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
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.
It’s too unpredictable, with so many things to consider and factor in. Newbie vs veteran. Clean diet vs shitty diet. Supplements or not.
I will be very glad when people stop thinking like this. Anyone who gives a specific number limit for how much muscle a person can EVER gain in a given period of time is NOT a biologist and is likely not very educated when it comes to any advanced sciences…or they are trying to sell you something.
You guys rush to be led by shit like this. Does anyone really think no human can gain more “.25lbs” of muscle in a week?
[quote]MaximusB wrote:
It’s too unpredictable, with so many things to consider and factor in. Newbie vs veteran. Clean diet vs shitty diet. Supplements or not. [/quote]
There still wouldn’t be a number limit across an entire species like this even if we all ate the same and were all at the same stage of development.
[quote]Professor X wrote:
I will be very glad when people stop thinking like this. Anyone who gives a specific number limit for how much muscle a person can EVER gain in a given period of time is NOT a biologist and is likely not very educated when it comes to any advances sciences…or they are trying to sell you something.
You guys rush to be led by shit like this. Does anyone really think no human can gain more “.25lbs” of muscle in a week?[/quote]
that would be the average gain/week
[quote]andy90 wrote:
Professor X wrote:
I will be very glad when people stop thinking like this. Anyone who gives a specific number limit for how much muscle a person can EVER gain in a given period of time is NOT a biologist and is likely not very educated when it comes to any advances sciences…or they are trying to sell you something.
You guys rush to be led by shit like this. Does anyone really think no human can gain more “.25lbs” of muscle in a week?
that would be the average gain/week [/quote]
Really? No shit. That doesn’t change what I wrote. If some newbie gains 40lbs in a year, will you guys say it is impossible?
It isn’t.
Genetics are the primary factor here and frankly, for anyone who is not at least at intermediate level to believe in shit like this can only hold back progress, not advance it along.
The problem is, newbies are taking this random info and using it to limit themselves. They are not simply acknowledging it as some observed piece of information from a personal trainer somewhere.
You’re all wrong. It’s actually .26 lbs/wk. Geezus, you’d think this would be common knowledge.
How about a better question would be, what would you aim for weight gain wise per week when bulking? Obviously some weeks may be lower and others higher, but at what rate do you like to gain weight (in order to get fat accumulation within tolerable limits).
I find 1 lb/wk is a good thing to shoot for
I honestly have never once worried about how much muscle I gained in a week. They only thing I worried about was if my strength went up.
[quote]jehovasfitness wrote:
I find 1 lb/wk is a good thing to shoot for[/quote]
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.
[quote]jehovasfitness wrote:
How about a better question would be, what would you aim for weight gain wise per week when bulking?
… I find 1 lb/wk is a good thing to shoot for[/quote]
[quote]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.[/quote]
You seem to be assuming he means a never-ending bulk, 52 weeks a year, at least a couple of years in a row. I don’t think he had that in mind.
[quote]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.[/quote]
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.
(and of course when dieting down you can go with a fixed rate, or try to. Didn’t mention that before because the topic is about muscle-gain, but yeah, in the internet, you always have to mention everything and every detail and possibility or people’s brains will end up imploding, it seems)
find out what your maintenance kcal are and up that by 500 and you should be able to gain a pound per week
[quote]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.[/quote]
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.
This is almost as retarded ad the guy who says you can only digest 25g of protein in an hour.
[quote]hardcoreraymond wrote:
This is almost as retarded ad the guy who says you can only digest 25g of protein in an hour.[/quote]
it’s per meal 
and the body will just poop out the rest of the chicken as it was eaten lol
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
jehovasfitness wrote:
How about a better question would be, what would you aim for weight gain wise per week when bulking?
… I find 1 lb/wk is a good thing to shoot for
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.
You seem to be assuming he means a never-ending bulk, 52 weeks a year, at least a couple of years in a row. I don’t think he had that in mind.[/quote]
not never-ending. I’ll do it for 10 yrs, you fools better watch out
[quote]Professor X wrote:
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]
Agreed on it being potentially a huge loss to not eat enough when in a potential growth spurt on account of being bound and determined that more than such-and-such muscle gain “can’t” occur.
In my own case, I know I certainly did not consciously eat extra during those unusually large spurts (unusual over the course of my training, not unusual relative to others.) It is possible that unconsciously I did, with the body giving the necessary feelings of needing to eat to get what it needed.
It also might be the case that being younger then, and able to eat a lot more generally than I can now without adding fat, that the body was able to divert calories and protein otherwise going to being burned for fast metabolism instead to growth purposes. Don’t know. It is the case that children have growth spurts without apparently eating any more during them. (Not talking about the sustained rapid growth of puberty, but younger children adding a half-inch or whatever in height in one week or less, as they will do from time to time.)
It certainly would be a shame for a beginner to restrict his eating because his scale weight was going up rapidly and he believed some article or book telling him that that had to be fat.
[quote]jehovasfitness wrote:
hardcoreraymond wrote:
This is almost as retarded ad the guy who says you can only digest 25g of protein in an hour.
it’s per meal and the body will just poop out the rest of the chicken as it was eaten lol[/quote]
god i hate pooping out chicken chunks.
i pee out pink strawberry milkshake too when my 25 out of 50g of protein in my shake doesnt digest.
silly me