For anyone who feels trapped in the body of a skinny teenager, putting on weight can seem painfully and frustratingly slow. Some people gain muscle very quickly. Others, however, make little or no progress at all.If you're trying to figure out how much muscle you can expect to gain over the course of a year, the simple answer is that there is no simple answer. There are a number of things that you need to take into account when you're setting your muscle-building goals.
Muscle growth tends to come in a series of "spurts"
No matter how hard you train, how strict your diet is, or how many muscle-building supplements you use, growth will never come at a predictable steady pace. There are so many factors influencing your progress. Not many people can do nothing but go to the gym, eat and sleep for months on end.
Holidays, illness and injury all get in the way. Your partner complains that you go to the gym too often and demands that you spend more "quality time" together. You pull a few "all-nighters" at the office and decide to skip training for a week, vowing to "start fresh" on Monday.
While there are some variables that you can control, such as how you train and what you eat, there are many that you cannot. The most important of these is your genetics.Be realistic. If you have a body designed for long-distance running, it's unlikely that you'll be winning the Mr. America contest in the next few years.Like it or not, some people are genetically predisposed to gaining weight, and will see impressive results after only a few months. Others will build muscle more slowly.
Scientists from the Netherlands, for example, have shown that mesomorphs (those naturally athletic guys who just have to look at a weight in order to gain muscle) build muscle more easily than ectomorphs (the typical "skinny guy" who has an extremely tough time gaining weight) [7].
The researchers used something called the fat-free mass index (shown below) to assign subjects to either a "slender" group (the ectomorphs) or a "solid" group (the mesomorphs).Although both groups put on muscle during the 12-week study, the slender guys gained only 0.7 pounds (0.3 kilograms) versus 3.5 pounds (1.6 kilograms) in the solid group.In other words, the mesomorphs gained muscle FIVE TIMES more quickly than the ectomorphs.Your rate of progress also depends how close you are to the upper limit of what you're capable of in terms of muscle mass, also known as your ceiling of adaptation.
The closer you are to this upper limit, the slower your gains will be. Someone who's been working out with weights for 10 years, for example, will gain muscle a lot more slowly than someone who's just starting out.It's also normal to put on a little fat at the same time.
For every pound of muscle you gain, expect to add some fat at the same time. The amount of fat you gain will depend, in part at least, on how much you eat. But it also depends on how lean you are when you start to overfeed. Studies show that during a period of overfeeding, you'll gain more muscle and less fat if you're naturally lean to start with [6]. Conversely, fatter people tend to lose more fat and less muscle when they go on a diet. The leaner you get, the harder it gets to lose fat without losing muscle.
So, for every 10 pounds of weight gained by someone who is overweight, roughly 3-4 pounds come from lean tissue and 6-7 pounds come from fat. But for every 10 pounds of weight gained by a lean person, 6-7 pounds come from lean tissue while only 3-4 pounds come from fat. I should point out that the term "lean tissue" doesn't necessarily mean muscle tissue, as stored fluid and carbohydrate can also contribute to gains in lean tissue.
The studies on which these estimates are based lasted a minimum of three weeks and didn't include a structured exercise routine. With a good weight-training program you can expect gains with a superior muscle-to-fat ratio.
On a related note, if you're loading with creatine (20 grams a day for 5 days), or you eat a lot more carbohydrate than normal, you can gain lean tissue more quickly.
For example, you might put on 4-5 pounds of lean tissue in your first week on creatine and a high-calorie diet. But as I mentioned earlier, lean tissue and muscle tissue aren't the same thing. And you won't keep on gaining weight at that rate indefinitely.
What if you don't want to gain ANY fat?
Although some people try to gain muscle mass while maintaining a very low level of body fat at the same time, this is actually very hard to do.Why? The issue may be psychological. If you've just spent the last six months working your butt off to get a six-pack, the last thing you'll want to do is put the fat right back on again. Someone in this position may simply be reluctant to eat the quantity of food necessary to gain a significant amount of muscle.
