Dan I started weightlifting while at school, ( quite sometime ago now .. ) I was about 15 I think and my P.E teacher was a scottish bloke called Bill Sharp, who aparently used to know a bloke called Geoff Capes, it was bill who got me started, he would let me off P.E and I'd go to the weight room .. which was a disused garage we'd convereted at the school ... and I'd push weights there, and he ran a class in the evening once a week too, I did that for about three years about four / five times aweek till I left school, that was my start, after that I did two physical jobs but didn't do the weights, till I joined the Navy at 20 when I got back into them .. I've been in London now for about 16.5 years now and although I've been to the gym a few times I've not really done anything for some time .. the point to all this ramble is .. at no time in my life have I used or needed to use steroids or any other " Power muscle " building supplement type thing, yes I've put on weight after stopping the weightlifting, I'm about 25/26 stone but I think that's more to do with the fact that I stopped working out, but didn't stop the eating side of things, I still have abit of tone and I put that down to the fact I didn't use any of the above muscle enhancing stuff .. The way to bulk up is easy in my books .. eat plenty, plenty of anything, heavy weights low reps .. one of the times I went back to the gym here I was doing 40kgs on the machines .. I was doing 5 reps three times that worked out at 40kgs x 5 = 200kgs x 3 = 600kgs I did that with about 8 of the machines .. that's about 4800kgs .. then I did the free weights leg press 350kgs x 5 x 3 bench press 80kgs x 5 x 3 .. arm curls 40kgs again x 5 x 3 plus a few other bits and bobs .. all up in about an hour and a half I'd lifted about 11800 odd kgs .. it may come across as a brag .. but it isn't, it's how I built up and got big .. hard work and alittle focus ... supplements can be avoided by just eating healthy and heaps and working out in the right way ... simple equation .. eat, heavy weights low reps, puts on weight, if that's what your after that's the way forward .. sorry about the babble Dan ...

//I have always had trouble putting on weight

Enjoy it while you still can. That won't be such a problem in another 5 years...

If you do it Dan, just pick a weight your comfy with, start off with say 15 / 20 kgs most people can handle that weight, just heavy enough to know about, do the exercises slowly as in don't go one, two, three, four, five .. go onnee, twwooo, threee .. etc and really make your muscles feel it, it's as much about the control of the weight as it is about the weight of the weight .. if that makes any sence .. :-) !! if your doing bench press, make sure the weight hit's your chest and you push up from there and not just bend your elbows abit thinking it's accomplishing the same thing ... well Dan I'll stop my preaching .. I'm not the biggest bloke in the world, but the above worked for me, and even today at 40 I still have alittle tone left even though I've haven't touched a weight in a good few years ... good luck with the weight gain mate ..

One last thing in that case mate .. :-) if your going to do it, make sure you balance it out, as in work out the lower body as much as the upper, do leg press and squats and other assorted leg and thigh exercises, also when doing curls etc try standing, stand ridged with legs / back straight, you'll have to balance the curls with your body, which means your legs and back take some of the strain you sould feel your bum and hamstrings pulling to counter balance .. last word mate, your solo, let me know how you get on, I'd be interested in how you do ...

How's the weight gain going mate ? You still at the gym ?

//I don't know enough about it to judge.

Heather's 1/2 hour surf-research bubble (grain of salt please, this is the internet): creatine already occurs naturally in the muscles and in some foods, so taking creatine is tantamount to taking a vitamin supplement. It's produced synthetically, but only because extraction from red meat is too expensive. You won't gain weight: if you don't use it then your muscles will store as much as they are able, and your body will just flush out the rest. A few people experience diaorrhea or a tummy ache, but usually because they're taking more than the recommended dose. So far that's the worst of the side-effects. Researchers are still watching out for long-term side-effects; particularly any bad effects on the heart, but so far none have been forthcoming.

//If you eat to much bread and don't do anything physical you get fat too.

There's a difference between not working out and not doing anything physical. I think what I was meaning, if you do a lot of aerobic exercise but not much anaerobic, do you bulk up generally or is it not used?

//It's creatine not steroids

Yeah, I know. I was using steroids as an example of something that has negative side effects.

//Blood doping is a different thing altogether that is cheating as fas as I can see taking creatine is not.

I don't think we're talking about the same thing. Some athletes remove normal blood a few weeks before a race, and put it back in just before the event, boosting their oxygen capacities. This is illegal... but why. if not creatine?

//But I have spoken to alot of people who have said it doesn't work anyways so I duno, might have to try it for myself.

Probably it's a bit difficult to work out whether there's a marked difference; from what I gather it sort of has a cumulative effect, so while you might possibly notice you can benchpress more for longer for a week or two after you start taking it, you wouldn't notice so much in the longer term; much like any kind of diet & exercise. I imagine if you started taking it when you're already well built, or with a good healthy bulking-up-style diet it'd probably have less of an impact as well.

//blood doping

Thing about creatine is that you're already consuming it in normal foods; only to get the kind of amounts you get from supplementing, you'd have to eat about 5kg of steak a day. The websites I looked at recommended against that because it's bad for your cholestrol levels. :-S