How fast can you build muscle mass? Alan Aragon will give his prediction back in October 2022

It’s a question almost every strength athlete asks themselves, whether their goal is bodybuilding, powerlifting or just looking better.

In Alan Aragon’s Research Review (October 2022), he provides one of the most nuanced and realistic estimates of how fast muscle growth you can expect – depending on how far along you are in your training career.

In his review, Alan Aragon gives a realistic estimate of how much muscle you can build depending on where you are in your training journey.

Beginners

• Can often do recomposition (build muscle + lose fat simultaneously).
• Realistic muscle growth:
  ➡️ 1-2 lbs (0.45-0.9 kg) lean mass per month
  • But there have been examples of people who have gained up to 8-9kg in 12 months, but as he says, it’s not realistic for most people.

Intermediates

• Still good progress, but not as fast as in the beginner phase.
• Realistic muscle growth:
  ➡️ 1-2 lbs (0.45-0.9 kg) per month
  (But requires more optimal training, diet and structure than for beginners.

Advanced

• Closer to genetic potential → much slower progress.
• Recomposition is largely unrealistic here.
• Realistic muscle growth:
  ➡️ 0.5-1 lb (0.25-0.45 kg) per month

Avatar

If we assume that our avatar has been training for several years and at the same time performs the leg extension exercise in our example, which they have been doing for a long time.

What does this mean for our avatar.

If you think about it. So if things go well, you might gain 400g on a monthly basis, spread out over 10 different muscle groups, corresponding to about 40g per muscle on a monthly basis.
That’s 10g increase in muscle mass per week per muscle group.

 

With that in mind, it’s also easier to understand why it can be difficult to make large increases in kg from week to week when they potentially only have 10g of extra muscle mass, only about half of which is contractile tissue.

Especially when for our avatar it will primarily be due to an increase in muscle mass, or because our avatar will compensate more than normal (which is not the goal) (see under the section “Mechanisms that cause strength gains” where the different causes of strength gains are discussed)

 

It therefore doesn’t seem realistic with big jumps after a little mental calculation, which is also what we see in practice if the exercise is to be standardized.

 

But won’t that be incredibly slow progression?

Not really. Let’s say you gain 250g per week. Over 52 weeks this will accumulate to an increase of 13kg.

It doesn’t sound like much, but you don’t see many people doing such an increase in, for example, DB curl on an annual basis.

 

For example, if you increase by 0.5kg a week on squat, bench or deadlift. Equivalent to 26kg in just one lift, this would mean an increase of about 78kg in your total on an annual basis, which very few powerlifters manage to achieve when they are more trained.

Mechanisms that lead to strength gains

We know there are several mechanisms that contribute to strength gains:

1. Improvements in coordination
2. Increase in voluntary activation
3. Decrease in antagonist co-activation
4. Hypertrophy
5. Increase in tendon stiffness
6. Increase in lateral force transmission

 

Coordination

Coordination adaptation is a quick training adaptation especially in the example of our avatar, where we are dealing with a leg extension exercise that is very stable and requires very little coordination.

We know from Green et al. 2013 that 10-15 contractions may be sufficient for familiarization protocol in high stability isolation exercises for trained individuals. Studies are good enough. The study is on isometric dorsi flexion, but I don’t see that as a negative, because even though the study is on trained individuals, it’s still a movement they’re not used to training, which again shows how quickly this mechanism maxes out in stable isolation exercises.
(Familiarization protocol is also used to remove the co-founder that may be present in studies if coordination is the primary adaptation mechanism leading to strength gains)

 

For our avatar, coordination adaptations are unlikely to result in significantly greater strength gains.

 

Voluntary activation

Let’s start by stating that an increase in voluntary activation will only be a good thing for our avatar and increase our growth potential (more hypertrophy) because our avatar will now recruit fibers in the leg extension movement that he/she previously did not recruit = more fibers will experience mechanical tension and therefore more growth.

 

Voluntary activation is a training adaptation that primarily only occurs when the coordination adaptations have been picked up to a higher degree (which our avatar has done a long time ago). Because when we have mastered the coordination of an exercise, we can also pick up high recruitment of an exercise.
To stimulate increased voluntary activation, we need a high degree of voluntary activation, which is why it only occurs after we have mastered the coordination of a given exercise. Ansdell, P. et al (2020).

 

Voluntary activation is a training adaptation that you don’t know for sure how long it will continue to increase. It can potentially increase throughout one’s training career, as we always see signs of innervation deficit even in highly trained individuals.
Balshaw et al. 2019. Also showed in their study that there is a large increase at the beginning of one’s training career (the study was also on a very stable exercise, with high frequency and motivation due to encouragement from the researchers), and then it gradually decreased from the period between 3 months of training experience to about 4 years of training experience.

 

Voluntary activation may have an impact on strength gains for our avatar, but will also be limited as he has been training for a long time and has already practiced this exercise a lot.

 

Antagonist co-activation

Antagonist co-activation is also a training adaptation that is both highly initial and long-lasting. Among other things, they also saw this in Balshaw et al. 2019saw a large decrease in antagonist co-activation within the first 3 months, and still a small decrease 4 years later.

 

Based on our avatar, you wouldn’t expect it to have the biggest impact from training to training for our avatar either.

 

Mustard stiffness?

In several strength training studies, there is no difference between 8-12 weeks or longer when it comes to increasing tendon stiffness Bohm et al. 2015. So in our avatar, it’s unlikely that increased tendon stiffness would significantly improve our strength.

 

Lateral force transmission

First, we need to understand what lateral force transmission is:
Muscle cells transfer the majority of their force laterally to the surrounding collagen layer (endomysium), rather than longitudinally to the tendon. The surrounding collagen layer then transmits the force longitudinally to the tendon. However, not all sarcomeres inside the muscle fiber transmit this force laterally. By increasing the number of costamers connecting the sarcomeres to the surrounding collagen layer, the amount of lateral force transfer can be increased, ultimately increasing maximal strength.

 

We know that an increase in lateral force transmission will lead to an increase in strength Erskine et al. 2011even if there is no increase in contractile tissue, but this is due to better force transmission through the ECM from our sarcomeres.

Costamers are known to increase after strength training programs lasting a few months, but it is unknown whether such changes happen quickly or slowly during this period. It is also unknown if the changes reach a plateau or if they continue to increase after the first few months of training. Li et al. 2013. However, based on the knowledge we have now, we probably wouldn’t base increased strength gains of our avatar to come primarily from an increase in lateral force transmission