How fast can you build muscle?
Building muscle takes much longer than most people realise. It’s a slow — almost excruciatingly slow — process that can feel discouraging when you don’t see the muscle definition you want. There’s no shortage of people and products making outrageous claims about how fast it’s possible to build muscle.
Pick up any of the popular fitness magazines, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that building muscle is the easiest thing in the world. So, how fast can you put on muscle — really? The honest answer is that I don’t know. And nobody else does either. Muscle growth varies so much from person to person that it’s almost impossible to predict in advance exactly how much muscle you’ll gain over a certain period of time.
But if you’re on a quest for bigger muscles, it’s important to start your new workout plan with the right expectations. Lifting weights is the best way to build muscle over time. Research supports resistance training, especially weightlifting, as the best method for inducing hypertrophy (the scientific term for muscle growth).
Building muscle involves the repair of microtraumas in your muscle fibres.
How long does it take to build muscle?
There’s no one muscle-building timeline, because several factors affect your ability to build muscle mass, including:
Your protein intake: While all macro nutrients have their roles, protein is king when it comes to building muscle. Your muscles need adequate protein to repair themselves after the stress of weight training. Without enough protein, muscle growth stagnates.
Your calorie intake: If you don’t eat enough calories on a daily basis, you won’t build muscle even if you eat a lot of protein. To build muscle, your body must create new tissue, and it can’t create something from nothing. Extra fuel from extra calories expedites muscle recovery and growth. This is one reason many people never reach their muscle growth goals — they aren’t willing to deal with the extra body fat that comes along with a muscle building phase.
Your sleep schedule: Lifting weights while sleep-deprived isn’t a smart strategy. You might see some gains, but you definitely can’t optimise muscle growth when you don’t give your body a fighting chance to recover.
Your lifting routine: If you’re trying to build muscle, you should know about two key strength training concepts: frequency and volume. Frequency refers to how often you train a muscle or muscle group, while volume refers to the total load you stress a muscle with.
For example, if you perform three sets of 10 reps on squats using 100 pounds, your total volume is 3,000 pounds. More volume and higher frequency typically equate to more muscle, unless you reach the point of over training.
Your training age: The more advanced you are, the less muscle growth you’ll see (yeah, that sounds backward). Everyone has a maximum genetic potential for muscle growth, and the closer you get to yours, the harder it gets to build muscle.
Your actual age: Like a lot of things, building muscle gets harder as you get older. Sarcopenia, or loss of muscle mass and function, is actually a big problem in older adults. That’s one reason why it’s so important to stay active as you get older.
Other major factors include your genetic potential for building muscle (which is impossible to quantify without lab testing, and even then, kind of wishy-washy) and your testosterone levels — which is why men typically have more muscle than women. Other hormones, including human growth hormone and insulin growth factor also play a role in muscle growth.
All that said, the muscle building process starts the moment you challenge your muscles to do something. True beginners might see muscle growth within six weeks of starting a resistance training program, and advanced lifters may see results within six to eight weeks of switching up their usual strength training regimen.
Regardless of fitness level, building muscle takes several weeks, even when your diet, sleep and training regimen are all dialled in to optimise muscle growth