Tier 2 — strong

Effects of coffee and caffeine anhydrous intake during creatine loading

Eric T Trexler, Abbie E Smith-Ryan, Erica J Roelofs, Katie R Hirsch, Adam M Persky, Meredith G Mock

J Strength Cond Res 2016 30(5):1438-1446

Bibliography

PubMed: PMID 26439785
PubMed Central: PMC4808512
DOI: 10.1519/JSC.0000000000001223
Funding: Funded by the National Strength and Conditioning Association Foundation and supported by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, National Institutes of Health, through Grant 1KL2TR001109.
Competing interests: No explicit competing-interests statement was located in the accessible PubMed or publisher records during Biohack Blueprint's 2026-10-02 audit. This is an audit-status statement, not confirmation that no competing interests existed.

Study snapshot

Design	Randomized, partially blinded controlled trial
Model	Human
Sample	54 physically active men
Intervention	20 g/day creatine monohydrate alone, with 300 mg/day caffeine anhydrous, with coffee providing about 303 mg caffeine, or placebo
Duration	5 days
Endpoints	Bench press strength; Leg press strength; Repeated sprint power; Serum creatinine; Gastrointestinal symptoms

What the study showed, in plain terms

Randomized study comparing creatine loading alone with creatine plus caffeine, creatine plus coffee and placebo in physically active men.

Key findings

No treatment group significantly outperformed placebo for the measured strength or sprint outcomes over five days. Four of 13 participants in the creatine-plus-caffeine group reported mild gastrointestinal discomfort, while none did in the creatine-plus-coffee, creatine-alone or placebo groups.

What this study can and cannot tell us

Short five-day intervention, men only, and no significant creatine-versus-placebo performance advantage in the study, limiting its ability to determine whether caffeine specifically blunted an otherwise measurable creatine effect.

Citation network

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Biohack Blueprint analyses that reference this study in their evidence base.

Oct 2, 2026 Creatine and Caffeine: Can You Take Them Together? Coffee, Pre-Workout and EvidenceCan you take creatine with caffeine or coffee? See what the original 1996 trial, a later randomized coffee study and two systematic...Read analysis

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