Creatine Multi — the chocolate shake at the end of the session

When the bench is the right place for the next decision

You've finished. The last set was honest, the last rep was uglier than you'd want, and your forearms have that pleasant weight that means tomorrow will know about today. The water bottle is empty. There's a shower in twenty minutes. The next forty minutes are the most useful nutritional window of your day, and your real question is what to put in the shaker bottle.

Most people answer that question with two or three pots. Whey for the protein. A scoop of dextrose for the carbs. A creatine teaspoon. A sachet of electrolytes if it was hot. Glutamine if you read the threads. Then a multivitamin at dinner because the day's vegetables didn't quite happen.

This is one pot. One scoop, ninety grams, in two hundred millilitres of water, mixed in a shaker on the bench. Twenty servings to a 1.8kg tub. Built for the forty-minute window — which is why we put everything that belongs in that window into the same chocolate-flavoured powder.

The pot, in your hand

A 1.8 kilogram tub, the green band of our label running around the dark shape of the powder. The colour inside is deep cocoa. The smell is plain chocolate — the kind of low-sugar real-cocoa note you'd recognise from a quality drinking-chocolate, not the candy-bar kind.

Two scoops, ninety grams, into a shaker. Two hundred millilitres of water. Ten seconds of shaking. Sip it on the bench while you cool down.

That's the dose, and that's the ritual.

The five jobs

Most "all-in-one" powders are vague about what they're trying to do. We'd rather be specific. This shake does five jobs.

One — refill the glycogen. The ten-second window after a hard session is when muscle is most receptive to fast carbohydrate. We use an incremental-release blend — maltodextrin, dextrose, hydrolysed waxy maize starch — so a portion of it lands fast and a portion lands slower. Ninety grams of powder delivers around forty grams of usable carbohydrate.

Two — feed the protein synthesis. Five different protein sources at the right ratios — micellar casein, hydrolysed whey, whey concentrate, milk protein concentrate, calcium caseinate — together delivering around twenty-three grams of complete protein per serving, with a leucine load high enough to flip the muscle protein synthesis switch.

Three — top up the creatine. Three grams of monohydrate per serving. Not a "loading" dose; a maintenance dose at the moment the muscle is most receptive.

Four — replace what came out of the pores. The salt and minerals you sweated for an hour: magnesium, potassium, sodium, calcium. Plus iron, because hard training is hard on iron stores in some people. Plus a full B-complex, vitamin C, vitamin D, vitamin E and a handful of trace minerals — a meaningful slice of a daily multivitamin baked into the shake.

Five — the supporting cast. Hydrolysed collagen at five-and-a-half grams (the connective tissue under the muscle), glucosamine (the joint supporter), glutamine peptides at three grams (the amino acid the gut and the immune system burn through under load), and BCAAs at six-and-a-half grams in the classic 2:1:1 ratio (leucine, isoleucine, valine).

That's the architecture. Carb plus protein plus creatine plus electrolytes plus the supporting cast, in one cocoa shake at the end of the session.

A word on each of the building blocks

Whey, casein, milk protein. Five different protein sources, from cow's milk, processed to different degrees. Whey is the fast one — peaks the bloodstream amino acids in about an hour. Casein is the slow one — feeds amino acids steadily over several. The blend of the two delivers a fast spike followed by a long tail, which is the protein architecture most strongly supported in the trials of post-exercise muscle protein synthesis.

Hydrolysed collagen. A second protein, sourced from cattle hide and bone, broken into small absorbable peptides. Different amino acid profile from whey — high in glycine, proline, hydroxyproline, the building blocks of connective tissue. Five-and-a-half grams here.

Creatine monohydrate. The most studied compound in sports nutrition. Three grams per serving — a maintenance dose for someone who trains four-to-five days a week. (Pure single-ingredient creatine, if you'd rather buy it on its own, lives on this site as Creatine Monohydrate.)

BCAAs and glutamine peptides. The branched-chain amino acids — leucine, isoleucine, valine — at the 2:1:1 ratio used in most of the published work, on top of the protein content. Glutamine peptides are a gentler form of L-glutamine, an amino acid the gut wall and the immune system burn through under heavy training load.

Vitamins and minerals. A full premix — A, D, E, the B-complex, C, plus calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium, phosphorus, iron and a few traces. A meaningful daily slice in every serving, baked into the shake instead of bought as a separate pill.

Cocoa. Real cocoa powder. Not a flavouring "natural identical chocolate aroma" — actual cocoa, with the small dose of polyphenols cocoa naturally carries. Helps the powder taste like food rather than chemistry.

How to use it

Two scoops (ninety grams) in two hundred millilitres of water. Shake. Drink immediately after training — within the first thirty to forty minutes is the most useful window. On rest days, you don't really need this — a normal meal does the job. This shake is for the gym day.

Powder settles over time, so weigh the serving for the most accurate measure if you're being careful about macros.

The pot lasts twenty servings — about a month of training four-to-five times a week. If you train more, it lasts less; if you take half-doses, it lasts more. Adjust to what your week looks like.

Honest caveats

This is a food supplement — it complements a varied diet, doesn't replace one. Contains dairy, milk, soy and gluten (from the glutamine peptides). Not suitable for vegetarians or vegans (whey, casein, collagen). Halal approved. Sweetened with sucralose — a fully approved sweetener in the UK and EU, but if you avoid it for personal reasons, our pure Creatine Monohydrate and Whey Protein Multi (separately) get you most of the way there without it.

If you are pregnant, breastfeeding, taking medication, or living with a medical condition — particularly anything affecting kidney function — talk to your GP or pharmacist before starting a shake of this density. Drink water alongside. Keep the pot cool, dry and sealed. Manufactured to UK GMP standards in an Informed-Manufacturer facility.

If you've read this far, thank you. We tried to write the kind of page we'd want to read before buying a near-two-kilo tub of cocoa-coloured powder — no neon promises, no twelve-tier "matrix". Just the five jobs your body wants doing in the forty minutes after a hard session, in one chocolate shake on the bench.

— Vitadefence