[quote]Professor X wrote:
hawaiilifterMike wrote:
jehovasfitness wrote:
I find 1 lb/wk is a good thing to shoot for
Would that be considered on the high side - 52 lbs per year? In a couple of years you would be 300+ pounds at that rate.
Wait, do you really think you can predict how much muscle you will gain in a year?
Do you want to know WHY you can’t? Because your body does NOT grow linearly. It grows in spurts…meaning the guy who truly believes he can only gain “.25lbs of muscle in a week” could be eating less when his body is ready to grow much more.
You people need less time on line and more time in text books.[/quote]
You’ve saved all of these lines in a word doc and just cut and paste them at this point, right?? lol
[quote]Cephalic_Carnage wrote:
hawaiilifterMike wrote:
jehovasfitness wrote:
I find 1 lb/wk is a good thing to shoot for
Would that be considered on the high side - 52 lbs per year? In a couple of years you would be 300+ pounds at that rate.
I don’t like any of this “x amount of lb per week” stuff, to be honest. Sometimes my strength increases quickly (in the moderate-high rep ranges) and my muscle-mass accumulates quickly as well then… Then there are periods where things don’t go as fast or nearly stagnate… Etc.
Shooting for an exact number is maybe good after a contest or in general when regaining mass you previously had, because that can be done in a fairly linear fashion… But other than that…
In the end you can adhere to your 1 lb a week rule and gain mostly fat still if you don’t make the necessary improvements in the gym.
And then, if you do train in a way (and eat in a way) that allows you to get strong very fast, limiting yourself to 1lb a week come hell or high priest doesn’t make any sense…
Newbie gains may be somewhat linear (strength progression wise at least), but afterwards, things don’t happen at fixed rates at all.
[/quote]
Yah…I don’t even really weigh myself anymore. I honestly think at this point that hurts me more than anything. If I am lighter it just makes me want to pig out and in the end just accumulates more fat. I’ve found it’s more beneficial to log my strength gains and rely mostly on the mirror and maybe weigh myself once every few weeks.
Wait, do you really think you can predict how much muscle you will gain in a year?
Do you want to know WHY you can’t? Because your body does NOT grow linearly. It grows in spurts…meaning the guy who truly believes he can only gain “.25lbs of muscle in a week” could be eating less when his body is ready to grow much more.
You people need less time on line and more time in text books.[/quote]
Maybe less time online and more time in the gym as well…
What? Don’cha know that if your muscle gain exceeds 0.25 lb per week, you are spending too much time in the gym and soon overtraining will set in if you don’t cut back immediately???
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
What? Don’cha know that if your muscle gain exceeds 0.25 lb per week, you are spending too much time in the gym and soon overtraining will set in if you don’t cut back immediately???[/quote]
CT said something to the effect that the AVERAGE OVER THE COURSE OF THE ENTIRE YEAR FOR AN AVERAGE TRAINEE MAY BE AROUND .25LBS/WEEK OR 2 POUNDS A MONTH OR 15-25lbs a year. AVERAGE. AVERAGE. AVERAGE. AVERAGE.
We got that now?
He wasn’t talking about noobs. He wasn’t talking about those on AAS. He wasn’t talking about Prof. X or Joe Schmo wannabe or dedicated trainee number 1.
So what happens is people take single line in a thousand word article and fuck it all to hell.
I’m as noob as noob gets. Was 145lbs, at 5’6’, in September and started lifting 4-5 days a week at the end of November and have so far put on 20lbs of lean mass in 6 months so I guess I’ve maxed out for the year!
Get in the fucking gym, shut up, lift. If you’re not getting stronger or bigger than something is wrong. Either your workout intesity sucks (likely) or your diet sucks (even more likely). There is no one best training program for everyone because everyone has gotten big and strong on different programs at different times of their training life. There is no one best nutrition program for everyone because everyone has gotten and strong on different eating strategies be they low carb, high carb, low fat, high fat, cycling, Scott Abel cycle, yada, yada, yada.
Go find what works. Once it stops working as well, change it. I’ve gotten bigger and stronger while eating big and I’ve gotten bigger and stronger while eating low carb.
Less posting, more lifting…I’m out, sign on the door says “Gone Lifting”.
Wait, do you really think you can predict how much muscle you will gain in a year?
Do you want to know WHY you can’t? Because your body does NOT grow linearly. It grows in spurts…meaning the guy who truly believes he can only gain “.25lbs of muscle in a week” could be eating less when his body is ready to grow much more.
You people need less time on line and more time in text books.
Maybe less time online and more time in the gym as well…[/quote]
I average 14+ hours in the gym per week, but as BantamRunner pointed out I am lacking in both intensity and diet right now.
[quote]hardcoreraymond wrote:
Bill Roberts wrote:
What? Don’cha know that if your muscle gain exceeds 0.25 lb per week, you are spending too much time in the gym and soon overtraining will set in if you don’t cut back immediately???
to a 1600 calorie diet of granola and wheatgrass.[/quote]
Woah there wouldn’t want to get too many carbs, better to just drink lots of water, I mean we swallow on average a handful of bugs a year that has to cover our caloric needs for weight loss.
Well, we all know that >.25 or even 1lb per week is possible, but what do you guys suggest aiming for during a bulk?
Does it mainly depend on your training status and BF levels?
For example, would a newbie ecto at 8% BF be wise to aim for >2lbs per week, while a more intermediate or advanced lifter at >12-15% BF be wise to shoot for something more like 1lb per week or even less?
On fat gain: personal opinion is, I think a fat gain of more than half a pound per week is wasted, resulting in more time later lost to gains on account of dieting than any benefit from the yet-faster fat gain.
However that is hard to calibrate: it’s more after the fact that one realizes, yeah, I put on more fat in the last 8 weeks than I should have, probably 7 or 8 lb worth rather than about 4 lb. So that is just something to remember for next time, rather than to bemoan this time or to be overly cautious to avoid. By the time its definitely detectable – a difference between 0.5 lb added fat per week and 1.0 lb – it’s many weeks in already.
Now on LBM gain, a per week figure shouldn’t be picked, IMO.
Well I could say maybe 1lb of weight gain per week is a decent guideline, under most circumstances, and too much more than that is likely just fat gain…or I could just get all snarky and tell you to read lots of biology books…take your pick
[quote]JMAX wrote:
Well I could say maybe 1lb of weight gain per week is a decent guideline, under most circumstances, and too much more than that is likely just fat gain…or I could just get all snarky and tell you to read lots of biology books…take your pick ;)[/quote]
It’s funny that you’ve missed the point completely.
[quote]pasteee wrote:
I’ve been looking for that T-Nation article (via searchbox) discussing the max amount of muscle gain per week (i think it’s something like .25 lbs)…Does anybody know which article im talking about???
thank you[/quote]
Okay okay, I’ll help you out.
Here are the ingredients for what you’re looking to do (gain muscle hopefully, since you’re in the BB forum)
Take 1 T-Nation article (in your case about muscle mass gain)
add a liberal serving of salt
Go straight to the BB and T-Cell forum for filtering of said message
Mix that with a serving of what everyone here does in real life
Stir on a regular basis with regular high intensity training and good diet for the next …years
And you should have a nicely built beefcake build.
Divide the total amount of lean body mass you gain in that time by the number of weeks you’ve trained, and you’ll have YOUR average of what YOU can add for muscle mass per week.
Oh, and as you’re following the previous recipe, watch out for the impending kidney and liver failure that comes with adding copious amounts of muscle mass
(that’s still one of the most priceless things I’ve read on these forums)
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
It wouldn’t matter where it was, because any such thing giving any figure remotely like that is just wrong, and any quite-different figure large enough to cover all situations would be useless for you to have anyway as it would be unlikely to be personally relevant, and even if you did fall at the very high end of what is possible, it would be untrue for you the extreme, vast majority of the weeks of your training career.
But if you want a figure, just as a personal example, pre steroid use I twice gained 5 lb in one week without gaining any fat and without doing anything different. Just completely inexplicable growth spurts: no different eating, no different training. So to say the least, 1/4 lb per week as a limit is ridiculous.[/quote]
Agreed about the growth spurt theory, it sounds crazy but i can almost tell, inherent feeling when i’m hitting a spurt, 170’s to 185 spurt, plateau for a bit 190’s for a long while than bang 205-210lbs range. Bottom line, body responsiveness is in a state of constant variance, all we can do is work hard and provide our bodies the raw materials to grow, it’s not always going to be in a sort of linear progression or when we dictate it to be. It sounds crazy but the times i’ve felt it, i’ve mentioned to my girlfriend and others, watch i feel a growth spurt happening and then bang i’m 5-10lbs heavier and i hold it. I know it’s fucking nutty bat shit talk but it’s the TRUTH.
…From reading all the posts, I realized I should stay away from such meticulous little details like
.25 lbs/week and stuff like that…I forget that it is just “the average” and there’s a whole lot of room for variations. I just mentioned it b/c I’m going for the cleanest bulk attainable. But, in the real world, nothing is ideal and all I can do is train hard, eat smart & alot and progress from there…
