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If you exercise regularly, you likely want to be sure you’re getting the most out of it.

One important benefit of exercise is gaining muscle and strength. Having a healthy amount of muscle allows to you to perform your best during exercise and daily life.

Three main criteria must be met for maximal muscle gain: eating more calories than you burn, consuming more protein than you break down and an exercise program that is challenging to your muscles (1Trusted Source, 2Trusted Source, 3Trusted Source).

While it’s possible to meet all these criteria without taking dietary supplements, certain supplements may help you meet your goals.

The 6 supplements listed below may help you gain more muscle with your exercise program.

1. Creatine

Creatine is a molecule that’s produced naturally in your body. It provides energy for your muscles and other tissues.

However, taking it as a dietary supplement can increase muscle creatine content by up to 40% beyond its normal levels (4Trusted Source, 5Trusted Source, 6Trusted Source).

This affects your muscle cells and exercise performance, promoting muscle gain. In fact, a large amount of research shows creatine improves muscle strength (7Trusted Source, 8Trusted Source, 9Trusted Source).

This is good news if you’re trying to gain muscle. Greater strength allows you to perform better during exercise, leading to larger increases in muscle mass over time (10Trusted Source).

Creatine can also increase water content in your muscle cells. This may cause your muscle cells to swell slightly and produce signals for muscle growth (11Trusted Source).

Furthermore, this supplement may increase levels of the hormones involved in muscle growth, such as IGF-1 (12Trusted Source).

Moreover, some research shows that creatine could decrease the breakdown of proteins in your muscles (13Trusted Source).

Overall, many researchers have studied creatine supplements and exercise, and one thing is clear — creatine can help increase muscle mass (14Trusted Source, 15Trusted Source).

Creatine has also been studied extensively and has an outstanding safety profile (14Trusted Source).

If you are looking for a supplement to help you gain muscle, consider creatine first.

Shop for creatine supplements online.

Summary:Creatine is probably the single best supplement for muscle
gain. Many studies have confirmed that it can help increase muscle mass.