Creatine supplementation and its effect on absolute strength

[Peter_k]

I suspect this may be more of a question for Dr. Kilgore, but I have a feeling you've trained athletes who have used creatine at some point.

There's a passage in PPST on creatine supplementation that says it can help athletes achieve their strength goals.

If I understand correctly, the primary reason for this is that creatine helps muscles handle more volume, allowing for more overall work.

But what kind of effect does creatine supplementation have on absolute strength (i.e. 1RM)? Rather, what effect could stopping creatine have on a 1RM? I can see your workouts seeming harder, but would your top numbers actually go down?

I have only a rudimentary understanding of exercise physiology, but if your 1RM is a function of how much muscle mass and neuromuscular conditioning you have, would that mean that using creatine doesn't affect absolute strength, strictly speaking?

The reason I ask is that it seems to give my workouts a major boost. But I'm not sure I want to take it forever.

[Mark Rippetoe]

It has no direct effect on absolute strength, you're right. Now, if it has enabled high-rep sets to increase your training volume and adaptation, thus making you stronger, it may have helped indirectly. And there are always placebo/psychological effects.