Have you ever wondered why some people seem to pack on the muscle in a short period of time, while others might be overjoyed when you put on 5-6 lbs of lean body mass in a year?
It's about how much muscle can you build and the answer isn't just so straight forward or simple.
Consider the following: The average man has between 30% to as much as 60% of his lean body mass as actual muscle. The average women has between 25% to 50% of her lean body mass as actual muscle.
Muscular growth is rarely a liner process and tends to come in a series of cycles.
"You cannot calculate your actual muscle gain, short of having a biopsy." - Jeremy Likeness, Certified Personal Trainer and Body Transformation Expert
That means that no matter what you eat, how hard you train or what supplements you take, muscle growth will never come at a predicable steady rate. This makes those 10-12 pounds of muscle a year for a natural bodybuilder a myth along with any other hard numbers telling you how much actual muscle to expect or any references to the actual rate of growth.
holidays
injuries
illness
nutrition
training
sleep
medications
complications called "life"
and more...
By the way...
Some people are genetically predisposed at packing on lean body mass and can just look at a weight and gain muscle (you know those people right?). Others have to work like the dickens to just gain an ounce of muscle and their rate of growth is slower.
Researchers from the Netherlands, Van Etten, L.M., Verstappen, F.T., & Westerterp, K.R. studied the effect of body build on weight-training-induced adaptations in body composition and muscular strength. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 26, 515-521. In the study they found that men with a "solid" build gained more muscle than men with a "slender" build following a 12-week weight-training program .
Although fat-free mass increased in both groups, the slender guys gained only 0.7 pounds (0.3 kilograms) versus 3.5 pounds (1.6 kilograms) in the solid group. My point is...
The nearer you get to your muscular genetic potential, the slower the gains will be. This is known by exercise professionals as the ceiling of adaptation. The longer you've been training, the slower your gains will be. Somebody like me who's been training for 17 years will gain less muscle mass than a new trainer who's just started out in the first 6 weeks.
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