Editor's Note:  Are you weight training and wondering how much muscle gain to expect in a year? In this article, Christian Finn outlines the challenges to gaining muscle and helps you set realistic goals.

For anyone who feels trapped in the body of a skinny teenager, putting on weight can seem painfully and frustratingly slow. Some people gain muscle very quickly. Others, however, make little or no progress at all.

If you're trying to figure out how much muscle you can expect to gain over the course of a year, the simple answer is that there is no simple answer.

There are so many factors influencing your progress. Not many people can do nothing but go to the gym, eat and sleep for a whole year.

Holidays, illness and injury all get in the way. Your partner complains that you go to the gym too often and demands that you spend more "quality time" together. You work late for a few nights and decide to skip training for a week, vowing to "start fresh" on Monday.

All of these things can slow your progress by weeks—maybe even months. In other words, a "perfect" year of training and eating is rare. That's why I think it's a better idea to set your goals over a much shorter period. Six weeks should be long enough for you to see measurable results.

The "average" male, if there is such a thing, with a year or two of training behind them can expect to gain roughly 2-4% of their initial weight after six weeks of regular resistance exercise [3, 4]. Although I haven't seen many studies on muscle growth in women, my best guess is that gains in the "average" female are approximately half those seen in males.

For example, someone who weighs 180 pounds might expect to gain an extra four, five, maybe even seven pounds of lean muscle over a six-week period.

This assumes, of course, that you're eating enough of the right kind of foods. If you need more guidance on diet, more information is available elsewhere on my site.

It's not realistic to gain weight at this rate forever. Over the course of a year, it's rare to add more than 25 pounds of muscle. Sure, you might gain more than 25 pounds in weight. But, unless you're using drugs, gaining this much lean muscle in one year or less is very hard to do.

These figures are based on the results of studies using trained subjects with a body fat percentage of 10-15%. Whether extremely lean or very overweight people would get the same results is hard to say.

It's also quite normal to put on a little fat at the same time. So, for every five pounds of muscle you gain, expect to add a pound or two of fat. Although some people want to gain mass while at the same time maintaining very low levels of body fat, this is actually very hard to do.

Why? The issue may be psychological. If you've just spent the last six months working your butt off to get a six-pack, the last thing you'll want to do is put the fat right back on again. Someone in this position may be very reluctant to eat the quantity of food necessary to gain muscle at a decent rate.

The problem may also be hormonal. Studies have found a link between a low level of body fat and low testosterone levels [5]. Dr. Richard Strauss, writing in the December 1993 edition of The Physician and Sportsmedicine, describes the case of an athlete who was closely observed at monthly intervals for two years. The individual had never used anabolic steroids, and had normal hormone levels during the off-season.

During competition, the athlete reduced his body fat percentage to 4-5%, which is extremely low. This was accompanied by a drop in testosterone. His sexual activity dropped to almost zero, despite the fact he had a very active sex life before losing weight. Once he regained the lost weight, his testosterone levels (and sex life) returned to normal.

Because of this, I think it's a good idea to accept the fact you'll gain some fat while on the mass-building phase of your program.

Of course, not everyone will build muscle at the same rate. Some people are genetically predisposed to gaining weight, and will see impressive results after only a few months. Others will build muscle more slowly.

Editor's Note: What I believe Christian is referring to here is the three main body types - ectomorph, endomorph, and mesomorph. The ectomorph is the "skinny guy" that has a tough time building muscle or gaining weight. The endomorph is just the opposite - an overweight guy who typically carries around too much fat and tends to have trouble losing weight. A mesomorph is the "natural athlete" and has perhaps the ideal body type with a well-formed physique and can gain or lose weight fairly easily.

Your rate of progress also depends on a principle known as the ceiling of adaptation. The closer you are to your ceiling of adaptation, the slower your gains will be. In other words, someone who's been training for 10 years will gain muscle more slowly than someone who is just starting out.

Be realistic. If you have a body designed for long-distance running, it's unlikely that you'll be winning the Mr. America contest in the next few years.

All you can do is get the most out of your own body. There'll be times when you see results very quickly. But there will also be times when you feel like you're stuck on a plateau, and nothing seems to be working. When you get discouraged, what counts is where you end up, not how long it takes you to get there.

Remember that the progress you make when you start training is not always a good indication of how far you can go. Not all training programs are equally effective. Some work well. Others are little more than a waste of time.

So many people out there work hard, but just don't see the results they deserve. That's because they were never really told what to do.

Don't be duped into thinking you're a "hard gainer" because what you're doing now isn't working. If the program you're using hasn't been working for the last six months, it won't suddenly start working tomorrow.

Consistency of effort is important. But your body isn't a machine. Simply doing the same ineffective things over and over again (only harder) will lead to frustration and disappointment.

If you're desperate to gain muscle, and nothing you've tried has worked so far, an updated version of the Build More Muscle program is now available.

Although the previous two versions of the Build More Muscle program (BMM) worked well for almost everyone who tried them, this new version is easier to follow and more flexible.

The program did include a fatigue index, which was designed to help you gauge how much effort to put into each set. Though useful, it did make the program quite complicated and difficult to follow. This has now been removed. The guidelines on repetition speed and tempo have also been made easier to follow.

BMM 3.0 is much more flexible and includes both 4-day and 5-day split routines, along with links to a highly effective 3-day split.

I'll also explain how to get each workout done in less time without doing less work for each muscle group. Using this technique, I've been able to get most of the workouts finished in less than 45 minutes. Plus, the leg workouts have been changed so they won't leave you feeling wiped out for the next two days!

You can click here now to learn more about the program.

Read other articles by Christian Finn

About the Author

Christian Finn is a Certified Personal Trainer and holds a masters degree with distinction in exercise science. He's lectured at a number of universities and private training organizations around the United Kingdom on fitness training, weight loss and the effective use of nutritional supplements. He writes extensively on the subject and his articles have been published in numerous magazines, leading industry journals and websites worldwide, including Men's Health, Men's Health Muscle, Fit Pro (April/May 2001), CAM magazine (February 2003), Image (January 1997), Zest (March 2004), and Body Life magazine (March/April 1997). He was also featured in the July 2004 issue of Muscle & Fitness (UK edition). His website, TheFactsAboutFitness.com, is dedicated to providing its members up-to-date, unbiased information and research on the world of fitness.

References

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2. Paddon-Jones, D., Leveritt, M., Lonergan, A., & Abernethy, P. (2001). Adaptation to chronic eccentric exercise in humans: the influence of contraction velocity. European Journal of Applied Physiology, 285, 466-471

3. Volek, J.S., Duncan, N.D., Mazzetti, S.A., Staron, R.S., Putukian, M., Gomez, A.L, Pearson, D.R, Fink, W.J., & Kraemer WJ. (1999). Performance and muscle fiber adaptations to creatine supplementation and heavy resistance training. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 31, 1147-1156

4. McLester, J.R. Jr., Bishop, P., & Guilliams, M.E. (2000). Comparison of 1 day and 3 days per week of equal-volume resistance training in experienced subjects. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 14, 273–281

5. Strauss, R.H., Lanese, R.R., & Malarkey, W.B. (1985). Weight loss in amateur wrestlers and its effect on serum testosterone levels. Journal of the American Medical Association, 254, 3337-3338