12/3/2019
B: oatmeal and banana
L: rice and veggies and BBQ sauce
D: Potatoes and corn and raw veggies and apple
S: orange
Good day overall. Slept ok, but still not sleeping as I would like. My expectations of changing my sleeping schedule due to my change in work schedule seemed to go smoothly for the first week or two, but now seems to be not as good as I had hoped. Still, its a work in progress and with all the other changes I've made, especially in my new exercise schedule, I have to expect that it will take some time getting back to a normal sleep schedule. You can't expect decades of a normal sleeping pattern to be overcome in a matter of a few weeks or months and I suspect given my age that is even more true. None-the-less we will prevail over time.
Q: So how much muscle can one gain through resistance training?
A: No one knows for sure but there do seem to be some definite boundries to human potential. Most would agree that for men, the average amount of muscle gain (given proper exercise over a lifetime) would be about 40-50 lbs of muscle. For women its about half this.
Q: and how long will this take?
A:Again, no one knows for sure, but Dr Casey Butt, one of the foremost authorities on anthropometric data of bodybuilders and strength athletes says that the average man can reach their genetic muscular potential in about 10 years of training. That seems like a long time for many. However thats because muscular/strength growth is not at all linear. You gain more in the early years of training and growth slows down over time as you get closer to your genetic potential. Much in the same way that weight loss is faster in the beginning and then slows down over time as you get closer to your minimum weight.
So how fast can the average person gain muscle/strength. according to Dr Butt. The average male can attain 88% of their genetic potential in only 3 years of training and about 97% of their genetic potential in 5 years. That sounds much better right! In only 3 years of hard training you can reach almost 90% of your genetic potential of muscle/strength growth. I think thats very encouraging.
Now of course you have to temper this with age. Your potential at 20-30 ears of age is greater than your potential at 40-60 years of age. So the younger you start, the better off you are.
Some other interesting data from Dr Butt:
* The average man can gain approximately 10-20 lbs (some say the upper limit may be closer to 25 lbs) of muscle in their first year of training and every additional year of training they will gain about half that amount. So if you gain 20 lbs in your first year, you could expect to gain 10 lbs in your second year and 5 pounds in your 3 year and 2.5 pounds in your 4 year and 1.25 pounds in your fifth year, etc...
* Again for a woman it would be about half that of a male.
* Of course this is all predicated on hard,proper training, adequate rest, and proper nutrition. Don't get this right and all these numbers are just a pipe dream.
Now the best source I've found on the theory of all this that includes references and calculators to determine your own genetic potential based on various body part measurements can be found in these 2 long articles:
https://www.strongerbyscience.com/your- ... al-part-1/https://www.strongerbyscience.com/your- ... al-part-2/Also, a lot of good info can be found at Dr Butt's site:
http://www.weightrainer.net/articles.html#Casey_ButtThat should keep you all reading for a good long while
By the way, Dr Butt did write a short 50 page e-book on "Your Muscular Potential" thats based on over 6 years of work on gathering anthropometric data on over 300 of the best bodybuilders and strength athletes since the 1940's till now to create some very interesting calculations on what you can expect given your particular body measurements. Its a great read but does cost $10 and probably not so useful to those that just want to have an idea on what their potential might be...the above links are free and will pretty much get you what you want to know.
Keep it up
