Is Long Term Creatine and Glutamine Supplementation Effective in Enhancing Physical Performance of Military Police Officers?

Abstract

The objective of this study was to analyze the effect of supplementation with creatine and glutamine on physical fitness of military police officers. Therefore, an experimental double blind study was developed, with the final sample composed by 32 men randomly distributed into three groups: a group supplemented with creatine (n=10), glutamine (n=10) and a placebo group (n=12) and evaluated in three distinct moments, in an interval of three months (T1, T2 and T3). The physical training had a weekly frequency of 5 sessions × 90 min, including strength exercises, local muscular resistance, flexibility and both aerobic and anaerobic capacity. After analyzing the effect of time, group and interaction (group × time) for measures that indicated the physical capabilities of the subjects, a significant effect of time for the entire variable was identified (p<0,05). However, these differences were not observed when the univaried intragroups and intergroups analysis was performed (p>0,05). In face of the results it was concluded that supplementation with creatine and glutamine showed no ergogenic effect on physical performance in military police officers.

Creatine Supplementation and Upper Limb Strength Performance: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

“…Interestingly, we did not report an influence of the training regimen on performance improvement, i.e. the increase of strength performance following creatine supplementation appeared similar between studies involving resistance training [48][49][50][51][52][53], mixed training [41,42,46,54,55] and also aerobic training alone [9,28,56].…”

“…Responses to creatine supplementation did not differ between males and females [16,17,37,[40][41][42]. More direct comparisons of the effect of creatine supplementation in males and females are needed to elucidate any sex differences in response to creatine.…”

Biological Responses to Short-Term Maximal Exercise in Male Police Officers

“…The latter consisted of 6 × 35-m maximal sprints interspersed by 10-second passive recovery periods. RAST is a valid and reliable tool for assessing short-term power and capacity ( da Silveira et al, 2014 ). Each participant performed a 12 min warm-up (5 min of jogging and 7 min of active dynamic stretching), followed by some acceleration to 5 min of jogging.…”

Ergogenic Aids and Supplements

“…4-12 weeks) in combination with training appears to increase muscle mass and strength as a result of an improved ability to perform high-intensity exercise via increased creatine phosphate availability [14,25] . Collectively, in spite of a few controversial results [26][27][28] , creatine supplementation combined with resistance training seems to be able to amplify performance enhancement to the maximum and endurance strength as well muscle hypertrophy. Based on these data, in a 2007 position statement, the ISSN declared that the use of creatine as a nutritional supplement within established guidelines is safe, and effectively improves anaerobic capacity, strength, and lean body mass in conjunction with training [25] .…”