The Reality Of Building Muscle As A Natural Lifter

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Video Summary:

The Reality Of Building Muscle As A Natural Lifter

In today's video I wanted to cover one simple concept that natural bodybuilders should really be aware of and understand...

That concept is the rate of diminishing returns that you'll experience as you progress throughout your muscle building journey.

In other words, the longer you've been training, the slower your rate of muscle growth will become.

When you first start lifting, you'll gain muscle at a relatively fast pace (this is known as the "newbie gains") since weight training will be a brand new stimulus for your body.

However, as you put on more and more muscle and move further from your body's natural setpoint, it will become increasingly difficult to make further gains.

This is just the way natural muscle growth works, and it's key to understand that it won't be a game of linear progress from year to year.

Your body doesn't want to gain a large amount of excess muscle mass in the first place, and so it has genetic limits in place to prevent things from going too far.

A reasonable expectation assuming you've trained and eaten properly/consistently would be to achieve about 50% of your noticeable genetic potential within the first year of training, around 75% after 2 years, roughly 85-90% after 3 years, and then at years 4-5 and beyond to be right up near your natural limit.

You could still be able to build muscle further at that point, but it would require a lot of time and patience just to squeeze out a few pounds of additional muscle growth.

There are 3 reasons why this natural bodybuilding principle is important to understand:

1) It will give you realistic expectations about how the muscle building process works so that you can remain patient and on-track toward your goals.

2) It will prevent you from over-eating and gaining an excessive amount of body fat if you're attempting to maintain the same rate of weight gain from year to year.

3) It will prevent you from getting carried away in the gym in terms of volume/intensity/frequency and injuring yourself if your gains have slowed down and you're under the impression that something is wrong.

By all means have big goals and work hard to maximize your natural bodybuilding potential if that's what you're after, but at the same time, make sure to maintain a realistic perspective when it comes to natural muscle growth so that you can maintain an intelligently structured approach from year to year.

[Sean_Nalewanyj]

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[FrankThompson-zt]

Reading Muscles: Every Man's Dream felt like unlocking a secret level in my fitness journey. It's truly life-changing!

[Daggerfall]

I love the bit starting @5:39. Sean doesn't care about your positivity, he'll tell you how it is, straight up. Keep it up Sean, that kind of objectivity is why I enjoy this channel so much.

[razam]

This is actually good news. As this means that if you want to look somewhat muscular, you only have to train hard for 2-3 years and then you only have to train enough to maintain the muscles.

[sandimilicevic]

"fat and injured quite a sad combination" LOL

[francoismorin]

I can confirm this from my own experience of serious bodybuilding for 5 years, 4-5 times a week, 1 hour to 2 hours each time, when I was younger. I went from 155 pounds of body weight to 172 pounds the first two years, than it took me 3 years to go to 178 pounds at about 11% body fat. I am almost 5'9'' of height by the way. Actually Arnold Schwarzenegger said the same thing in his training advice that a natural bodybuilder would make about 2 to 3 pounds of lean muscle mass gains per year of training. So natural bodybuilders should prepare mentally for this reality. A natural bodybuilder reaches a nice level of muscle maturity for competition value over about 8 years of natural training. So it is an easy way to spot fake naturals.

[jayp]

I just want to say thank you!! I’ve been following your videos and advice and I’ve lost 90 lbs. I feel better than I’ve felt in 20 years. If I can do it anyone can! Thank you for posting these videos Sean. I really appreciate your guidance, you make everything easy to understand and follow. You helped me change my life!

[snayddy]

Its Basically like levels in RPG's Level 10 progresses faster than level 50 etc. XD

[Ran-ku]

excellent explanation on how our bodies work. Thanks a lot. This really explain a lot of why some stuff dont work the way we expect them to.

[the_happykodiak]

I love the microfacial expression at 3:30 when you think about becoming fat and injured combined XD, you begin smiling/laughing before saying it. Love the transparency and the honesty, it's the reason I go to you for my fitness information.

[searching_soul]

Thank you very much for the honesty. It lifts a bunch of unnecessary preoccupations and stress

[boriquaelrey]

Thanks for the information. I don’t actually want to bulk up but to get lean. You given me great advice. So the law of diminishing return won’t be too much of a factor. I just need to stay consistent and now tweak my diet.

[mikhailkurzanov]

Hello Sean. Have been running through your videos for the last couple of weeks since I found your channel. Just want to confirm the "no BS" channel status and thank you for what you do. Really surprised by number of your subscribers. Should be much more. Started scrupulous calories account yesterday.)

[blakewy]

Thank you for clearing the time on your microwave.

[rnegoro]

That's why roids are The fact that you can gain muscle 6x faster vs a natural then once you stop

[tmoonz]

years of PROPER training is the key thing there..because a lot of people who train sub-optimally (which is what the average Joe in the gym is doing), will be watching this who have trained for several years and they will think that they are near their natural limit..

for a lot of people it takes them 3-4 years to even max out their noob gains.

[marleymeuse]

I'm in no rush to get to my goal. My goal is to go from 315 on bench press to 405 I will never take any type of PEDs cause I love being in the gym and if it takes me like 5 years to get to 405 then so be it I'm in no rush to get there and I'm going to enjoy every step and every day of the journey.

[Ordrolix]

Very truthful video, its taking me 5 years to gain 5-6 lbs of muscle.. I have been training 16 years now and still enjoy every part of this journey called natural bodybuilding even if the gains are slow and I'm making millimetre muscle gains over the years it makes me happy to know i achieved my shit through nothing but had work.

[arthurblackhistoric]

I was really lucky in my life when it came to gaining muscle. Without realising it, I took advantage of the body's growth spurts and did bulk and power training at the right times. Between ages 17 and 18 I followed a 4-month program in Iron Man and gained 30 pounds. That's the time in a young man's life when he changes physically from a boy into a man.
Then I gained NO more muscle until age 24 when I decided it as time to make my move and I did breathing squats, bench presses and bent over rowing for three months and gained 25 more pounds, but some of that was fat. The final growth spurt we undergo is at age 24 when we "fill out" as they used to say.
In the intervening years I trained my guts out with pretty much no gains at all. Then at age 30, after being a Powerlifter since age 25, I again used breathing squats to gain weight to move up into the 125kg class. Of course a lot of the weight gained was fat as well as muscle, but the increased leverage and body mass enabled me to become as strong as some of the lower dose steroid munchers! Now, I look like your typical heavyweight powerlifter from the days before rampant steroid use . . generous waistline, barrel chest, big arms, etc . . but that's just fine with me. I was puny as a kid and now I'm not. No interest in bodybuilding, just maintaining size. Sean is right when he says your body will try and shed what it considers to be excess size.

[JohnnyGuitarRocks]

If I could only watch one fitness channel on YouTube it would be yours. Always appreciate your guidance. Thanks Sean!