How Much Muscle Can I Get?

We are creatures of habit, and we like to adapt our habits to long term goals. Therefore it is natural that people entering a gym will seek to create a long term goal, and for many novices that goal will often be how huge can I get? We see those massive muscle bound men on TV that seem to weight about three hundred pounds of pure muscle and ask ourselves, can we get that big? Is there a limit on how much muscle I pack on if I do everything absolutely right? What if I eat correctly, lift correctly, sleep right, can I get as big as the biggest guy out there, or is there a genetic limit on my size? Well, in today's article we are going to look at the science behind muscle growth, and tell you what experience has taught us about everybody's natural limits, including yours.

irst, let's be honest about something that nobody wants to hear. If you are really interested in how limited you are by your own genetic potential, then you need to realize that you are putting your energy into the wrong place. We all have different genetic potentials, and until we can decode our genetics in some kind of science fiction manner, there is no way to tell your exact potential. What we can do is spell out certain basic guidelines, but you need to put your energy into working out right, and not wondering about things that you can only realize some four years down the road.


That said, let's look at some numbers. The fact of the matter is that there is a difference between weight and lean body mass. Anybody can pack on fat and drive their weight up, hitting hundreds and hundreds of pounds, but your lean body mass is limited by your genetics. So let's say you are going to keep your body fat at 10%, you can expect your lean body mass to be limited by your height. At 5'6" you can expect to be about 170lbs, at 5'8" you can expect to hit 178lbs, and at 6' you can probably reach 185lbs. This means that you can get as huge as you like by adding fat, but if you want to reach your max you add about 8lbs for every 2 inches above 6'. That means that that taller you are, the bigger you can get.