KNEW PERFORM

Stay strong. Stay sharp.

Creatine for physical and cognitive performance. In a vessel designed to stay on your counter.

WHY KNEW EXISTS

You should know.

Supplement companies make money when you take more supplements. So you hear the benefits, the exciting studies, the compelling mechanism — and very little about the risks, the conflicting evidence, or whether you needed the thing at all.

Which is how thoughtful people end up with fifteen bottles in a cabinet and a quiet suspicion that none of it is doing anything.

We think you deserve the same honesty about a supplement that you'd expect from a doctor about a drug. What it does. What it costs you. What nobody knows yet. And whether we'd tell you to bother.

Read how we decide

01 We publish the downsides and the uncertainty next to the benefits, at the same size.
02 We tell you who probably doesn't need a thing, including when that's you.
03 If the evidence doesn't earn our conviction, we don't make the product.

01 What it is for

Three outcomes. One compound.

Strength

More work in the sets you already do.

Among the most extensively studied compounds in sports nutrition.

Muscle

Supports lean mass when you train.

Studied alongside resistance training, not instead of it.

Mind

Studied for cognitive performance.

Research ongoing; the clearest signals are under sleep deprivation and mental fatigue.

Creatine supports strength and lean-mass gains when taken alongside resistance training. Research into creatine and cognitive performance is ongoing, with the clearest signals under sleep deprivation and mental fatigue.

02 The misconception

Creatine isn't just for bodybuilders.

Creatine got its reputation in the 1990s, in gyms, attached to a particular kind of body. That reputation has outlived the science by about thirty years.

Creatine is not a bodybuilding compound. It is a substrate your muscles and your brain both use to recycle energy quickly. Which means the case for taking it has very little to do with how much you lift, and quite a lot to do with how long you intend to keep performing.

You do not need to train like an athlete for it to be worth taking. You do need to take it consistently.

03 The evidence

Creatine: the good, the bad and the uncertain.

We hold our own product to the same method we'd hold anyone else's. Here it is, including the parts that don't help us.

CompoundCreatine monohydrate

Evidence reviewed[DATE]

Reviewed by[REVIEWER + CREDENTIALS]

Next review[DATE]

01

The good

Creatine increases phosphocreatine stores in muscle, which is how your body regenerates energy during short, hard efforts. The mechanism is well characterised — this is not a theory.
Meta-analyses consistently find modest increases in strength and lean mass when creatine is combined with resistance training.
It is cheap, unpatentable and has been studied for decades. Partly why the evidence base is unusually good, and partly why nobody markets it hard.
Monohydrate is the most-studied form. Newer, pricier forms have not shown a convincing advantage over it.

Effect sizes are averages, and they are modest — a few percent, not a transformation. Anyone promising more than that is selling.

02

The bad

Stomach discomfort — cramping, nausea — mostly at larger single doses. Lowering the dose or splitting it usually resolves it.
Weight gain of roughly one to two kilos in the first weeks, largely water drawn into muscle cells. It is real, and it shows on the scale.
Non-responders exist. If you already eat a lot of red meat and fish, your muscle stores may be close to saturated and you may notice very little.
Purity varies by manufacturer. Contamination has been documented in the category, which is why third-party testing matters more than branding.

If you have kidney disease, are pregnant or breastfeeding, or take prescription medication, do not start without talking to your physician.

03

The uncertain

The cognitive research is genuinely interesting and genuinely unsettled. The clearest signals appear under sleep deprivation and mental fatigue. Many studies are small and short.
Whether meaningful benefit extends to people who do no resistance training at all is not well established.
Use beyond about five years is less studied than short-term use.
Dosing evidence in women and in adults over sixty is thinner than in young men, who make up much of the literature.

This column appears on every KNEW evidence page. If you ever find it empty, we have stopped doing our job.

04

The verdict

Worth considering if you do resistance training and want a modest, well-evidenced edge; you eat little or no meat or fish; or you are training to hold onto muscle as you get older.

You probably don't need it if you are not training and expect a change in body composition, or if you are buying it specifically for the cognitive effect — that evidence is not there yet.

Don't start without medical advice if you have kidney disease, are pregnant or breastfeeding, or take prescription medication.

Reviewed [DATE]. We will update this entry when the evidence moves, and say plainly what changed.

What we read

[CITATIONS — replace with the actual reviews and trials this entry rests on. An evidence page without them is decoration.]

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Nothing here is medical advice — if you have a health condition or take prescription medication, talk to your physician.

04 The system

Three objects. One habit.

You buy the system once. After that you buy refills, and the vessel stays where it is.

01

The vessel

A permanent countertop container in matte black with a stainless lid. Bought once, refilled forever. Designed to be left out, not hidden in a cabinet.

02

The creatine

Creatine monohydrate. The most-studied form, which is exactly why we use it. Nothing else in the jar — no proprietary blend, no flavouring, no filler.

03

The scoop

A double-ended stainless steel scoop, machined rather than moulded. One end measures 3 g, the other 5 g. Etched, not printed.

KNEW Perform

CompoundCreatine monohydrate

Serving3 g or 5 g

Servings per refill[QTY]

Other ingredientsNone

Third-party tested[CERTIFICATION]

05 Dosing

Your dose. Your choice.

Most creatine ships with one plastic scoop, nominally 5 g, and no other option. Plenty of people try that, decide it doesn't suit them, and stop — which is the only outcome that guarantees no benefit at all.

So we cut two. Both are studied daily amounts. Start where you like, change your mind whenever, and keep going.

3 g

Lower serving

The small end. A studied daily amount, and a sensible place to begin if you are new to creatine.

5 g

Full serving

The large end. The amount most commonly used in the research on strength and performance.

06 Why it works

Designed to stay out.

A supplement does nothing because you bought it. It works if you take it, most days, for months. Everything else is detail.

Most supplements are designed against that. They arrive in a plastic tub nobody wants on a counter, so it goes in a cabinet — and out of sight is the whole problem. Forgotten, inconsistent, eventually thrown away half full.

So we built ours to be left out, next to the machine you already use every morning. The environment does the remembering.

01 The vessel is the cue — you see it when you make coffee.
02 The scoop removes the decision — one end or the other.
03 The refill arrives before you run out, so there is no gap.

07 Questions

The honest answers.

Most of these are objections rather than questions, which is why we would rather answer them here than let you find a worse answer somewhere else.

Isn't creatine for bodybuilders?

It got its reputation there, in the 1990s. But creatine is a substrate your muscles and brain use to recycle energy quickly — it is not specific to a training style or a physique. The reason to take it has more to do with how long you intend to keep performing than with how much you lift.

Will it make me gain weight?

Creatine draws water into muscle cells, which is part of how it works, and the scale can move early on. That is intracellular water, not fat. We are not going to tell you it never happens or that you won't notice it — but it is worth understanding what the number is actually showing you. If you would rather ease in, start at 3 g.

What about water retention?

Same mechanism as above. Some people notice it, many don't, and the research does not support the idea that creatine causes the puffy subcutaneous bloating people picture. Any brand promising you zero water retention is making a claim it cannot support.

Do I need to lift weights?

The strongest evidence for strength and lean mass comes from studies pairing creatine with resistance training, so training is where you will see the most. But creatine's role in cellular energy is not conditional on going to a gym, and the cognitive research does not require it at all.

What dose should I take?

3 g or 5 g daily. Both sit inside the commonly studied maintenance range, and the scoop cuts both so you can choose. You do not need a loading phase; it simply gets you to the same place a little faster.

When should I take it?

Whenever you will actually remember. Timing is a rounding error next to consistency — creatine works by saturating your muscles over weeks, not by peaking at a moment. Attaching it to something you already do every morning is the entire design of this product.

Is it safe?

Creatine monohydrate is among the most extensively studied supplements available, with a long record of use in healthy adults. That said: if you have kidney disease, are pregnant or breastfeeding, or take prescription medication, talk to your physician first. That is genuine advice, not boilerplate.

What does the research say about cognition?

It is an active and genuinely interesting area, with the clearest signals under sleep deprivation and mental fatigue. It is not settled, and we are not going to imply that it is. If you want to read it yourself, the citations are in the evidence section above.

KNEW PERFORM SYSTEM