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Sports supplement creatine makes no difference to muscle gains, trial finds

unsw.edu.au

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Re: Sports supplement creatine makes no difference to muscle gains, trial finds

#141

Post by tekla »

globular-toast wrote: post #135
tekla wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean your 1RM for any of those lifts isn't particularly interesting if you're around a young man 180-220lbs or so. You weren't loading enough. At my max weights (600lbs Deadlift, 400lbs Squat, 340 Bench) , I needed to take 2-3 days off minimum

~160lb, 30yo. I know it's nothing special on the world stage but it's irrelevant because everyone is on gear these days and I've never even taken creatine (got scared about hair loss, lol). I also used to rep out both dips and chinups with 60kg of weight attached which tended to attract attention. But no matter what I did I never felt like I needed to take days off. I remember the DOMS in the very early days of the g…

I think you just plateaued which is normal for everyone and just ended up staying there. Most likely a combination of not eating enough and not really pushing to failure to get past it.

If you're repping things with no problem, you're at the your current "optimal" level so yeah, you won't feel like you need to recover.

Like in cardio, I could rip out a half-marathon at a 8:00m pace and feel fine the next day, but try and reach 7:30 and I would be shattered.

At 30, probably better not to try and go too ham, but you have plenty of room to get much stronger. I don't know why other people using gear influenced you. Get fit for yourself, fuck the others.

Re: Sports supplement creatine makes no difference to muscle gains, trial finds

#142

Post by seadan83 »

globular-toast wrote: post #135
tekla wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean your 1RM for any of those lifts isn't particularly interesting if you're around a young man 180-220lbs or so. You weren't loading enough. At my max weights (600lbs Deadlift, 400lbs Squat, 340 Bench) , I needed to take 2-3 days off minimum

~160lb, 30yo. I know it's nothing special on the world stage but it's irrelevant because everyone is on gear these days and I've never even taken creatine (got scared about hair loss, lol). I also used to rep out both dips and chinups with 60kg of weight attached which tended to attract attention. But no matter what I did I never felt like I needed to take days off. I remember the DOMS in the very early days of the g…

DOMS goes away by training again, then comes back. Sounds a lot like overtraining. Always a little fatigued. Enough where you are not able to do a PR, but not enough where you still can't go relatively hard. The body gets used to the moderately hard workouts and can plateau easily.

Were you having issues with plateaus at all?

Re: Sports supplement creatine makes no difference to muscle gains, trial finds

#143

Post by TomHenderson3 »

laszlojamf wrote: post #122
Nifty3929 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the actual study: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/17/6/10812.3.4 . Resistance Training Program After the 7-day wash-in, both groups followed the same RT program that comprising 3 full-body sessions a week for 12 weeks (Supplementary Materials, Table S1). All sessions were supervised by tertiary qualified exercise physiologists and commenced with a standardised warm-up of dynamic flexibility exercises. Each sessio…

So they were asking beginner lifters to rate how many they would have left in the tank? I've been lifting for maybe half a year and I still find it pretty hard to estimate >. It's good that it's studied, but it does sound that they've "conclusively" proven something, and I'm not so sure. Small sample size too, like you said.

They are asking beginners in both the control and test arm, so it sounds like they have "proven" something (or at least given good evidence).

Re: Sports supplement creatine makes no difference to muscle gains, trial finds

#144

Post by TomHenderson3 »

zzbzq wrote: post #126
RealityVoid wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can lift more reps, you can go to the next weight level. It's basically linear progression with a self-reported knob. My experience is that everytime I use creatine and start training after not training for like 3 weeks, I put on about 3 kg in a very short time. The rate of progression is deff connected to the quality of my sleep and the amount of protein I consume I did not follow as closely how much creatine…

They say you always gain a bunch of weight on creatine just from the higher water retention in the muscles

The paper says and shows this...

Re: Sports supplement creatine makes no difference to muscle gains, trial finds

#145

Post by TomHenderson3 »

seadan83 wrote: post #140
svnt wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their methodology does seem to potentially capture what is at question here, by use of perceived exertion to adjust weight for repetition maximums. It is possible it doesn’t capture everything, because they don’t say anything here about setting the initial load, or adjusting the load up for low perceived exertion, only down for high perceived exertion.

Not sure anything is captured. Need control for diet and measurements of existing creatine levels. It takes a few weeks to get creatine higher after supplementation. This is a small sample sized study that strikes me as dubious. Particularly compared to others that have done muscle biopsies. The pre-warm up routine is itself sus, that impacts lifting potentially more than creatine. Creatine also has a role in recover…

In the introduction they talk about creatine loading. Also, their study is looking at lean body mass changes after the "wash-in" period, so any effect that increased recovery is supposed to have on lean body mass when following the exercise protocol they give for the time period they studied should be captured, no?

Re: Sports supplement creatine makes no difference to muscle gains, trial finds

#146

Post by seadan83 »

the__alchemist wrote: post #3

This sort of study is important, given how highly taken creatine is. I will highlight a part that I think may be especially relevant: > “The people taking the creatine supplement saw changes before they even started exercising, which leads us to believe that it wasn’t actual real muscle growth, but potentially fluid retention,” Dr Hagstrom said. I think this is well-known, right? People take creatine specifically bec…

Caffeine has impacts beyond motivation. It has been studied on the context of cyclists and boosts ability to ride. So does beet root.

Creatine has been studied to have other small effects too..

What too, the above have effects on muscle endurance, though for resistance training the effects may vary well be small. Further, this study took people that were not trained. 5lbs of muscle is a lot.. these folks might have gone from 50lbs to 55lbs, an extra 0.1lbs due to a supplement would be noise. I think this study needs muscle biopsies to measure creatine levels accurately to tease out those that are getting plenty from their diet vs not. Or.. try to have a large control group that gets zero creatine in their diet.

AFAIK creatine supplementation is something to think about after a year or two of training, for advanced intermediates.

Here are some sources with how caffeine and nitrates help at least endurance performance:

https://www.cptips.com/nitrate.htm

https://www.cptips.com/caff.htm

Re: Sports supplement creatine makes no difference to muscle gains, trial finds

#147

Post by TomHenderson3 »

dgfitz wrote: post #27
laszlojamf wrote: post #4

The way I understood it creatine by itself doesn't promote muscle gain all that much. It's the fact that you can potentially do one to three more reps which does. But that still means you have to do the reps. https://leangains.com/supplements-you-might-actually-find-us...

This has been known for ~15 years. I'm not sure what this study thought it was debunking.

Wait, are you saying that they didn't have the creatine arm of the study work as hard as the control arm? I'm really confused by this comment.

Re: Sports supplement creatine makes no difference to muscle gains, trial finds

#148

Post by mrmuagi »

jonwachob91 wrote: post #100
lawlessone wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found it gives me a lot more mental energy too. Like I can think better with creatine.

>>> more mental energy too Is that the creatine, or the caffeine added to virtually ALL creatine supplements?

Creatine does tend to get added to pre-workouts chocked full with caffeine, but stimulant free pre-workouts exist and you can always buy it in bulk seperately either in pill or powdered form.

Re: Sports supplement creatine makes no difference to muscle gains, trial finds

#149

Post by TomHenderson3 »

lowqualityworld wrote: post #127
ActivePattern wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't the extra stamina have been rewarded, assuming creatine allowed you to perform extra repetitions? All exercises were done to repetition maximum.

You're right, I read that too quickly.

You may want to delete your comment as it is spreading misinformation about this study.

Re: Sports supplement creatine makes no difference to muscle gains, trial finds

#150

Post by TomHenderson3 »

ddorian43 wrote: post #69
LostMyLogin wrote: post #5

I've been lifting five to six days a week since 2012, with some de-loading periods between, and have had my nutrition and sleep locked in for the majority of that time. Anecdotal of course, but I will still sit here and say that creatine is the only supplement that has actually worked over all those years - in fact, it's the only one I currently take. I recover so much better when on roughly 5mg of Creatine for an ex…

But isn't it like 1kg more water retention? How did you notice it?

According to this paper, yes, the 1kg could very well just be water retention, or the increase in lean body mass during the loading period.
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