max gains in 6 months?

[chemicalromance]

Assuming time and money are no issue, what is the most mass one can reasonably put on in 6 months, without using anything illegal? Assume an intermediate lifter, weight 160 lbs.

[sumopatrol]

Assuming nothing illegal (including prohormones banned and unbanned), 20-40 pounds, depending on how you eat, work out and rest. 40 pounds would be a lot of fat though.

[IronRooster2]

~100 pounds. If you actually try.

~30 pounds in the first month is completely doable if you're as tough as Rocky Balboa or Rudy.

[dw300]

Lean mass? So you're exactly the same bodyfat % at the end? .. I'd say 10lbs.

You probably add about 1g of muscle per 10g of protein you eat, so at 160g/day for 182.5 days thats .. 2920g or 6.42lbs.

If you eat 250g of protein a day that 10lbs exactly, but that's if your body is great at building muscle, your diet is perfect, and your workout program is perfectly devised.

You might only add as little as 3lbs in 6 months if things are not ideal.

[chemicalromance]

20-40 lbs seems high, it would require some serious cutting because of fat stores.

10 lbs seems great - I think I will shoot for 20 lb gain overall and hopefully end up with 6-7 lbs.

[Slow-N-Steady]

You can gain a lot of weight in 6 months, but you can only gain so much muscle in that time. You shouldn’t really expect more than 2lbs of muscle per month for a natural trainee (one exception to this is if you are a completely new trainee, you may be able to gain more quickly). On top of that, you will have an increase in water and glycogen storage so anywhere from 3-5lbs/month is a good place to start. Anymore than that, and a good percentage of it will be fat.

For example, I’ve been gaining at 3lbs/month for 6 months and I am definitely gaining some fat. Nothing unreasonable, but if I up’d it to 5lbs/month I would be gaining even more fat, while likely not increasing the amount of muscle gained.

[chemicalromance]

Even 2lb/month pure muscle seems very high. I remember reading something by Mike Mentzer where he said that 10/year was the absolute max naturally.

[dorris1988]

Even 2lb/month pure muscle seems very high. I remember reading something by Mike Mentzer where he said that 10/year was the absolute max naturally.

1-2lb is the recognised figures and tbh sounds about right, but thats training your backside off, eating clean, resting enough and drinking enough etc etc.