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When your life requires grit, resilience, and elite performance, every supplement you put in your body matters. That's why Joe DeSena, founder and CEO of Spartan Race, and legendary advocate for human toughness, chooses Qualia Creatine+. It's also why so many Spartan athletes swear by it for training, recovery, and competition.
Spartan isn't just a race. It's a global movement rooted in discipline, discomfort, and personal accountability. Most Spartan athletes train in addition to their day jobs, often before sunrise, after long workdays, under the stress, mental pressure, and fatigue associated with the outer limits of daily drive. In that world, supplements need to be as dialed in and results-based as the daily routines they are fueling.
Creatine isn't new, but Qualia Creatine+ redefines what creatine supplementation can be. It is the result of an award-winning science team obsessed with how far creatine supplementation could be advanced if it was crafted for superior absorption, micronized powder that mixes effortlessly, clinically studied forms, and then combined with key cofactor ingredients that help shuttle creatine throughout the body. These are the reasons Qualia Creatine+ has become a staple for high performers pushing both their physical and cognitive limits.
“You don’t rise to the occasion—you fall to the level of your preparation.” — Joe DeSena
To truly appreciate how Qualia Creatine+ was designed to evolve the power of creatine supplementation, you first need to understand what creatine is and its critical roles in human health.
WHAT DOES CREATINE DO?
Creatine is a naturally occurring compound found primarily in the muscle tissue and the brain. Its primary role is to support the rapid production of ATP (adenosine triphosphate), the body's most immediate source of energy during high-intensity effort.
Whenever you lift weights, sprint, climb, jump, or even think intensely on a cognitive task, your body burns ATP rapidly. Creatine helps recycle ATP more efficiently, allowing you to maintain output longer and recover faster between efforts.
In practical terms, creatine helps your body:
1. Generate explosive power.*
2. Sustain repeated bursts of intensity.*
3. Extend the duration of intense effort.*
4. Recover faster between bursts of intensity.*
This makes creatine invaluable for any form of physical training, sport, or even physical jobs requiring repeated bursts of exertion throughout the day.
And unlike stimulants that can stress the nervous system and mask fatigue without addressing the cause, creatine works at the cellular energy level, supporting performance without jitters, crashes, or dependency*.
CREATINE'S UNDERREPORTED ROLE IN BRAIN HEALTH
Creatine has been extremely popular in gym and athletic culture since the 1990's, but what is less well known is creatine's vital importance to brain health.
The brain is the most energy-demanding organ in the body. During long sessions of focus, learning, caloric restriction, sleep deprivation, or psychological stress, brain energy becomes a noticeable limiting factor towards our ability to function. Creatine helps support neuronal ATP production, which may contribute to:
1. Improved mental stamina.*
2. Sharper focus under fatigue.*
3. Better decision-making when stressed.*
For Spartan athletes making split-second decisions while fighting exhaustion in a disorienting landscape of muddy obstacles and clamoring noise, this cognitive edge matters. And for everyday people of any age, the benefits of creatine are often rapidly noticed under the lesser stressors of everyday life.
CREATINE BENEFITS EXPERIENCED BY MANY ATHLETES
Creatine is one of the most studied and universally heralded supplements in sports nutrition. The human body makes creatine, but the amount we make normally declines with age. And decades of research support its safety and effectiveness when taken supplementally. But the real magic happens when quality, dosing, and formulation specifics are dialed in to reflect the leading-edge research in sports nutrition.
1. Increased Strength & Power: creatine enhances short-duration, high-intensity output; perfect for climbs, carries, sprints, lifts, and explosive transitions.*
2. Improved Endurance for Repeated Bursts of Effort: athletic endeavors such as Spartan Race has dozens of separate, repeated instances pushing the human psyche and body to the brink. Creatine's role in replenishing ATP between bursts of effort is critical to avoid drop-offs in performance late in a race or event.*
3. Faster Recovery: many athletes report less muscle soreness, improved training frequency, and quicker bounce-back between sessions.*
4. Lean Muscle Support: creatine helps muscles perform more total work over time, supporting strength and resilience without requiring mass-gain as the primary driver; ideal for endurance-focused athletes.*
5. Cognitive Performance: emerging research suggests creatine supports brain energy metabolism, particularly during stress, fatigue, and sleep deprivation; key factors in both training and competition.*
While small amounts of creatine are found in foods like red meat and fish, diet alone can't reliably saturate the body's storage capacity for creatine especially when training hard, eating lean, or managing body weight carefully. And as previously mentioned, as we age, the body's ability to make creatine generally declines.
And while men have embraced creatine for its many health benefits since the 1990's, the health benefits for women supplementing creatine may be even greater.
For all those reasons, supplementing creatine:
1. Aids our ability to enhance our creatine stores as we age.
2. Even among young athletes, it aids in maintaining high stores when intense training can diminish levels.
3. Maintaining a more reliable output of brain and body performance under intense demands.
4. Avoiding the excess calories and digestive strain from obtaining optimal creatine levels via food-only sources.
But here's the key realization: not all creatine supplements are created equal.
WHY JOE DESENA & SPARTAN ATHLETES CHOOSE QUALIA CREATINE+
Creatine supplementation has traditionally been marketed as an isolated ingredient to randomly add to a daily routine. But that approach falls far short of many scientific realities that can help or hurt the degree of benefits you actually experience from creatine supplementation.
Qualia Creatine+ was designed to combine creatine with vitally important cofactors (and equally important drinkability and solubility) that dramatically upgrades the evolution of optimal creatine supplementation. It's formulated with a to not only address the amount of creatine your body needs each day, but also how effectively your body absorbs, distributes, and uses it.*
Qualia Creatine+ is more than an isolated ingredient. It is an advanced blend of ingredients that includes two entirely separate forms of clinically studied creatine:
1- Creatine monohydrate: the standard-bearer of creatine forms for decades, backed by hundreds of clinical studies.
2- Creatine MagnaPower: a trademarked and branded creatine-magnesium chelate that is also clinically studied which supports cellular energy metabolism and stability.*
This dual-form approach supports both power output and energy efficiency, particularly during prolonged or repeated effort*. But features of this advanced creatine complex also address the usability of creatine itself, both in your body and in your glass. It features:
3- Micronized Creatine Monohydrate: a branded and standardized version of creatine monohydrate that has been comminuted into a much finer powder to allow faster dissolution, smooth water solubility, and no clumping or sludge at the bottom of your glass.
This improves your experience. A supplement only works if using it is effortless enough that you actually keep taking it.
4- A Pinch of Sea Salt for Smarter Delivery: Qualia Creatine+ includes a small, precise amount of sea salt whose naturally occurring ions help support hydration and fluid balance*, and improve creatine distribution by helping to shuttle it throughout your body.*
5- Clean Science-First Design: Qualia Creatine+ contains no sugar, color, fillers. In fact, it has virtually no taste at all. This isn't a supplement that compromises quality in order to taste like candy or any other compromising traits of some brands. This is a creatine supplement valuing the science-based minimalism of what is relevant for the formula, and nothing more.
HOW QUALIA CREATINE+ FITS A SPARTAN MINDSET
Qualia Creatine+ aligns perfectly with the Spartan ethos. It's not about masking fatigue; it's about building capacity, so fatigue hits later and recovery happens faster*. Whether you're training at dawn, grinding through an intense midday mental task, or racing through mud, fire, and exhaustion, your cellular energy is dictating an enormous amount of your daily experience.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT CREATINE
When should I take creatine? Creatine can be taken any time of day, but many athletes prefer post-workout, when muscles are primed for nutrient uptake, or taking it daily at the same time to maintain consistent levels. Consistency matters more than timing.
Does creatine cause bloating? High-quality creatine taken at proper doses is unlikely to cause bloating. Bloating issues typically arise from: poor-quality creatine, excessive dosing, or inadequate hydration. Qualia Creatine+ is formulated for easy digestion and smooth absorption.
How much creatine should I take? The general recommendation for Qualia Creatine+ is 1 scoop per day which approximates the 5-gram serving of creatine monohydrate that is fairly standard dose in most human studies, but adjusting for factors such as body weight or other variables with 2 to 3 grams for smaller individuals and 7 to 10 grams for larger individuals being a common range of variation. Always follow label directions, and consult your healthcare professional with any questions you may have.
Does creatine make you gain weight? Creatine may cause a small increase in intracelluar water within muscle cells, which supports performance. This is not fat gain, and often contributes to a stronger, fuller muscle appearance.*
THE BOTTOM LINE
Joe DeSena doesn't build his body, or his mindset, on shortcuts. Neither do Spartan athletes. Qualia Creatine+ is trusted because it not only works, but it works with the body, supporting strength, endurance, recovery, and mental toughness from the cellular level up.
If your goals include training harder, recovering more, and mental performance that that the stress of daily life cannot break, then Qualia Creatine+ should be part of your daily ritual.
"Prepare. Perform. Prevail." That is a mantra that has come to be associated with Spartan culture. Qualia is proud to support it with Qualia Creatine+.
*These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.
