Yes, professional athletes across nearly every major sport take creatine. It is one of the most widely used and well-researched sports supplements in the world, and it is completely legal in every professional league, the Olympics, and collegiate athletics. While exact usage rates among pros are hard to pin down (most data comes from self-reported surveys), creatine is a staple in the nutrition programs of NFL players, soccer players, sprinters, swimmers, and strength athletes at the highest levels.
Why Creatine Is So Popular Among Elite Athletes
Creatine works by topping off your muscles’ supply of a molecule called phosphocreatine, which acts as a rapid-fire energy reserve. When you sprint, jump, or push through a heavy lift, your muscles burn through their primary fuel source (ATP) in seconds. Phosphocreatine steps in to recycle that fuel almost instantly, letting you sustain high-intensity effort for a few extra reps or a few more seconds at full speed. Supplementing with creatine increases the amount of phosphocreatine stored in your muscles, so you can regenerate energy faster during bursts of explosive activity.
This mechanism also reduces how much your muscles rely on a backup energy pathway that produces lactic acid. The result is less metabolic stress during repeated high-intensity efforts, which matters enormously in sports built around short, explosive plays separated by brief rest periods.
Performance Gains Measured in Football Players
Some of the most detailed creatine research has been done on collegiate and professional football players, and the results explain why the supplement is nearly universal in the NFL. In one study, NCAA Division I football players who took creatine for 28 days gained more lean body mass and increased their bench press volume, total training volume, and repeated sprint performance compared to a placebo group. Another trial found that combining creatine with carbohydrates led to significantly greater improvements in bench press strength, vertical jump height, and 100-yard dash time.
Multiple studies on collegiate football players completing 9- to 10-week strength programs found that those supplementing with creatine saw greater gains in squat, bench press, and power clean performance than athletes who trained without it. One 5-week study reported increases in both upper and lower body strength along with faster rates of force development. These are the exact qualities that separate good athletes from dominant ones at the professional level: the ability to generate more force, more quickly, play after play.
Benefits Beyond Raw Strength
Professional athletes don’t just care about getting stronger. They care about staying on the field. Creatine has shown meaningful benefits for injury recovery, particularly for preserving and rebuilding muscle mass after a period of immobilization. In a study where participants had one leg immobilized (simulating a cast or post-surgical recovery), both groups lost about 10% of their quadriceps muscle size and 25% of their muscle power. But during rehabilitation, the creatine group recovered significantly faster. After 3 weeks of rehab, the creatine group had regained 15% of muscle size compared to 9% in the placebo group. After 10 weeks, those numbers were 21% versus 14%. Only the creatine group fully recovered their muscle power output above baseline levels.
For a professional athlete, shaving weeks off a rehab timeline can mean the difference between making it back for the playoffs or missing the season.
Brain Health in Contact Sports
A newer area of interest is creatine’s role in brain energy metabolism. The brain is one of the most energy-demanding organs in the body, and it relies on the same phosphocreatine energy system that muscles do. After a concussion, creatine levels in the brain drop, contributing to the metabolic disruption that causes symptoms. Animal studies have shown that creatine supplementation before a head injury reduced tissue damage and lactic acid buildup in the brain. Research involving contact sport athletes has found that creatine supplementation may help restore markers of cerebral metabolism after concussions, though human evidence is still limited.
It Is Legal in Every Major League
Creatine does not appear on the World Anti-Doping Agency’s 2024 Prohibited List, which governs the Olympics and most international sports. The NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, and NCAA all permit its use. It has never been classified as a banned substance by any major sports governing body. This is a key reason athletes are comfortable using it openly: there is no risk of a failed drug test from creatine itself.
The NCAA does have a somewhat unusual rule worth noting. While creatine is not banned, the NCAA does not approve any specific nutritional supplements, and athletic departments cannot guarantee the safety of any product. All supplements are taken at the student-athlete’s own risk, and athletics staff are expected to help athletes evaluate products before use. This means college programs typically guide athletes toward creatine rather than directly distributing it, but usage is widespread at the collegiate level. An NCAA survey found that 14% of all college athletes reported using creatine in the prior 12 months, with rates much higher among male athletes in strength-dependent sports.
How Athletes Typically Take It
Most professional athletes follow one of two approaches. The faster method involves a loading phase of 20 to 25 grams per day (split into four doses of about 5 grams each) for 5 to 7 days, followed by a maintenance dose of 3 to 5 grams per day. The slower approach skips the loading phase and simply takes 3 to 5 grams daily from the start, which fully saturates the muscles after about 3 to 4 weeks. Both methods ultimately achieve the same muscle creatine levels.
Research suggests that taking creatine after exercise alongside a meal or shake containing carbohydrates and protein improves absorption. Creatine monohydrate is the form used in the vast majority of research and is what sports nutrition experts recommend over newer, more expensive formulations. Pro athletes and their support teams typically choose products certified by third-party testing programs like NSF Certified for Sport or Informed Choice, which verify that the product contains what’s on the label and is free of banned contaminants. This is a critical step for anyone subject to drug testing, since the supplement industry is loosely regulated and contamination can cause a positive test.
Long-Term Safety in Healthy Athletes
The most persistent concern about creatine is kidney damage, and the scientific evidence is clear: in people with healthy kidneys, creatine supplementation does not impair kidney function. Controlled clinical trials lasting up to 21 months have found no clinically significant changes in any kidney marker. Studies comparing long-term creatine users to non-users have found no differences in kidney function. A 2023 narrative review in the journal Nutrients concluded that “cumulative evidence from independent, randomized controlled trials clearly show” that creatine is not harmful to the kidneys in healthy individuals.
The caveat is that research in people with pre-existing kidney disease remains limited. But for healthy professional athletes with normal kidney function, the safety profile of creatine is among the strongest of any sports supplement on the market. It has been extensively studied for over three decades, and no serious adverse effects have been consistently linked to its use at recommended doses.