People looking to build muscle with the help of a creatine supplement might be disappointed by new research suggesting it has little to no impact when taken at the recommended dosage.
New research led by UNSW has found that taking the popular sports supplement creatine does not lead to faster muscle growth when combined with resistance training.
In a randomized controlled trial published in Nutrients, 54 participants completed a 12-week supervised resistance training program. Half of the participants took creatine at the recommended dosage, while the other half did not take the supplement.
At the end of the program, both groups gained an average of two kilograms of lean body mass, with no significant difference between those who took creatine and those who didn’t.
“We’ve shown that taking five grams of creatine supplement per day does not make any difference to the amount of lean muscle mass people put on while resistance training,” said senior author Dr Mandy Hagstrom, from UNSW’s School of Health Sciences.
“The benefits of creatine may have been overestimated in the past, due to methodological problems with previous studies,” she added.
Creatine is a naturally occurring compound which supplies energy to muscles. It is produced by the liver, pancreas and kidneys, and found in protein-rich foods. Previous research shows creatine supplements help build muscles, enhance athletic performance, and may even have cognitive benefits.
However, previous trials have started supplementation and exercise programs on the same day, making it difficult to separate the effect of each on muscle gains, Dr Hagstrom said. They’ve also overlooked the potential for creatine to cause water retention, though more research was needed to confirm this.
So, in this trial, those in the supplement group started on creatine one week before the exercise program began, taking five grams per day, which is at the upper end of the recommended maintenance dose of three to five grams.
“We had what we call a wash-in phase, where half of the participants started taking the supplement, without changing anything else in their daily life, to give their body a chance to stabilise in terms of its response to the supplement,” Dr Hagstrom said.
The effect of creatine with and without resistance training
During that first week people taking creatine gained more lean body mass, particularly women, gaining an average of 0.5 kilograms more than the control group. However, the extra gains they made varied greatly, and soon dropped back to match those of the control group.
“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.
“Then once they started exercising, they saw no additional benefit from creatine which suggests that five grams per day is not enough if you’re taking it for the purposes of building muscle.”
By comparison, previous trials with no wash-in period found those on creatine gained one kilogram more muscle, than those not taking the supplement, during trials spanning four to 12 weeks.
“In theory, then you would have expected our creatine group to put on three kilograms of muscle over the 12-week program, but they didn’t,” said first author Dr Imtiaz Desai, from UNSW’s School of Health Sciences and Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA), opens in a new window.
The participants, aged 18 to 50, were all relatively healthy people doing less than the recommended minimum of 150 minutes of moderate intensity exercise per week.
They were put through the same training program and had their measurements taken at multiple stages using dual energy X-ray absorptiometry, a non-invasive imaging technique that measures bone mineral density (BMD) and body composition. They were also required to keep a food log three days prior to each assessment, which showed no significant differences in their diets.
Those on creatine did bypass a loading phase, which includes taking 20 to 25 grams daily for up to one week. While it is common to start with a loading phase, it can cause gastrointestinal issues and is not necessary to reach saturation levels – the maximum that the body can store at any one time.
More research needed on creatine doses
The trial suggests people need to take more creatine than is commonly thought to get the desired benefit of additional muscle gains, the experts say.
Just how much more will need to be the subject of further research, but 10 grams could be the dose to test first, given it’s already shown to be safe and promising for both brain and bone health, Dr Hagstrom said.
A longer study would also be beneficial, added Dr Desai, as would measuring body water content, tracking the menstrual cycle – which can affect fluid retention – and creatine absorption, which was not feasible for this trial.
“It would be really interesting to see if creatine has more of a long-term benefit,” said Dr Desai. “When you start weight training, you have those beginner gains in strength, and those start tapering off around the 12-week mark and become slower, so it’s possible the support from creatine might come at a later stage.”
In the meantime, the researchers hope it will give people more realistic expectations on creatine use, and prompt them to question claims made in the marketing of some supplements.
“For your average person taking creatine to boost their gains in the gym, this will hopefully change their perception about what it can help them achieve,” Dr Desai said. “For professional athletes, particularly those who must be at a particular weight for their sport, the findings may inform how and when they take the supplement.”
As for researchers, it’s hoped the study may encourage others to start to use a wash-in phase, to better understand the impact of supplements with and without exercise.
Reference: “The Effect of Creatine Supplementation on Lean Body Mass with and Without Resistance Training” by Imtiaz Desai, Anurag Pandit, Abbie E. Smith-Ryan, David Simar, Darren G. Candow, Nadeem O. Kaakoush and Amanda D. Hagstrom, 18 March 2025, Nutrients.
DOI: 10.3390/nu17061081
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42 Comments
I am a 6’ 3” 50 year old healthy male that started taking 5mg creatine 4 months ago. Baseline weight 196 I am now 208. I have gained muscle mass from taking creatine and weight training. I know this because the supplement was my only addition to my normal routine.
So what about strength gains? There’s a key metric that’s missing from this article.
It’s just water weight. Creatine causes water retention in the muscles. When you stop the creatine you will lose all of the gains not counting any real muscle you managed to add on. But the amount of real muscle you add won’t be any different compared to if you never used creatine in the first place.
It’s not about building muscle, it’s about recovering faster from workouts, and I can confirm it works for that. Worked when I was in my 20s speeding recovery 3 fold, still works at 50.
They built 4 lbs of muscle in 12 weeks?
I have a few questions about the studies methodology. That is A LOT of lean mass in that period.
My son was taking Creatine to help build muscle along with weight training. He eventually experienced severe jaw pain to the point of needing physical therapy and even a cortisone injection in the jaw. The jaw pain led to headaches and loss of sleep. This went on for many months until I read that one of the side effects of Creatine was jaw pain. He immediately stopped the Creatine and within two weeks the jaw pain completely subsided.
Nah. That’s called cramping up and it’s been a known side effect of creatines for decades. The fact that he’s getting in his jaw doesn’t really matter. But I could almost guarantee he’s not drinking enough water. I took creatine as a teenager in the late 90s. Occasionally Grappled with the same issue of cramping back then. Upped to my water and take as recommended ( Even back there) , and the cramping went away.
Where did the creatine come from?
A bulk heavy metal tainted Chinese brand
Gotta tear down Creatine so the incoming “drug” by big pharma can be pushed.
I know from personal experience the creatine makes a difference in building muscle.
Not to mention the other benefits you get from it (good for your brain and memory).
Prime example of why you should not take any of these studies at face value.
They probably had participants trained with elastic bands.
You can’t compare gains from creatine with a simple comparison control on approximately identical workout routines. Creatine ≠ test/steroids. Creatine is a r e c o v e r y supplement.
Rather, both groups should be told to ramp up their routines over time until they feel subjectively (there’s no other metric here but subjective) they have maxed out their workout tolerance. If one group can’t work out harder/faster/longer/etceterer and then feel more recovered the next workout day than the other, then you found your no-difference condition.
It’s astonishing that professionals in the sports physiology field, with their ears to the workout-room ground almost their entire lives, haven’t a least of glimmer of a trace of knowledge as to WHY people take this or that supplement.
Good point about recovery. People have never done a sport Or hard labor usually omit this important detail.
This exactly. Although I have serious doubts that these researchers have ever set foot in a serious gym. Over 30 years of first hand gym experience here and without a doubt creatine lets me push myself harder at each workout.
Doing less than the recommended 150 minutes moderate exercise. Maybe there’s a clue there. My own experience when weight training at relatively high intensity was strength and muscle gain, strange.
Yep good point. Heavy squats, deadlifts, cleans and bench. Just the basic football workout. Usually 5 reps or less , etc. Performance enhancers ( creatine being a mild example of this) are for the people who are already doing the HARD work and not seeing games not for noobies. If theyre just checking to planet fitness and going through the motions then sure they probably won’t see gains.
I have found creatine does very little for me. The supplement industry is a money grab. All supplements come from natural sources. Eat a balanced diet , work hard and stay hydrated.
Creatine enables lifters to add an additional 1-2 reps to each set (prior to failure) as ATP is in greater supply (relative to no creatine supplementation). The benefits come from this phenomena. Creatine does not make your muscles grow more if the weight and reps stay the same as when one didn’t take it. This study offers zero new information, nor does it conflict with any of the conventional science on creatine so far.
Everyone who takes creatine knows this already because that isn’t what creatine does lol.
This was an interesting study, but it is VERY FAR from showing creatine doesn’t work “to build extra muscle”. There were several issues I had with the methods, not least of which was the sample pool and the fact that they didn’t use a loading period to attain maximal blood levels before starting the intervention. Overall it was not a bad study, but most certainly overblown by everyone reporting on it.
Anybody seriously considering making changes to your creatine intake should look more closely at the supporting data from this study.
The participants averaged around 1600 calories and 75g of protein per day. It should come as no shock to anyone who has even an elementary understanding of macronutrients that those levels are simply way too low to support appreciable muscle growth. Of course there was no difference between the test group and the control group, the diet alone is insufficient for the goal of muscle growth.
The authors of this study should consider redoing the entire study using only participants who are actually eating to gain muscle, not just taking creatine for fun.
Terribly underpowered study, rigour-lacking design and poor/incomplete presentation, published in a predatory journal. Ignored. The title of this “article” is irresponsibly misleading. Please apply some scientific scrutiny to your journalism.
Anyone with any actual training experience and knowledge knows that if you don’t use the extra CP to do a higher volume of high intensity training, it’s largely wasted as far as training gains go.
The fact that these two groups did the same training negates the study entirely.
Not to mention that vastly suboptimal nutrition was consumed.
And the title, “Creatine doesn’t cause as much muscle gain as previously thought” is an indicator of BS to begin with, as no knowledgeable person in the training arena things that taking creatine and keeping your training the same will do much.
You take creatine so that you can train harder/more.
It wouldn’t matter if it wasn’t underpowered and better designed.
The premise of the study as all wrong, to begin with, and lacks even basic exercise physiology knowledge.
Dumb study is dumb. Anyone who is both experienced in training and understands the basic relevant scientific principles would realize this study was dumb to begin with.
First off, nobody in the industry who is even remotely knowledgeable thinks that creatine supplementation is for direct building muscle.
The body has three metabolic energy pathways — aerobic, glycogen and creatine phosphate based. For high intensity strength training, the CP energy pathway is heavily utilized, obviously.
The whole point of creatine supplements is to boost the amount of creatine ‘fuel’ in addition to what is obtained through the diet.
In other words, more fuel in the tank for more high intensity training.
One needs to be at a certain level of training to be able to benefit from this to begin with.
Only weekend warriors and people who don’t lift think that creatine supplements are supposed to have a direct anabolic effect.
The study did what it was designed to do. To state creatine does not do something we already know it doesn’t do. Creatine does not help create muscle tissue. Notice how the study only said ‘lean muscle tissue, and not weight. The study also did not provide strength gains. But neither group would really see significant strength gains. These people worked out LESS THAN 150 MINUTES PER WEEK. I reach that time in excercise before halfway through my second workout of the week. While this study is a real study and has reliable results within its confines, this is false hyperbole designed to create a headline and weaponize science.
I think you should track your progress and measure body parts for 6 months using creatine. Then do 6 months without creatine. See what the difference is.
How can this be of any value at all firstly ,eventually quietly slips in they were getting less than the recommended amount of exercise ,so how much were they getting?
Without specifics this information is useless
There is nothing you can take and watch tv and put on muscle.and
This information is misleading but perhaps that’s the point
From what I and some fellow boulderers have experianced creatine lets u train harder (kinda makes sense if you add fuel to your tank) and recover faster. This extra training that you can do thanks to creatine is what builds muscle and strength. So for me it makes sense that if you compare taking creatine or not while keeping the training regiment the same that you would not see a difference.
Back in the eighties I used to do a lot of weight training,creatine was being sold back then as a device that actually helps muscle fibres within your cells contract ,so if you took it twenty minutes before your work out you would be able to do more reps literally ,I used to do a low rep workout two sets of six with as much weight as possible and you would build muscle fast and for me this worked superbly
At the time I would swear the creatine helped ,I was in my twenties then and now I’m in my sixties.
I don’t know for sure it really made the difference and now I couldn’t swear to it ,but I think it did.
Trouble is of course the belief itself would have made a difference too,I just don’t know how to tell the difference especially from this distance
Creatine was not available commercially until the early nineties
I have found creatine does very little for me. The supplement industry is a money grab. All supplements come from natural sources. Eat a balanced diet , work hard and stay hydrated.
I’ve heard that creatine can help with a more explosive workout. Never that it directly builds muscle. This seems like a flimsy study imo.
Can’t argue with that
Exactly! More energy lifting weights! So you could argue it does help build muscle , indirectly.
This is a non sensical study showing that they didn’t understand the claim behind the creatine before doing it. It is never claimed that creatine directly increases muscle mass. The claim is that it increases strength, which allows to do MORE exercise, and therefore gaining muscle.
So doing a study where you give the same training to both groups will of course give the same gains that was expected.
I remember taking creatine “back in the day” and you stacked it with L-Glutamine. I believe many powders come with this mix. I had good results from it, and others that I knew who took this had good results.
You have absolutely no idea of what you speak. And it takes longer than 12 weeks to start seeing significant gains on creatine, another factor is the kind and quality of creatine. This is the most studied supplement for building muscle of the last 25 years so you’re a little late with your ridiculous findings. Personal experience I’ve gained a significant amount of mass and strength at 54 years of age and it has also helped my cognitive functions as well, my memory has improved amazingly. Please stop giving absolutely false misleading claims on here or something will be done about it. We aren’t going to sit by while you make absolutely Ludacris false claims about creatine and how ineffective it is. That’s a total and complete lie!!
Instantized creatine and creatine HCL are the best and absorbed the best in liquid and also the body.
So, let’s see. You have dozens of studies with far greater sample sizes suggesting that there is a significant increase in muscle mass when using creatine supplements, versus one university study with below a hundred of participants stating otherwise.
Hmmmmmmm…. Where can one find their article? If “methodology of previous studies” is the issue, then I sure hope to read what mind-blowing novel analytical techniques were applied in this particular study.
Well, never mind. I have found the study.
So, tell me: why start the dosage at the maintenance dosage instead of the advised loading dosage of 20 to 25 gr (https://doi.org/10.1186/1550-2783-12-S1-P2)?
Why was the majority female participants and males in the minority? Why wasn’t there a 50-50 in participants? Would you say this sample size is enough to make a proper conclusion that can be generalized for multiple individually distinct metabolic phenotypes? Did ethnicity have anything to do with the metabolic differences between groups of your cohorts (with things as Cytochrome P450 in mind)?Why is there no mention of metabolic differences in sex when relating to muscle output and growth?
And finally, did the Personal Records of the individuals increase or not? I wasn’t able to find it in your article.
Thank you for your time.
What brand of creatine did you use for this study?
I tried it for a few days and my body said nope!
This headline way overstated the purpose of the study.
> [T]he effects of CrM alone on LBM compared to RT have only been examined in older adults [14]. Therefore, there is no original research elucidating the relationship between long-term CrM supplementation and LBM gains in the absence of exercise in healthy individuals aged under 50 years.
> The purpose of this study was therefore to investigate whether whole-body and segmental LBM measurements were affected by a seven-day wash-in of 5 g/day CrM in the absence of RT in healthy, untrained adults. It was hypothesised that the 7-day CrM wash-in phase would significantly increase LBM measurements. We then sought to investigate whether the wash-in LBM outcomes impacted changes in LBM following supplementation with a 12-week RT. We hypothesised that an increase in measured LBM after the wash-in would affect the magnitude of LBM growth after the ensuing CrM and RT intervention