Rate of Muscle Growth in a Specific Body Part?

CT, most have seen the guidelines of max muscle growth being capped at about 2lbs a month. In your experience is there a max rate at which a specific body part can grow? I.e focusining on arms for 1 month, etc.

First the 2lbs is an average. It comes from Fred Hatfield who says that a non-beginner, natural lifter cannot build more (baring some exceptions like being a genetic freak or regaining lost muscle) more than 25lbs in a year of training. And that is if EVERYTHING is done perfectly. So it averages out to 2lbs per month.

In reality it’s likely lower than that. Very rarely have I seen a non-beginner, natural lifter gain 25lbs of MUSCLE in a year. I would say that 10, maybe 15lbs is more realistic… but even then… let’s be honest and objective for a minute how many people do you know gained 40lbs of solid muscle (not a mix of muscle, water, glycogen and fat) in 4 years? I’m betting that few know people like that.

You can gain more WEIGHT. But it will be from fat, water, intramuscular triglycerides, added capillaries to support the muscle, etc. From experience with every pound of muscle added your body weight normally goes up by 1.5lbs even if you are not gaining subcutaneous fat. Gaining 10lbs of muscle without adding any fat would trust translate to a gain of 15lbs. And Most natural trainees to achieve that 10lbs gain of muscle would likely need to gain 20-25lbs.

Furthermore, like I mentioned the 2lbs (more like 1lb) is an average. It is possible to gain more tissue in a month, and on some month you will gain less.

As for how much can you make an individual muscle grow I can’t answer that. There are so many factors involved that even a supercomputer could not answer you. Sorry

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Hey CT can you revisit rep-ranges & performance/strength vs “hypertrophy”. This is a dead horse beat often but there’s a very vocal camp that would say 3x10 produces more hypertrophy than a 5x6 or 10x3.

Even if the latter bar is moved as powerfully as possible.

Then you have some camps say the exact oppposite (better to do heavier work for lower reps but way more sets, total tonnage/volume is what’s important).

Where do you stand on this? I used to think you were the 2nd camp, but your recent programs reflect a much more of the former.

And if the maximum gain is 25 lbs of muscle…then does this even matter (i want to say it DOES matter though…even in natural guys over the years).

Performance/preference wise, well I’m used to multiple sets of low reps, ramping up so thats what i enjoy the most. It’s very different feeling than 2-3 warm up sets followed by a top blast set thats in the higher rep range.

If you post a thread about it maybe. But not if you post your question in an unrelated thread

oops sry starting!