Creatine is Vaulted?

Everyone loves creatine.

It’s become such a key part of the fitness industry that no one ever stopped to question what it does, or how it works.

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Recently someone sent me a study that made me reflect and question creatine.

Besides having the weirdest workout program in the world…

This study actually asked an interesting question, and was pretty flawless.

Does creatine increase muscle growth when taken alongside resistance training?

So here’s what they did.

• Split 64 untrained people into creatine/placebo groups

• Gave them placebo/creatine for a week to creatine load without training

• Made them start train whilst continuing the placebo/creatine

• Measure changes after 12 weeks

This is a good study for a few reasons

• If they’re untrained the benefits of creatine on muscle gain are likely going to show up MORE

• You’re able to see a group that’s already loaded on creatine, not a group that’s counting that as part of the gains

• You’ve got a good amount of time for the program

Both groups grew from this.

The Creatine group also gained about 2kg on average just from that 1 week wash-in.

That being said, there was no difference in the two groups when it came to muscle growth.

That doesn’t mean you should just outright stop taking Creatine, there are benefits here.

Why you should still use Creatine

Truth is. I never saw Creatine as giving extra gains.

This was something a few YouTubers pushed that I always thought was a bit weird…

If you take a look at research on single joint exercises/isokinetic tests after creatine loading, the force isn’t really changing.

When it comes to compounds however, there are a few things that are happening.

1. There are leverage changes due to the Creatine increasing muscle size

2. There are coordinative improvements due to the cognitive benefits of Creatine

These both come with a “WOW I GAINED A LOT OF STRENGTH!”

While that’s true, no extra tissue is being put on here.

Creatine isn’t increasing the stimulus. probably

Imagine it like this.

You have a sponge that weighs 10g.

When you add water to the sponge, it gets bigger, and it weighs more.

This is what’s happening when you store Creatine in a muscle.

As you get more muscle, more Creatine is getting stored.

Yes, in the long run even without extra gains Creatine will make you look bigger.

But that’s not where I’ll stop.

The cognitive/mental benefits of Creatine are going to be somewhat similar to caffeine. If this makes you lock-in more, if it greatly improves your session performance, etc. You will see some extra growth.

It just differs person to person.

Of course let’s not forget the biggest benefit creatine has.

You’ll recover quicker from muscle damage.

Whether you chose to take Creatine or not is entirely on you, I know I’ll take it forever because 1) brain power 2) looking bigger 3) recovering quicker, are all things that matter to me.

Your Hypertrophy Hero,
Fletcher