Does creatine make you gain non-muscle weight?

Remember, creatine is not directly responsible for building muscle. Creatine has an indirect effect at building muscle and strength. Here's what creatine does: It is used to increase the amount of creatine phosphate you have in your muscle tissue.

Creatine phosphate is than used to replenish ATP which acts as a quick energy source for activities that require quick bursts of energy such as strength training/weight lifting and sprinting. The more creatine phosphate you have on hand, the more ATP can be replenished during bursts of all out effort. Consequently, you can push harder and longer in your workouts, because creatine intensifies the pace of energy production in your muscle cells.

Remember, more power and strength equals more weight being lifted and more reps being performed. More reps with more weight means more muscle. So, the bigger the amounts of creatine phosphate in the muscles, the more the muscle can lift and perform short-term maximum strength lifts.

Let's go back to the bench press example. Let's say you want to get 4 to 6 reps with a heavy weight and you really want to get at least 4 reps (Anymore than 4 reps would make your day!). Also, let's assume your not supplementing with creatine.

Since you only get a small amount of creatine from your diet, your not getting a lot of creatine phosphate in the muscle. So, you take the weight off the rack and power up one rep. You take a deep breath and do one more rep, struggling all the way.

You know the next rep will come hard, if at all, since your muscles are losing energy. In your muscle, you've exhausted your stores of ATP with these two reps. Your body is now looking for additional stores of creatine phosphate to convert to ATP in order to power up an additional rep or two.

However, since you only have minimal amounts of creatine phosphate stores in your muscle, you don't have enough ATP to power the weight up. Your muscles give out and the weight falls on your chest. In short, you simply didn't have enough short term fuel (ATP) to power up those extra couple of reps.

Now, let's say you've been loading up on creatine for the past week. You hit the gym and you decide to try that same weight. You take the weight off the rack and boom, you hit two reps with ease.

Inside your muscle, you have more than enough creatine phosphate stores to convert to ATP. This means more short term energy to power up the weight. You hit two more reps and finally squeeze out one more rep.

You hit 5 reps!