Taking creatine supplements while doing strength training leads to an average gain of 1.39 kilograms of lean body mass in adults, whether or not they have trained before.
Mechanism
Synthesis from 1 study
Creatine gives your muscles more quick energy so you can lift heavier or longer, which stresses your muscles just enough to trigger growth signals. Your muscles then build more protein, get bigger, and add lean weight—no matter if you're new to lifting or have been doing it for years.
Most probable mechanism
Taking creatine helps muscles recover faster between hard lifts by giving them more quick energy, which lets you do more work. This extra work stretches and stresses the muscle fibers more, triggering signals that tell the muscle to build more protein. Creatine also pulls water into the muscle, which further turns on the growth signals. Over time, this leads to more muscle tissue and higher lean body weight.
Oral creatine supplementation increases intramuscular creatine and phosphocreatine stores
Elevated phosphocreatine enables faster regeneration of ATP during high-intensity resistance exercise, increasing work capacity and mechanical tension on muscle fibers
Increased cellular hydration from creatine uptake and osmotic effects activates the mTOR signaling pathway
mTOR activation upregulates ribosomal biogenesis and protein translation, increasing muscle protein synthesis
Resistance training enhances insulin sensitivity and upregulates creatine transporter expression, improving creatine uptake and amplifying anabolic signaling
Greater training volume and higher proportion of fast-twitch fibers in trained individuals increase the anabolic stimulus, leading to greater net muscle protein accretion
Net accumulation of muscle protein increases fat-free mass
Evidence from Studies
Supporting (1)
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Creatine supplementation and resistance training: a comparison between novice and experienced lifters - a systematic review and dose-response meta-analysis
Contradicting (0)
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