I am a recent member at Fitrex and find it extremely illuminating. I have been lifting seriously for about a year and 8 months and noticed great strength gains all around but find the my shoulders, triceps and back are benefiting unfairly in muscular development. My biceps and pecs, although have increased dramatically in strength, are not getting that much bigger. I have gotten my bench press up to 300 lbs for one rep and the size is not there in comparison to my shoulders and back. What do you suggest?

Second question and perhaps more important. I am under the impression that Creatine allows your muscle cells to retain more water and therefore hydrating the muscle more, inturn allowing them to work harder. Is the extra water in the cells what makes you look a little bloated when on Creatine? Is this information true and are there side effects to Creatine use?

You are experiencing an unfolding of your genetic picture. It usually starts to become evident after a year or so of hard training. You can increase the size of your biceps and chest but you will have to really emphasize these areas and actually reduce some of the time you spend on your triceps, back, and shoulders. This reduction of time is only so that all of your energy can be spent on recovery from the brutal chest and biceps workouts you will need to do. You should also reduce some of the pressing movements you do for your chest and replace them with more classic isolation movements like Dumbbell Flys and Cable Crossovers. This will reduce the synergistic help from your shoulders and triceps thus focusing more work for the chest. For your biceps, make sure you are moving through a full range of motion. Cutting a biceps movement down means that you will have a shorter biceps and a shorter biceps is a smaller biceps.

You are correct in stating that a more hydrated muscle cell is a better working muscle cell. And, yes, creatine will create greater water retention within a muscle cell. Here is an article I wrote about creatine which should be helpful.
Here is the address:
www.fitrex.com/newsletter/newsletter_3.html

Also, just type in the words creatine monohydrate at a yahoo search engine sometime and see what happens! You will get tons of info on creatine research!