TARGET VS TIME

HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE TO BULK UP?

Hey, what I’m about to tell you today will be nothing new for many people.  However, since new people regularly join us, this topic is still relevant.  After all, before starting anything, we first PLAN and estimate the costs we’ll incur.  Including time, the most important human resource.  That’s why I wanted to give the most honest answer to this question.

Unfortunately, most athletes and instructors do not plan muscle growth stages in any way, as they have little understanding in this respect.  Now I’ll try to explain how to plan your muscle gains and, accordingly, how long will it take to bulk them up.

BEGINNERS

Beginners are constantly asking: how soon will I get bulked up?  The question makes you smile only at the beginning. After a couple of years, such questions only get under the instructor’s skin.  Do you know why? Because it’s a philosophical question you can answer only if you know a particular person inside out.

After all, all people have very different genetic potential, financial capabilities and even motivation. Not to mention the level of knowledge, which is most often decisive: some do mumbo jumbo year after year, while some have correct workouts.   It’s often that you hear something like: you can gain 3-5 kg of mass in the first year at the gym.  Who is it about? What mass? Doing what at the gym?   That is all so personal.  For example, I did not gain a single kilogram in the first year of my workouts, because I was not doing that right. And another guy with good genetics gained 8 kg.    And the third guy with good genetics, motivation and the right knowledge gained15 kg.  Do you realize how many factors will affect your growth?

Moreover, if you want to grow your muscles as quickly as possible, it is not enough for you to know these factors, you should also take them into account when planning your growth. Good planning reduces the time and resources required to achieve maximum.   And good planning means the ability to set achievable goals. That is, the goals you can achieve taking into account all those factors (genetics, nutrition, knowledge) of yours.

You might set the target for a 50 cm arm .... and strike out.  If you now have a 37 cm arm and won’t be able to eat well, it will be hard to achieve even 38 cm.  But when you see that you failed to hit the “50 target”, you’re disappointed and leave this “losing battle”.  Everything happens just like in any other business.  The only difference is that bodybuilding is much more complicated and requires more attention than any business.

Never set difficult goals! Always set achievable goals!

do you have a 37 cm arm? Do you want  it to be 50 cm?   So set an ACHIEVABLE target for yourself for the next 5 months - to increase your hand to 38 cm. Then set the 39 cm target.....The desired 40 cm will be just around the corner.  Gradual and real targets will constantly encourage you for new higher achievements.   And when your arm is 49 cm with 50 heading, you’ll simply laugh: I’ve come through the most difficult 11 cm ..... and now I have only one left. Fear me, I’m coming!

Okay. Let us nevertheless try to boil the ocean and give at least some approximate time guidelines for achieving the desired size.  To do that, we’ll take an absolutely average person.  Let it be a man (guy). 178 cm, and 70 kg.  Not thin and not fat.  Having average economic opportunities. In other words, he can afford eating enough animal protein (dairy products, eggs, meat, fish), but he will not have enough money to buy specialized sports nutrition.  A perfectly natural situation in our country.    The guy is strongly motivated for workouts, and doesn’t believe himself to be the smartest (i.e., he is ready to follow the useful recommendations I give).  How can he plan his progress and how long will it take?

Anyone’s progress is built in Four STAGES:

1. 1.Stage. Preparing the body for(2-4 months)
2. 2.Stage. Hypertrophy (+2 years)
3. 3.Stage. Hyperplasia (+ 1-2 years)
4. 4.Stage. System adaptation.

PREPARING THE BODY for future growth is the shortest stage (lasts a couple of months), but is crucial for future growth.

Weight training is a very stressful for all systems of our body. When such stress becomes regular, the body starts rebuilding all its systems in such a way as to spend less energy and suffer less from such stress.

The first thing being changed by our body is the energy supply system.  Muscle contractions require lots of energy, so the body starts learning how to store and release more energy than before.  Increases muscle glycogen and ATP stores. Speeds up enzymes that influence energy exchange processes.

At the same time, muscles learn to work with higher energy efficiency, i.e. to spend less energy for new exercises.  This is achieved by a more coordinated muscle (motor unit) work under the influence of the central nervous system.  The more in concord muscle fibers contract, the less energy is required to complete the work.  In practice, this translates into a sharp strength growth. A person pressed a 50 kg barbell at the very first workout, and easily presses 60-70 kg a month after.  Not because his muscles got bigger, but because they learned to work more effectively. You probably noticed that when you start doing a new exercise, the result is altogether different from the one after a month or two of regular practice. Muscles learn!

That’s why you should handle small weights for the first few months, but do that very skillfully.  It’s not about muscle growth at this time. It’s about teaching them how to work properly.   A beginner should thoroughly follow the technique, trying to make it perfect in basic compound exercises.  After all, if he learns to feel and properly contract his muscles, it won’t be long before his further progress. Muscles will properly work and he’ll only have to apply a gradual load for their growth.

Moreover, nutrient (blood, oxygen, proteins, energy, etc.) transportation to muscles improves in the first couple of months with the expansion of the capillary network.

The ossa and ligamentous apparatus also adapt to the new load.  It thickens, increasing muscle strength.  That's another reason in lightweight scale’s favor. Give your body time to get used to the new stress.

The body systems will adapt to the new regular stress in the gym in a couple of months.  Muscles get bigger due to improved blood supply and accumulation of energy reserves.  BUT, it’s not muscle growth (myofibrils), it’s “accompanying" systems growth.  However, the muscles become visually bigger. Furthermore, as I said, there is a sharp strength growth. A person can add 10-20% strength and 2-4 kg body weight over these couple of months. His appearance is definitely changing for the better.   However, strength and weight growth slows down in a couple of months. Why?  Because it never happened! There was an improvement of muscle performance and growth of the systems “accompanying” muscles.   But muscle growth .... it occurs during the second stage ...

The second stage, MUSCLE HYPERTROPHY STAGE, begins a couple of months (2-4 months) after starting going to the gym.  This stage starts after all body systems are prepared for such growth.  The second stage will not begin until the first one is completed. Unless you have duly adjusted your energy performance and supply, there will be no significant muscular hypertrophy.  As long as the body can improve (adapt to workouts) in cheaper ways (improving energy performance and neuromuscular connections), it will not use more “expensive” ways (muscle cell growth), since it will not be cost-efficient.

The stage is all about maximizing the “swelling” of existing muscle fibers (muscle cells).  The stage is not at as long as most athletes think. For some reason, people think that it will take many, many years to maximize the buildup of their muscles.  That’s not true.  The muscle cell reaches its maximum size in 2 YEARS!!! In other words, 2 YEARS is enough to realize the maximum growth potential (HYPERTROPHY) of the existing muscle fibers.

Here are the numbers: a beginner raise his weight from 70 kg to 72-74 kg in the first couple of months. And over the next two years, he can actually reach the limit of growing existing muscle fibers, which will be expressed in extra 10-15 kg in the first year + 5-10 kg in the second year.   On average, a beginner with an average build, if not blinking and doing everything competently, can really improve his weight from 70 to 90 kg in a couple of years.  It will not be a competitive shape with 5% fat, of course.  It will be an “impure mass” with a little fat.

But how to grow further if muscle fibers are increased to their maximum and no longer increase in size? If existing muscle cells do not grow, create new muscle cells that will be still “capable” to grow in size.

Now we reach MUSCLE HYPERPLASIA, the third stage.  The stage is about achieving muscle fiber division with a special high-volume workout with lightweight.   Newly formed fibers can grow and give extra volume to our muscles.

If you have reached your hypertrophy limit up to this point, by switching to high-volume workout, you have an opportunity to significantly increase your muscles size by creating new muscle cells.  This will make an additional 5-10 kg of muscle mass in 1-2 years.  Provided that our beginner does everything right, he has a chance to increase his weight from 70 kg to 95-100 kg.

By the way, most bodybuilders intuitively combine the 2nd and 3rd stage into one long 3-4-year stage of maximum muscle gain.  It makes a lot of sense, because when you’re simultaneously exercising both for hypertrophy and hyperplasia, they help each other, therefore your progress is much faster.Now remember: you can reach the absolute ceiling of the body’s muscle growth abilities in 3-4 years. Further progress will stop.  How to bring it back?  It is necessary to improve the body’s abilities to enable serving more muscles.

I call this last, fourth stage the SYSTEM ADAPTATION STAGE. It involves developing all other body systems that limit the growth of your muscles.  You “expand and strengthen the foundation” to add new storeys to the building.  You work on energy, cardio, circulatory, nervous, tendon and other systems so that they become more powerful and allow you to build more muscles.

That’s what allows you to build truly huge muscles, but few people understand and use it. That is why few people have truly huge muscles.

The stage has no deadlines.  Those who arrived at its understanding are real professionals.  They can “strengthen their foundation” as much as they need, building larger and larger muscles.  That’s on a particular person when to stop and what to pay more attention to in his development.

Conclusion: if your goal is to have big muscles, it is better to follow a certain plan.  First, spend 2-4 months to prepare the body and muscles for future growth, then exercise for 3-5 years for hypertrophy and hyperplasia reaching the genetic ceiling.  After that, you should be paying much more attention to other body systems, divide into periods and use various workouts.   It’s very easy to reach 90 kg in a couple of years.  I know many guys who have increased their weight from 70 kg to 100 kg in 2-5 years, without pharmacology !!!  The key is to have a desire to learn and deliberately move forward.

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