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
Tags: muscle growth
lovely article (only a wee bit depressing)
But yeah, I noticed. I’m not very good at building muscle (esp at age 40+) but still I enjoy every minute of it trying to get somewhere. It’s way more about the road then about the destination. Good thing I have a pessimistic view on life and never expect to get much out of anything
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Brad Pilon, lowfat_recipes. lowfat_recipes said: Muscle Growth at all Costs?: In case you haven’t noticed, the human body has a basic shape. By and large .. http://bit.ly/8HsQMT [...]
There’s a big difference between being pessimistic and realistic. Training is a lot more fulfilling if you have reasonable expectations of the results.
B
Thought-provoking. Thanks for this.
I guess the next question is, how long does it take to get those 14 pounds?
I think this is the thing that almost all research misses…
It’s not the TOTAL muscle mass added that’s important, since this is relatively fixed, but its the RATE at which it is added that causes significant effects in research trials.
So in a 6 week trial of..well whatever, if one group put on 8 pounds while the other put on 6 pounds it may look different, but if you gave each group 40 weeks, they’d probably both hit around 14 pounds.
As you point out…rate of growth seems to be the important factor.
Most likely, the biggest factor here is genetics, probably followed by program design, and even possibly nutrition.
B
Brad,
As far as I know, “optimal” free testosterone levels in adult males are currently considered to be somewhere in the upper end of the optimal reference interval for males age 20-29, namely 15-26.6 pg/mL if using LabCorp for testing and 150-210 pg/mL if using Quest Diagnostics for testing.
Do you agree with that, and if so, is it safe to say that ensuring that levels are never chronically above or below that range would likely result in minimal risk to health and maximize that person’s ability to build whatever muscle he is genetically capable of building? (NOTE: I recognize that health and muscle growth are about more than just free Testosterone, so this question will make the assumption that other things are also in good order….a big assumption, to be sure, but necessary for asking this particular question).
And when you say that the average male can expect to gain about 14 pounds of muscle through strength training, is this specifically referring to “dry” muscle as opposed to the weight added by water and glycogen stores in muscle?
“standard deviation of about 7 pounds”
That’s definitely a fun fact known by very few.
Great little article Brad. Thanks for continually spreading the word about reality.
Brad but on the program for about 2 weeks now and have lost 6 pounds. Feeling good and getting some badly needed exercise.
Looking forward to the holidays.
Thanks,
Shaiwn
[...] source_ [...]
Hi, Brad.
First let me say that as an American I would be remiss if not saying thank you on Thanksgiving for sites like yours where you get honest information from one of the most knowledgeable people out there.
As such, I was wondering if you’d give your take on the following (especially in light of this post on muscle growth), however I understand if you either do not have the time or desire to look it over or just feel uneasy about commenting on it via this medium.
[[Link to latest t-nation article....link removed to be nice - BP]]
This is either the greatest hoax of all time (and that would be saying something in the supplement industry), or it is the future in its nascent stages, which will get torn to pieces in the short term and criticized to no end but ultimately vindicated in the end. I can’t see it being anywhere between either one of those extremes, because then it truly would be a colossal waste of time.
Even if trying to give the benefit of the doubt, it smacks of snake oil sales tactics.
Hi Rob,
Thanks for the compliments on the blog.
I’m cool commenting on this stuff, I actually enjoy that site. For me its a source of entertainment, fun stories, and fun (sometimes a little offside) pictures.
I think of it a bit like reading about hockey trade rumors (I’m a big hockey fan).
It’s entertaining to read, a lot of times the trades make a lot of sense, but rarely to they ever turn out. But they ARE entertaining.
B
Hi Jack,
When it comes to the Tesosterone levels, my area of expertise is not disease prevention, especially cancer, so really, I can’t give you an educated answer..anything I write would be more of a guess.
When it comes to muscle, your right, I’m not including temporary increases like water retention for creatine, glycogen etc…to me this is where the money is. It’s the difference maker. Greatly overlooked and almost always ignored, but it’s what makes all the difference.
B
Those are some excellent points.
I wish young bodybuilder wanna-be’s would stop and take consideration all the interesting points you make above. Some good stuff and worth considering…
Dave
Brad
As a fellow hockey fan, I think that analogy is a very apt one…..you always seem to have a knack for making a great point and doing so in a user-friendly way.
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Muscle Growth at all Costs? by Brad Pilon author of Eat Stop Eat…
Brad Pilon Blog – If I put a person, a gorilla and a hippopotamus together in a room, chances are you would easily pick out the human….
Hello,thanks for the post. Infos are pretty useful and saved me huge amount of time which I have spend on something else instead of googling
Im waiting for more, bye 
Hey just wondering you take on people who have claimed to gain something like 40 pounds of muscle in a year as a beginner? I guess that would be “wet” muscle as aposed to dry muscle maybe that would be the differance? Just curious
Joe,
Great question,
A lot of it has to do with Juvenile muscle growth, or just young growth in general.
If you look at standard height and weight growth curves, men are expected to gain about 20 pounds between the ages of 16 and 20 (they also gain a couple inches in height).
Add in weight training during this same time and you can see where people get close to 40 pound claims.
The other things is that since lean body mass is related to height, these larger claims also come from taller people.
Gaining 15 pounds of muscle over a summer are possible for a 19 year old pro athlete who is 6’4″.
It’s a little different for a 34 year old who is 5’10″ and has been training for 20 years.