The world of bodybuilding supplementation is full of fads that come and go. Most of these products are all marketing and no substance. However, many of them do incorporate ingredients that have been proven to give great results. One of the top time-tested supplements for building muscle and increasing strength is creatine. Let's take a look at what makes creatine so great.
What is Creatine?
Creatine is a naturally occurring substance that is produced by your body. It is also contained in a lot of the food that you eat, particularly animal products. With or without supplementation, a healthy body will have some amount of creatine in its system. When creatine enters your muscles, it bonds with a phosphate and becomes something that is known as phosphocreatine, or PCr. PCr is essential for increasing strength, building muscle and improving athletic performance.
Strength
Supplementing with creatine has great benefits for your ability to get stronger. Studies have shown that all other factors being equal, regular creatine supplementation can increase your one-rep max strength by anywhere from 10% to 25%. Additionally, people who regularly took creatine supplements were able to increase the total amount of reps that they could perform of a given exercise. These results have been repeated over a large number of studies, making creatine one of the most proven supplements that exist for building strength.
Muscle Growth
On top of studies demonstrating that creatine supplementation can increase your strength, science also supports the theory that creatine can boost your ability to grow muscle. One particular study compared the amount of lean body mass of powerlifters who were taking creatine supplements with those who were not. Lifters who supplemented gained between six and eleven pounds whereas the weights of the lifters who took a placebo stayed roughly the same. These results demonstrate that not only is creatine great for building muscle, but it is also an effective supplement for people at any level of training.
If you are looking to take supplements to assist your bodybuilding or powerlifting efforts, creatine is the one product that should be at the top of your list. There is no other supplement that has as much research that demonstrates its efficacy.
