Hey gang - Just a real quick tip here. From my history of researching different ectomorph articles and blogs over the years, I've noticed and discovered many different posts and also advertisements from magazines, TV commercials, supplement companies, etc that claim you can gain 40 lbs of muscle in about one year, for example. This makes me want to scream for days!
There is a harsh and very UGLY truth that you must ACCEPT as a bodybuilder, and boy does it ever suck. So here it is...
I'm sure you've seen the kinds of crazy advertisements and claims I mentioned above. If not, then that means you are a total newbie, which there's nothing wrong with :) but you will definitely see them plastered all over the place eventually.
Despite what all these supplement companies and magazines do to try to indoctrinate you, they're full of BS. Even if your diet is 100% ON POINT and your training is FLAWLESS, with PERFECT recovery periods and SUPERB supplementation, below are the REALISTIC results that you can expect in muscle gain in a variety of different time tables.
In 1 Day
Building muscle is kind of like the earth building a mountain. If takes a lot of different forces for the magic to happen and it happens at a painfully slow rate. Even with flawless training, diet, supplementation, and recovery, your actual rate of muscle growth per day is no more than a tiny thimble sized container of muscle volume. That's it. And don't forget, that's with perfect everything, covered above. And this tiny thimble amount of muscle is spread out across your body. Don't bother checking the mirror looking for your gains the day after you worked out.
In 1 Month
If we compound the same 1 day, flawless results from above over the course of 1 month, you'll get about an 8oz cup of muscle. Again, this is going to be semi-equally spread across your body of course. Can you understand why people get discouraged after looking in the mirror after a month of working out? There's no chance in hell they're ever notice 8oz of muscle gain on their entire body. It's harsh, but it's the truth.
In 1 Year
This is about how much muscle you can expect of perfect physical fitness and dieting in a year. Right around 5-10lbs of hard earned muscle. The picture to the right is a 2-liter bottle of volume. This would represent about 5 lbs of muscle. Twice that amount if you're really lucky. Most likely as an ectomorph, I'll doubt we'll get that lucky. Even with 5-10 lbs of muscle, this again is spread out across the whole body. How much results could one notice after a year of training? Clearly, we now understand that this process takes some serious time. A marathon, not a race.
In 8 Years
Now you can clearly see results! Here's the good news: After 8 years of thimble-sized gains each day, you can accumulate a muscle volume average of maybe 60-80 lbs. Sounds like it takes forever, doesn't it? Well it does! Physical fitness is not just a fad or a quick training regimen to get ready for the beach. It is a life style. A long term life style.
The Ugly Truth About Building Muscle
by Eli Georgaras | September 8, 2014