In case you haven’t noticed, the human body has a basic shape.
By and large we are all roughly related in how we look.
If I put a person, a gorilla and a hippopotamus together in a room, chances are you would easily pick out the human.
If I was abducted by aliens right now, and was forced to describe the male part of the human race, this is what I would say:
They average about 5’10” in height, with about 148 pounds of lean mass. At any given height they can vary greatly in weight, but this is due to their ability to store energy in the form of fat mass.
If I was asked to explain further I would say this:
Their height is normally distributed with a standard deviation of about 3 inches. This means that 95% of all men fall somewhere between 5’4″ and 6’4″ in height.
At any given height their lean mass is also fairly normally distributed with a standard deviation of about 7 pounds. Meaning, an extremely athletic healthy male can have about 14 pounds more lean mass than the average, and a man can be about 14 pounds less than the average before we begin to worry about them being in a disease state.
(or imagine the picture a 6 year old child would draw if they were asked to draw a man or a woman…it would probably be pretty obvious and pretty average looking, not too fat and not too skinny)
In other words, our physiology, much like everything else about the human body, is VERY tightly regulated. Everything is interconnected.
Yes, there are some anomalies that somehow have more muscle than anyone else, just like there are some men who are 7 feet tall. But these are very very rare cases (About 2.5% of the population).
For the most part you and I are limited in how much muscle we can add, based on the fact that we are all human beings. There are checks and balances EVERYWHERE in our bodies.
And this is for GOOD reason.
Here is something that people selling exercise programs with claims like “Add 60 pounds of muscle in 6 weeks” don’t want you to think about.
Many of the things that can cause your muscle to grow beyond its normal limits are also connected to higher than average rates of cancer.
After all, cancer is by definition, uncontrolled growth.
- Chronic high testosterone? Correlated with Increased Cancer risk.
- Chronic high insulin? Correlated with Increased Cancer risk.
- Chronic high Growth Hormone? Correlated with increased Cancer risk.
- Chronic high IGF-1? Correlated with increased Cancer risk.
The point of all this is – You are human. So be happy with your build, work towards increasing your muscle mass and decreasing your fat mass, but have REALISTIC EXPECTATIONS.
From my findings, an adult human male can expect to gain about 14 pounds of muscle through strength training, for a female its closer to 6. After that any muscle growth is extremely slow.
If you want more muscle and are willing to go the pharmaceutical route to get it, just be aware that there may be long term health ramifications.
If you want more muscle and are NOT willing to go the pharmaceutical route, and are upset about your lack of progress remember – there are good reasons why you are limited in your ability to grow.
Eat less and move more. Try your best to build muscle while keeping your body fat low, and remember you are human. This means you are probably not going to be 250 pounds and 5% body fat any time in your life unless you are also about 6’10” tall.
BP
