Can You Dry Scoop Creatine? The Best Way to Take This Popular Supplement

Are you wondering, “Can you dry scoop creatine?” In this article, we’ll be going in-depth on this popular supplement, and answering all your questions about the best way to take it. 

In short, we don’t recommend dry scooping creatine as there’s no reason to. Instead, just mix your creatine into water or a protein shake!

What are the benefits of creatine? 

Creatine is one of the most well-researched, affordable, and beneficial sports supplements available. With a daily dose of 3-5g/day, you can fully saturate your muscles in several weeks and experience all the benefits of creatine.

If you’re interested in taking it, be sure you’re using monohydrate as other forms tend to be more expensive and less effective. 

Below we’ll be covering some of the benefits of creatine that highlight why it’s so popular!

✅ Improved High-Intensity Exercise Performance

One of the main benefits of creatine is that it provides a boost to high-intensity exercise performance. Essentially, creatine provides benefits for short bursts of intense exercise, making it ideal for strength training where individual bursts of exercise only last around a minute. 

✅ Increased Lean Body Mass/Muscle Growth

Creatine is also known to quickly help people add on lean body mass and muscle. When combined with resistance training, creatine leads to lean mass gains of ~0.36%/week. This makes it one of the only supplements available that genuinely augments lean mass. 

✅ Improved Recovery 

Studies have shown that creatine supplements are also beneficial for recovery. In one study that examined knee extension recovery, creatine supplementation led to significant improvements in strength during recovery periods. This suggests creatine helps support faster recovery with consistent supplementation. 

✅ Reduced Fatigue

Finally, creatine is also beneficial for reducing fatigue, with one study showing creatine supplementation leads to improved performance over repeated sprint runs. Over 8 sprints, supplementation improved performance in the last 3 sprints specifically.

This suggests that athletes will experience less fatigue (or quicker recovery) when engaging in repeated bouts of short-term high-intensity exercise. 

What Is Dry Scooping and Can You Dry Scoop Creatine?

Dry scooping is the act of taking any powdered supplement without mixing it with water first. It usually involves pouring a supplement into your mouth and swallowing it dry, or taking a sip of water to wash it down. 

Dry scooping gained popularity as a trend online. It’s most commonly done with pre-workout. This is strongly advised against, mainly because taking in so much caffeine at once can be dangerous. So, what happens if you dry scoop creatine instead of pre-workout? 

While there’s no risk of excessive caffeine consumption, taking any dry powder may still lead you to cough, choke on, or inhale the powder. It may also increase the chance of creatine causing an upset stomach. These risks of dry scooping range from being unpleasant to genuinely dangerous. 

These effects can potentially be avoided by choosing to dry scoop creatine with water to wash it down. However, at that point you might as well just mix the creatine with water to begin with.

It’s also worth noting that there are no benefits of taking creatine in this manner. While some may believe that dry scooping leads to more effective absorption, there’s no evidence to support that claim. 

Because of the reasons listed above, we recommend just mixing your creatine with water or a shake instead of dry scooping. All things considered, it will be safer and easier to just mix your creatine before drinking it. 

How to Use Creatine for Best Results?

If you’re new to using creatine, you may be wondering what the best way to take this supplement is. What’s great about creatine is how simple it is.

You don’t need to worry about timing, or consuming it with food. As long as you’re taking 3-5g/day consistently, there’s not much else to worry about. 

With that being said, we’ll be covering some tips below so you can get the most out of this supplement. 

1. Mix creatine with water or juice and take it with meal

As mentioned above, we recommend avoiding dry scooping and just mixing your creatine with water or juice. If you find that creatine doesn’t mix too well, using warm water may help with solubility! Also, mixing with juice may help make the supplement more palatable if you don’t enjoy taking it in plain water.

While it’s not necessary to take creatine alongside food, there are some slight benefits. First, it’s thought that eating food alongside creatine will help with absorption. While this isn’t a major concern, especially if you’ve been taking creatine for a while, better absorption will help you notice the effects of creatine slightly faster.

On top of this, taking creatine with food may help prevent symptoms of gastrointestinal discomfort that some people experience when taking the supplement. 

2. Add creatine to your recovery shake 

If you keep forgetting to take creatine, a convenient way to remember is to add it to a recovery shake. While creatine will likely help you recover faster, you won’t make significant progress in the gym if you’re not eating enough protein as well. That’s why combining creatine with whey protein creates a powerful combo for better recovery. 

This is also a good idea if you don’t like the idea of drinking just creatine and water. By mixing it into a shake, it should blend up nicely to the point where you won’t even notice it!

It’s worth noting that you’ll also get the bonus of better absorption because you’re taking creatine alongside some food. Overall, whatever method is most convenient for you to get your creatine in every day will be best – as long as you’re not dry scooping it!

Best Creatine

If you’re looking for a solid, basic creatine powder to reap all the benefits of this supplement, we recommend checking out Naked Nutrition’s Creatine. 

Each scoop of Naked’s product contains 5g of creatine monohydrate, making it the ideal dose and form for most athletes. If you want to save some money, or you’re a bit lighter, you can always take a slightly smaller dose of 3-4g instead!

This is also a single-ingredient supplement with no unnecessary additional ingredients. This is exactly what you want with a creatine supplement to ensure you’re getting good value for money, as well as pure creatine!

Each 1kg package will give you a solid 200 servings, which should last for several months with daily use. It’s also very affordable at only about $0.18 per serving! Considering all the proven benefits of creatine, this is arguably some of the best value for money you can get for any supplement out there!

Best Protein

As mentioned above, to optimize recovery you need to eat enough protein! While this can be done through whole foods alone, one of the easiest ways to increase your daily protein intake is to incorporate a high-quality whey protein supplement. If you’re interested in this, check out Transparent Labs Grass-Fed Whey Protein Isolate.

Each serving only has 120 calories while still giving you a solid 28g of protein! This high protein content and low-calorie count make it ideal for both bulking and cutting.

When combined with a diet already rich in protein, you can ensure you’re getting enough protein to maximize recovery and muscle growth. This will ensure you’re getting the most out of creatine supplementation!

Like Naked’s product above, Transparent Labs’ protein contains no additional artificial ingredients. It also comes in a solid 12 different flavors, so there should be something that appeals to everyone!

Finally, in terms of price, at ~$2.00, this is somewhat more expensive than your standard protein supplement. However, considering the excellent macros and high-quality formula, Transparent Labs still offers some of the best value out there.

FAQ

Is It Bad to Dry-Scoop Creatine?

We strongly advise against dry scooping creatine. It can lead to risks such as coughing, choking, inhalation, and stomach distress. Mixing creatine with water is quick, safe, and easy, so why not just do that instead?

What Happens if You Take Creatine Without Water?

While dry scooping creatine is possible, we don’t recommend it. When you take creatine without water, you drastically increase the risk of problems with consumption. You might cough up, choke on, or inhale the powder. 

Can you take creatine without water? Yes. Is it a good idea? No.

Can You Put Creatine in Water?

Yes, mixing creatine with water is the quickest and easiest way to take in creatine. If it doesn’t mix well with cold water, try using slightly warm water to increase the solubility!

What’s the Best Way to Take Creatine?

We recommend simply mixing creatine with water, juice, or a shake. While it’s not necessary to take creatine with food, it may slightly increase absorption. While this can speed up the saturation of your muscles if you’re just starting out, it won’t matter much if you’ve been taking creatine for a while. 

Conclusion

So, does dry scooping creatine work? Not really. While it is possible, there are plenty of risks associated that make it somewhat pointless. Especially because creatine is so easy to mix with water, what’s the point of dry scooping? 

If you’re interested in a high-quality creatine supplement, check out Naked Nutrition Creatine. For a great protein powder to mix with your creatine, consider Transparent Labs Grass-Fed Whey Protein Isolate.

Have you ever tried dry scooping creatine? What were the results? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

Also read:

• How Long Does Creatine Take To Work
• How Much Water to Drink With Creatine
• How Long Does Creatine Stay In Your System
• Does Creatine Make You Gain Weight
• Creatine Hcl vs Monohydrate
• Micronized Creatine vs Monohydrate
• Does Creatine Make You Poop
• Does Creatine Boost Energy
• Does Creatine Have Caffeine

References:

1. Richard B Kreider, et. al, “International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand: safety and efficacy of creatine supplementation in exercise, sport, and medicine.” J Int Soc Sports Nutr. Jun 13;14:18. (2017).
2. Guillermo Escalante, et. al, “Analysis of the efficacy, safety, and cost of alternative forms of creatine available for purchase on Amazon.com: are label claims supported by science?” Heliyon, Volume 8, Issue 12, December. (2022).
3. Steven L Nissen, et. al, “Effect of dietary supplements on lean mass and strength gains with resistance exercise: a meta-analysis.” J Appl Physiol. Feb;94(2):651-9. (2003)
4. Matthew B. Cooke, et al. “Creatine supplementation enhances muscle force recovery after eccentrically-induced muscle damage in healthy individuals.” J Int Soc Sports Nutr 6, 13 (2009).
5. R Aaserud, et. al, “Creatine supplementation delays onset of fatigue during repeated bouts of sprint running.” Scand J Med Sci Sports. Oct;8(5 Pt 1):247-51. (1998)