With enough water, Do you need Creatine (the the like)

[unixfudotnet]

From reading about what creatine does (well I don't know enough about bio-chem to understand that part), it seems that it basically just grabs water from your body and pushes it into your muscles.

With drinking enough water in your system from just drinking, is there a need for creatine? Creatine seems like to me (at the moment, which may be shrouded in ignorance) a shortcut to ensuring that you have enough water in your muscles when you need it. Yet, you still need to drink the water to replace what is taken from the rest of your body from the creatine.

Is there more to it than that?
If I ensure that I am hydrated enough, is there a point to creatine?

[young_squatter]

Creatine helps with strength, its a cell volumizer which also leads to better lean mass gains.

[Abe the Cop]

Creatine phosphate is the main energy source for rapid ATP production during anaerobic activity. Adenosine triphosphate is broken down into the nearly useless adenosine diphosphate during strenuous activity. The phosphate molecule from creatine detaches to bind onto ADP to resynthesize it into ATP. This will result in more reps, sets and increased weight being used and thus you will overload the muscle more than it is used to. This is not something water can do. The extra water (bloat) is kind of a side effect. Although, the extra water around the muscles (I believe Layne said this, I could be wrong) creates an anabolic enviornment for muscles. So, this can actually be a desired effect. But this is NOT something water can do alone. And it's the lesser of the desired effects of creatine's main uses. And the reason for supplementing with creatine is simple. The body does not fill it's natural creatine stores anywhere near the amount they can potentially hold. So by supplementing with creatine, there is more creatine available for those short bursts of energy needed during strength training. Those "short bursts" start to become longer bursts of energy when supplementing with creatine.

So no, pulling water into the muscle cell walls is NOT creatine's primary method of increasing strength and mass and you could not just drink a lot of water to produce the same effects. Most of us here already do drink a ton of water.

[unixfudotnet]

Oh, ok. Thanks

Yeah, I drink a ton of water all day Aquafina bottes are awesome, the 1L ones with widemouth top for gulping.

Now to read the sticky on Creatine here.

[zhorner]

Originally Posted by Abe the Cop

Creatine phosphate is the main energy source for rapid ATP production during anaerobic activity. Adenosine triphosphate is broken down into the nearly useless adenosine diphosphate during strenuous activity. The phosphate molecule from creatine detaches to bind onto ADP to resynthesize it into ATP. This will result in more reps, sets and increased weight being used and thus you will overload the muscle more than it is used to. This is not something water can do. The extra water (bloat) is kind of a side effect. Although, the extra water around the muscles (I believe Layne said this, I could be wrong) creates an anabolic enviornment for muscles. So, this can actually be a desired effect. But this is NOT something water can do alone. And it's the lesser of the desired effects of creatine's main uses. And the reason for supplementing with creatine is simple. The body does not fill it's natural creatine stores anywhere near the amount they can potentially hold. So by supplementing with creatine, there is more creatine available for those short bursts of energy needed during strength training. Those "short bursts" start to become longer bursts of energy when supplementing with creatine.

So no, pulling water into the muscle cell walls is NOT creatine's primary method of increasing strength and mass and you could not just drink a lot of water to produce the same effects. Most of us here already do drink a ton of water.

could someone please rep abe for me...