Does creatine make you stronger?
A little, on top of lifting. In two reviews of placebo-controlled trials, 60 for the legs and 53 for the upper body, people who took creatine got a small extra gain in strength. It’s safe for healthy adults at the usual 3 to 5 g a day, and the training still does almost all of the work.
Creatine has two reputations. In one, it’s the closest thing to a legal steroid, and the tub is the reason the big guy at the gym got big. In the other, it’s just water weight, or it wrecks your kidneys. Both stories stick because creatine does something you can feel and see on a scale, and the trials land in the boring middle.
What we’d do
Get the lifting going first. Once you’re training twice a week and want a little more, take 3 to 5 g of creatine a day, at any time, every day. Skip the loading week unless you’re in a hurry. Expect a pound or two on the scale early on, and expect the strength gain to be small. If you have kidney disease, ask your doctor first.
If you’d rather skip supplements, you can. Your body makes about half the creatine it uses each day, and meat and fish bring the rest. How to build muscle naturally, without supplements covers doing it with lifting, food and sleep.
What it does in your muscle
Your muscles run short, all-out efforts on a tiny reserve fuel called phosphocreatine, made from creatine and phosphate. It rebuilds ATP, the molecule that powers each contraction, in the first seconds of a hard set. Taking creatine raises how much your muscles store.
It’s like a phone with a slightly bigger battery. It’s the same phone, with a little more charge for the hard bursts. That’s why the reviews found the benefit in efforts under three minutes, which covers almost every set of weights.
What the trials found
Cyril Lanhers and his colleagues pooled the placebo trials twice, first for the legs in 2015 and then for the upper body in 2017. Researchers call an effect size around 0.2 to 0.3 small, and that’s where creatine landed.
| Measure | Trials | Effect size |
|---|---|---|
| Squat | lower body, 60 trials in all | 0.34 |
| Leg press | lower body | 0.30 |
| All lower body tests | 60 trials, 1,297 people | 0.24 |
| Bench press | upper body, 53 trials in all | 0.27 |
| All upper body tests | 53 trials, 1,138 people | 0.32 |
The benefit held across the groups studied, their training, the dose and how long they took it, so the effect is real and modest.
60 + 53placebo trials
Pooled in two reviews, one for the lower body and one for the upper body (Lanhers, 2015 and 2017).
3 to 5 ga day
The usual daily dose once your muscles are full, from the International Society of Sports Nutrition.
0.5 to 1 Lof water
The fluid people hold early in a loading week, about 1 to 2 pounds on the scale.
How to take it
The International Society of Sports Nutrition’s 2017 position stand gives two ways to fill your muscles.
| Way | Dose | Muscles full in |
|---|---|---|
| Loading | About 0.3 g per kg a day (5 g four times a day), then 3 to 5 g a day | 5 to 7 days |
| No loading | 3 g a day | About 28 days |
Both end in the same place. If you stop, your stores take four to six weeks to fall back to where they started.
Is it safe?
For healthy people, yes. The same position stand found weight gain was the only side effect reported consistently, mostly the water creatine pulls into muscle. It found no compelling evidence that creatine harms kidney function in healthy people, and doses of up to 30 g a day for five years were safe and well tolerated in the studies it reviewed.
Creatine adds a little to lifting, so start with how to get stronger, and get your protein into the typical range first.
3 sources
- Lanhers C and others, Creatine supplementation and lower limb strength performance: a systematic review and meta-analyses, Sports Medicine, 2015europepmc.org
- Lanhers C and others, Creatine supplementation and upper limb strength performance: a systematic review and meta-analysis, Sports Medicine, 2017europepmc.org
- Kreider RB and others, International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand: safety and efficacy of creatine supplementation in exercise, sport, and medicine, Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 2017pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
