Massive In One Year?
This article was written by Christian Finn.
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.
Life Happens
There are so many factors influencing your progress. Not many people can do nothing but go to the gym, eat and sleep for a whole year.
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 work late for a few nights and decide to skip training for a week, vowing to “start fresh” on Monday.
All of these things can slow your progress by weeks—maybe even months.
In other words, a “perfect” year of training and eating is rare. That’s why I think it’s a better idea to set your goals over a much shorter period. Six weeks should be long enough for you to see measurable results.
What You Can Expect
The “average” male—if there is such a thing—with a year or two of training behind them can expect to gain roughly 2-4% of their initial weight after six weeks of regular resistance exercise. Gains in the “average” female are approximately half those seen in males [3, 4].
For example, someone who weighs 180 pounds might expect to gain an extra four, six, maybe even nine pounds of lean muscle over a six-week period.
It’s also quite normal to put on a little fat at the same time. So, the amount of weight (rather than muscle) you gain might be nearer 5-6% of your initial weight.
Remember, you won’t gain weight at this rate forever. Over the course of a year, it’s rare to gain more than 25 pounds of muscle. Sure, you might gain more than 25 pounds of weight. But, unless you’re using drugs, gaining this much lean muscle in one year or less is very hard to do.
These figures are based on the results of studies using trained subjects with a body fat percentage of 10-15%. Whether extremely lean or very overweight people would get the same results is hard to say.
Of course, not everyone will build muscle at the same rate. Some people are genetically predisposed to gaining weight, and will see impressive results after only a few months. Others will build muscle more slowly.
Your rate of progress also depends on a principle known as the ceiling of adaptation. The closer you are to your ceiling of adaptation, the slower your gains will be. In other words, someone who’s been training for 10 years will gain muscle more slowly than someone who is just starting out.
The Bottom Line
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.
All you can do is get the most out of your own body. There’ll be times when you see results very quickly. But there will also be times when you feel like you’re stuck on a plateau, and nothing seems to be working. When you get discouraged, what counts is where you end up, not how long it takes you to get there.
However, the progress you make when you start training is not always a good indication of how far you can go. Not all training programs are equally effective. Some work well. Others are little more than a waste of time.
So many people out there work hard, but just don’t see the results they deserve. That’s because they were never really told what to do.
Don’t be duped into thinking you’re a “hard gainer” because what you’re doing now isn’t working. If the program you’re using hasn’t been working for the last six months, it won’t suddenly start working tomorrow.
Consistency of effort is important. But your body isn’t a machine. Simply doing the same ineffective things over and over again (only harder) will lead to frustration and disappointment.
References:
- Kraemer, W.J., Adams, K., Cafarelli, E., Dudley, G.A., Dooly, C., Feigenbaum, M.S., Fleck, S.J., Franklin, B., Fry, A.C., Hoffman, J.R., Newton, R.U., Potteiger, J., Stone, M.H., Ratamess, N.A., & Triplett-McBride, T. (2002). American College of Sports Medicine position stand. Progression models in resistance training for healthy adults. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 34, 364-380
- Paddon-Jones, D., Leveritt, M., Lonergan, A., & Abernethy, P. (2001). Adaptation to chronic eccentric exercise in humans: the influence of contraction velocity. European Journal of Applied Physiology, 285, 466-471
- Volek, J.S., Duncan, N.D., Mazzetti, S.A., Staron, R.S., Putukian, M., Gomez, A.L, Pearson, D.R, Fink, W.J., & Kraemer WJ. (1999). Performance and muscle fiber adaptations to creatine supplementation and heavy resistance training. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 31, 1147-1156
- McLester, J.R. Jr., Bishop, P., & Guilliams, M.E. (2000). Comparison of 1 day and 3 days per week of equal-volume resistance training in experienced subjects. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 14, 273281
Christian Finn hold a masters degree in exercise science and lectures on the subject of fitness at both universities and private training organizations around the United Kingdom. You can find Christian’s articles published in numerous magazines, leading industry journals and websites worldwide, including Men’s Health and Muscle & Fitness (UK edition). His research on high-intensity intermittent training has been published in the online journal Sport Science (March 2001).
You can reach Christian by email at christian@christianfinn.com or on the web by clicking here: www.christianfinn.com.
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