How Much Muscle You Can Gain – BodyBuilding Expectations

November 17th, 2009 posted by admin
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When you begin bodybuilding, or building muscle, it is important to have a realistic expectation as to how much muscle you can gain. If you are expecting far more muscle development than what is possible, you are setting yourself up for failure.

If you are all super-motivated to become buff, this is an important article to read. It is absolutely imperative that you ensure that your goals are realistic before you begin training.

Why is this? Well, if you expect to gain an enormous amount of muscle over the next few weeks/months, and fail to accomplish this goal, you’re going to be pretty discouraged – wouldn’t you agree?

Here’s the thing, bodybuilding is a long-term project. Building muscle is a very slow process that takes years to accomplish.

For the average person, you may expect to gain somewhere within the vicinity of 2-5kg of muscle in the first twelve weeks of training, assuming that you have not trained previously. These first 2-3 months are like the honeymoon period where you obtain some amazing gains and can see some fairly considerable physique changes. Of course, how much muscle you gain will be highly dependant upon your approach to nutrition, exercise, recovery etc, as well as your genetic makeup.

Unfortunately, the honeymoon period doesn’t last. Following this short period of significant muscle development, hypertrophy (muscle growth) slows considerably. For a trained individual, it is typical to experience somewhere between 2-5kg of muscle growth a year. Again, this varies widely with your lifestyle and genetic composition. The more muscle you develop, generally the slower your gains will become.

It is very important to have some idea as to what to expect. Most people do not last longer than 8 weeks because they have unrealistic goals. I’m sure you could name a number of people who have attempted to accomplish some muscle building goals, only to be discouraged weeks later by lack of results. This is commonly due to unrealistic expectations (but of course, ineffective exercise and nutritional approaches weigh heavily on this too).

You may be interested in a calculator that we have available that actually predicts your maximum circumferences at a given body fat percentage. This data has been empirically derived from elite athletes and of course will carry a degree of inaccuracy. Follow this link to our maximum circumference prediction calculator. Do keep in mind that it would take many, many years of consistent training to reach anywhere near your peak natural muscle development.

If you are just getting started with bodybuilding and building muscle, you may wish to read a comprehensive introductory article we have available, entitled “Bulking Up – Bodybuilding For Beginners“.