Is Creatine HCl Better Than Monohydrate?
If you want more strength and more power from a creatine supplement, plain monohydrate is still the form to buy. It's cheap, it's the version behind most of the human evidence, and it works when you pair it with hard training. Creatine hydrochloride is marketed as more soluble and better absorbed. Three recent randomized comparisons exist: two found HCl no better, and a third, a very small four-week trial in soccer players, hinted otherwise. For steady-state endurance, HCl has little direct evidence and monohydrate's benefit is mostly repeated hard surges, not VO2max or long time trials. That's a signal worth watching, not a reason to switch.