Some people have always said that the maximum amount of muscle you can gain in a month is about 1 to 2 pounds. That’s a lot of lean tissue to gain for someone starting out with bodybuilding.

Imagine if you gain 2 pounds per month in a year that is 24 pounds. Muscle gain claims like this often encourage the new bodybuilder to work out hard at the gym in their first few weeks.

Usually the first five pounds are extremely fast for the young bodybuilder’s body. The body adapts, hardens and begins to take shape slightly.

The lifter feels the difference and continues to train. After 2-3 months, the rookie lifter usually stops winning and becomes frustrated. He is confused by the promise of supplement companies that there is no end to muscle growth. He watches his stifling progress and eventually becomes discouraged. Then stop lifting weights altogether.

As with many things in life, the novice bodybuilder forgets the principles of patience, dedication, and consistency. In a way, this is the fault of the popular media. Massive muscle gains are promised in all the magazine stands and bodybuilding websites in a few months.

Twenty to twenty five pounds in 8 weeks are common claims. But in reality, the amount of lean muscle tissue someone can build over a period of time is not constant.

In the first 12 months of lifting, 20 to 30 pound gains are commonly heard. Although they usually forget to mention that these people were already starting to gain weight even if they never lifted weights. Think of a slim teenager who weighs 145 pounds at a height of just over 6 feet and claims to have gained 20 pounds of muscle in 6 months. He forgets to mention that this happened during his growth phase.

So how much lean muscle weight can someone really gain if their training, sleep, and diet are correct? Probably 10-20 pounds per year for normal people. Genetics geeks can gain up to 40 pounds of muscle. The earnings in the second year will be half. Earnings in the third year were cut in half from the second. And possibly stop at the end of the fourth year. Gaining 40 pounds of muscle naturally in 4 years is amazing and would be a good goal, especially for the young learner.

Older weightlifters know that things go much slower as they get older. Without the help of steroids, it could be modest to maintain weight and reduce body fat. However, older weightlifters tend to have too much body fat. He wins half that a younger lifter is tremendously more mature.

In summary, late adolescent weightlifters can expect 20 pounds of muscle in the first year, 10 in the second, and 5 by the end of the third. Afterward, those gains will stabilize and become increasingly difficult to achieve. This, of course, can consistently train, eat, and sleep all the time for those first four years.

That my friends is the truth about how much muscle you can build naturally.