Creatine's strength boost is real but smaller than the tub suggests

Creatine is among the most widely used sports supplements, and its reputation for boosting strength is largely deserved, yet the size of the benefit and exactly who receives it are less settled. Marketing rarely distinguishes between upper-body and lower-body lifts, between young and older users, or between men and women. This meta-analysis set out to quantify creatine's effects on upper- and lower-body strength and power across populations, and to test whether the gains are uniform across different strength tests and different groups of people.

The authors searched PubMed, Scopus and Web of Science up to 21 September 2024 for randomised controlled trials of creatine supplementation, with or without exercise training, that measured strength via bench or chest press, leg press and handgrip, plus upper- and lower-body power. Sixty-nine studies covering 1937 participants were pooled using random-effects modelling, and subgroup analyses examined the influence of age, sex, training status, dose, duration and training frequency.

Creatine plus resistance training beat placebo by an average of 1.43 kg on bench or chest press, 5.64 kg on squat, 1.48 cm on vertical jump and 47.81 watts on Wingate peak power. Handgrip strength and leg press strength showed no significant improvement. The subgroups told a sharper story: younger adults improved on bench, leg press and squat while older adults did not, and males showed significant gains in leg press, squat, vertical jump and peak power that were not observed in females.

The headline confirms decades of creatine research: it works, particularly alongside resistance training and in multi-joint compound lifts. What this analysis adds is honest sizing and an uneven map of who benefits, with women and older adults showing smaller or non-significant changes on several outcomes. The authors caution that this may reflect underpowered trials in those groups rather than true non-response, and they call for more well-powered studies in women and older adults. They also note that smaller or more isolated strength tests appeared less responsive to change.

If you take creatine expecting a transformation, these pooled numbers are grounding: a few kilograms on the big lifts and a modest bump in power, real but marginal. For younger men who lift, the evidence is at its most consistent; for women and older adults the picture is thinner rather than negative, so a lack of statistical significance here is not proof of no effect. It is also worth knowing that one author has advised companies selling creatine, though the analysis pooled independent trials.