence of a football match, but also tennis, basketball and many other sports. The review also points to creatine's effect on glycogen as one reason why: more carbohydrate stored means more fuel left late in the game.

There's a catch worth knowing. In running, which is weight-bearing, the extra water creatine pulls into muscle can cost you. In one study, runners were slower over 6 km after loading, likely because they'd gained about 0.9 kg (Balsom et al. 1993; all four studies reviewed in Forbes et al. 2023). This is another reason the steady low-dose approach makes sense for footballers.

Off the pitch: training, recovery and injuries

Better training sessions. If you can produce more power in each session, you can train harder, and that is where long-term gains come from. Researchers suggest this is one of the main ways creatine pays off over a season (Yáñez-Silva et al. 2017).

Recovery. In under-20 players, a week of creatine lowered markers of inflammation after a repeated sprint test (Deminice et al. 2013, reviewed in Wax et al. 2021). An expert review also concludes creatine may help recovery after injury or time in a cast (Antonio et al. 2025).

Cramps and dehydration. This worry has been around for years, but controlled studies haven't found that creatine causes more cramping, dehydration or muscle injuries (Kreider et al. 2017; Yáñez-Silva et al. 2017).

Injuries: early but interesting. A 2026 pilot study at a Madrid university gave amateur footballers 3 g of creatine or a placebo for 14 weeks. Injuries hit 8.3% of the creatine group versus 36.4% of the placebo group, and the creatine group gained more leg strength and jump height (Soler Hurtado et al. 2026). But with only 23 players, the injury difference wasn't statistically significant. It's worth watching, not proof.

Safety over a full season. In 71 women's players followed for 32 weeks on daily creatine, kidney and liver markers stayed within normal ranges (Garcia et al. 2025). Blood creatinine can rise slightly on creatine, which is expected and doesn't by itself signal kidney damage (Zając et al. 2020). If you have a kidney condition, talk to your doctor first.

Where the results are mixed

No supplement works for everything, and it's worth being clear about the limits.

• Single efforts. Evidence for one-off sprints and jumps is weaker. Some sprint studies found no benefit at all, and the football meta-analysis found only a small, non-significant trend (Wax et al. 2021; Mielgo-Ayuso et al. 2019). Even for repeated sprints, the pooled effect in that meta-analysis was small, although several individual trials were clearly positive.
• Weight. Loading can add around a kilo of water, which may matter for a running sport (Forbes et al. 2023). Low-dose studies (3-5 g/day) mostly didn't see it.
• Not everyone responds. Some people's muscles take up very little extra creatine (Forbes et al. 2022).
• Small studies. Most football trials had 10–30 players. The meta-analysis authors themselves note that only nine trials were available, mixing men and women, different levels and different protocols (Mielgo-Ayuso et al. 2019).

How to take it

The practical side is refreshingly boring.

• Dose: 3–5 g a day. The EU's approved health claim is that creatine increases physical performance in successive bursts of short-term, high intensity exercise, with the benefit seen at a daily intake of 3 g in adults doing high-intensity exercise (Regulation (EU) No 432/2012). Successive bursts of short, intense exercise is a fairly good description of football.
• No loading needed: a daily dose gets you to full stores in about 3–4 weeks (Hultman et al. 1996). Start in pre-season and you're topped up by the first match.
• Timing doesn't matter much. Morning, after training, with dinner. What matters is taking it every day, rest days included (Antonio et al. 2025).
• Monohydrate is the form with the most evidence behind it (Gutiérrez-Hellín et al. 2025).

Where nudge fits

We make creatine in two formats, because the best supplement is the one you actually remember to take.

nudge move is a stick pack you tip into your water bottle. Each one has 5 g of creatine plus electrolytes: sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium and chloride. Magnesium contributes to a reduction of tiredness and fatigue. We also added 1.5 g of L-carnitine, which we think is promising. Putting creatine and electrolytes in one drink doesn't make the creatine work better. It just turns two habits into one, and one habit is easier to keep.

nudge Creatine+ gummies are for anyone who won't mix a drink. Three gummies a day give you 4.5 g of creatine, plus vitamins C, B6, B12 and folic acid, which contribute to a reduction of tiredness and fatigue. They live in a kit bag without complaint, which is handy on away days.

Either way, it's the same idea: a small amount, every day, for the whole season.

Creatine won't turn you into a different player. The research suggests it might help you still be the same player in the 85th minute.

Sources

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28. Commission Regulation (EU) No 432/2012, authorised health claims. EUR-Lex

Studies cited only through a review (Mohebbi 2012; Deminice 2013; Tomcik 2018; Vandebuerie 1998; Rico-Sanz 2000; Balsom 1993) are linked to that review in the text.