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How Much Muscle Can You Gain in a Year Naturally?
The common rule of thumb is that a natural male lifter can gain about 20 pounds of muscle in his first year, 10 pounds in his second, 5 in his third, and gradually less after that.
Women build muscle just as easily as men do. However, they’re usually smaller, so their average rate of muscle growth is proportionally slower. For example, if the average woman’s frame holds 2/3rds as much muscle as the average man’s, she might expect to gain 14 pounds of muscle in her first year, 7 in her second, and 3 in her third.
More controversially, you can expect to build muscle faster if you’re starting off skinny (full explanation). If you have an athletic background, you might start off more muscular, but future growth might be slower.
Perhaps most of all, your rate of muscle growth depends on how well you train and how much food you eat.
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What is a Recomp? Body Recomposition Explained
Recomp is short for body recomposition, which is when you build muscle and lose fat at the same time. It’s the holy grail of the fitness industry. It’s actually pretty common, though, especially among people who are out of shape or new to lifting weights.
Let’s go over some examples and some research, and explain how to do it.
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The Best Biceps Workout (Dumbbell, Barbell, or Full Gym)
A good default is to train your biceps with 3–5 sets of vertical pulls (like chin-ups and lat pulldowns) followed by 2–5 sets of biceps curls (like preacher curls and lying biceps curls) every week. That gives you 5–10 sets of biceps work per workout, and it trains both the short and long head. I recommend doing that twice per week, bringing you up to 10–20 sets per week.
In the rest of the article, we’ll go into more depth, talk about the best biceps exercises, and give you examples of good biceps workouts you can do with dumbbells, barbells, cables, or at a full gym.
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Are Chin-Ups/Pull-Ups Good for Your Biceps?
Chin-ups and pull-ups are heavy compound lifts, allowing you to heavily load your biceps while working them through a full range of motion. But they also train your back muscles, and some of those back muscles might fail before your biceps get worked hard enough. In that case, biceps curls might be the better biceps exercise.
Fortunately, a study comparing pull-downs with biceps curls found that they both stimulate about the same amount of biceps growth (study). Pull-downs work your biceps in the same way as chin-ups and pull-ups, so I suspect they’re similarly effective.
But there’s some nuance here. The short head of your biceps can work just fine during pulling exercises, but the long head can’t. The long head stabilizes the shoulder joint, so it can’t engage properly during pulling movements. It will grow faster if you do biceps curls.
Then, we need to consider that the distal portions of your biceps (closer to the elbow) grow faster when you challenge them at long muscle lengths (full explanation). Some types of biceps curls are better for that.
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The Best Short Head Biceps Exercises
The short head of your biceps is the simple head. Unlike the long head of your biceps, it doesn’t cross the shoulder joint. Well, it might, but it seems to be less significant than with the long head (study). Regardless, the short head is primarily responsible for flexing your arms, with a secondary function of supinating your hands. That means:
- You can train the short head perfectly well with regular biceps curls.
- You can also train it with pulling movements like chin-ups, pull-ups, and lat pulldowns. Rows won’t challenge your biceps very much, though.
- Exercises that are hard at the bottom are better for building muscle than exercises that are harder at the top (full explanation).
- You don’t need to worry about your shoulder position.
If you don’t have a preacher curl station, I’ll cover some alternatives that should be similarly effective.
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The Best Long Head Biceps Exercises
The main function of your biceps is to flex your arms. That’s what biceps curls are for. But the long head of your biceps also helps to stabilize the shoulder joint, meaning:
- Regular dumbbell, barbell, and cable biceps curls train the long head just fine. There’s no movement at the shoulder joint, so there’s no problem.
- Drag curls, chin-ups, pull-ups, and rows have too much movement at the shoulder joint, preventing the long head from working properly.
- Exercises that keep your elbows behind your body train the long head at longer muscle lengths, which is fantastic for building muscle (full explanation).
- Exercises that keep your elbows in front of your body train the long head at shorter muscle lengths, which isn’t very good for building muscle.
- Exercises that are hard at the bottom are better for building muscle than exercises that are harder at the top (full explanation).
If you want to keep it simple, keep doing regular biceps curls (tutorial video). They’re great for both the short and long heads of your biceps. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that.
But we can go deeper. If you bring your elbows behind your body and challenge your biceps at the bottom of the range motion, the long head of your biceps will get a tremendous muscle-building stimulus. There are two exercises that take advantage of that.
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Full-Body Workouts vs Splits: Which Builds More Muscle?
A new meta-analysis by Ramos-Campo gathered together all fourteen studies comparing full-body workout routines against split workout routines. This is the latest study, and it includes all of the previous ones, so it’s the best evidence we have.
- Full-body workouts train most of your muscles every workout. They’re usually done three days per week, but they can be done as many as five days per week. People like them because they’re more efficient. The downside is that they’re harder. It’s harder to train more muscles per workout.
- Split workouts “split” your body up into different muscle groups. They’re usually done four, five, or six days per week. You could have a Push Day, Pull Day, and Leg Day (Push/Pull/Legs). Maybe you add an Arm Day and Shoulder Day (Bro Split). Or maybe you alternate between upper-body workouts and lower-body workouts (Upper/Lower). People like these splits because you get to train more often without needing to train sore muscles. The workouts are also easier. The downside is that they’re less efficient.
The results show that full-body and split routines both stimulate the same amount of muscle growth (and strength gains). Sometimes, the results lean one way, flirting with statistical significance, but that wasn’t the case here. It really didn’t seem to make any difference at all. Sort of. There’s a catch.
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Long-Muscle-Length Training (Aka Stretch-Mediated Hypertrophy)
For at least a few decades, bodybuilders have favoured exercises that challenge their muscles at long muscle lengths. “Go deep! Feel the stretch!” The mechanisms weren’t known, and the results weren’t proven, but it seemed that lifting through a deeper range of motion stimulated more muscle growth.
Similarly, 90’s bodybuilders like John Parillo and then Dante Trudel were advocates of “extreme stretching,” where you hold the very bottom position of your exercises, challenging your muscles under a deep stretch.
Now, the research is catching up, and the results are even more dramatic than anyone expected. A systematic review of 26 studies found that holding the bottom position of an exercise stimulates nearly three times as much muscle growth as holding the top position.
This tells us that the bottom position of a dumbbell fly (with your chest stretched) stimulates more muscle growth than holding the top position of a cable crossover (with your chest contracted).
Since then, dozens of other studies have come out showing that long-muscle-length training stimulates far more muscle growth than short-muscle-length training. More controversially, it often stimulates slightly more muscle growth than training through a full range of motion.
So, let’s talk about how to train your muscles at long muscle lengths.
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How to Do Dips (And Why They’re So Good)
Dips are one of the best exercises for building a bigger chest, and they’re one of the best muscle-building exercises overall. They’re an older exercise than the bench press, and they’ve helped build some of the most iconic physiques of all time, including Arnold Schwarzenegger’s, Vince Gironda’s, and Larry Scott’s. They’re even more popular with gymnasts and callisthenics athletes for their ability to build upper body strength and mobility.
Dips aren’t quite as popular with bodybuilders anymore, perhaps because people lost their ability to work their shoulders through a deep range of motion. Myths spread about them being bad for our shoulders, but the opposite is true: dips are one of the best ways to build stronger, more stable, and more flexible shoulders.
The trick is to ease your way into them gradually. I’ll show you how.
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Is 225 a Good Bench Press? What Percentage of Men Can Do It?
A few years ago, Greg Nuckols asked his Stronger by Science readers how long they’d been strength training and how much weight they could bench press. He found that the average powerlifter could bench 185 pounds within his first three months and 225 pounds within his first year (article).
But the sport of powerlifting tends to attract unusually strong guys. Many of those guys have athletic backgrounds. And the ones most likely to stick with powerlifting are the ones who see early success with it. Plus, many aren’t natural.
I’ve noticed that most lifters I talk to haven’t ever benched 225 pounds, and I almost never see guys loading two plates on the bar at the gym.
So, I surveyed 585 of our newsletter subscribers. I also asked the Stronger by Science community how often they see other guys benching 225 pounds.
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