Creatine Benefits To Muscle Growth & Strength: Lasting Or Temporary?

There’s no getting away from the fact that supplements can be expensive. Each and every time you pull your wallet or purse out, you are making an investment in yourself; in your body, your health, your future. Creatine may well be one supplement you invest in, and you may well be enjoying the many positive creatine benefits and swear by it. But, what if you suddenly stopped taking creatine, would all of your creatine-enhanced muscle growth and strength gains be lost? Such fears can trap some folk into obligatory spending on supplements, and in this article I aim to tell you the truth you deserve to know regarding what really happens when you stop taking creatine.

Truth: You will lose some strength (there’s a but here…)

Creatine works by allowing enhanced refuelling and storage of our bodies anaerobic fuel ATP. By virtue of simply having more ATP in ones system, a person can expect to see enhanced anaerobic strength, with absolutely zero gains in muscle size needed.

Just as it took time to become fully ‘charged’ with creatine, it takes time for creatine levels to return to normal. Creatine levels usually take around 30 days to return back to normal upon stopping creatine supplementation. During this time you can expect to lose some strength, purely because your muscles no longer have the enhanced energy supply they once did.

Also, before any real biological changes take shape, a person may experience a loss of strength due to the placebo effect in which the expectation and anticipation of losing strength can cause premature manifestation of such stoppage effects purely on a psychological basis, before the physiological change really occurs.

Now it’s established why you will lose some strength, what about muscle size?

Truth: You will lose some size (there’s a but here…)

It may not be looking promising to you so far, but, bare with me – I think you’ll be surprised. Ok, here’s what you need to remember about muscle size: it’s not all comprised of muscle fibres. Muscle size is also determined by the fluids and energy stored into the muscles.

Because creatine enhances water retention and greater energy storage in the muscles, this creates greater size independently of muscle fibre size. When stopping creatine, as levels begin to normalize, you can expect to experience a decrease in overall muscle volume – but, that does not impact upon muscle fibre size whatsoever.

Any size and strength you gained solely attributable to muscle fibre hypertrophy will be kept.

Conclusion:

Losing some of the benefits of creatine you’ve become accustomed to enjoying may not be that easy to swallow. After all, it’s never nice to see size or strength go down – it doesn’t matter the reason. We train to progress, and as such, any kind of regression (perceived or real) can be hard to take.

What you have to keep in mind is, the lasting creatine benefits of enhanced strength and size through fibre hypertrophy will persist. If you are cycling creatine, you’ll experience this ‘boom and bust’ each time you end your cycle, and will soon learn to accept it for what it is – no big deal.

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