What is creatine?

NikkiDerrig386

:blushing: What exactly is creatine? I had a trainer suggest taking a creatine supplement. She explained it to me but I forgot everything she said bc it was an overload of information.....

navyrigger46

There's a lot to it, but basically, it's a naturally occurring amino acid that the body produces. It affects skeletal muscle and provides energy for those muscles. When you supplement with it you provide extra energy to those muscles, thereby allowing you to increase your workout intensity, which leads to faster muscle gain. It also helps your muscles to retain more water which helps them recover faster after a workout. There's a lot more to it than that, but that's the cliff notes version. I haven't used the stuff since high school, but I may after I finish losing weight.

Rigger

_Waffle_

One of the few supplements that everyone agrees on. It works. It won't make you Superman but it will give you the extra oomph to knock out another rep or two on your sets which will help you get stronger faster. Essentially it loads your muscle with little bit of extra energy for strength workouts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creatine

Salt_Sand_Sun

One side effect I've heard from many is it will most likely cause weight gain (mostly water retention) as your muscles will be going above and beyond what you are used to doing.

If you're looking for considerable muscle gain - this might be for you. But you should really do your research (body building.com might aid in helping your decision).

AJ_G

Basically what the other guys said. Without going into to much detail, the way it works is that when creatine enters your body it picks up a phosphate group and becomes creatine phosphate. Your muscles use ATP (Adenosine Triphosphate) as their energy source. Breaking off one of the 3 phosphate groups provides your muscles with energy, but your muscles cannot use the resulting ADP (Adenosine Diphosphate) for energy. The creatine phosphate gives up it's phosphate group to the ADP making it ATP again and providing more energy.

It's important to mention that creatine is only useful for very high intensity heavy lifts. You'll see the most benefit from creatine on weights heavy enough that you can only rep them 6-8 times to failure. It is not useful for endurance weight lifting in the double digit rep range, and it is completely useless for any type of cardio.