LBM Gain vs Muscle Gain

[stejor]

Jordan,

I am curious about the relationship between gaining muscle and gaining lean body mass. If I gain 20lbs of LBM, what percentage of that is likely to be actual muscle? Also, what other things make up a significant portion of LBM gain? I'm assuming that you don't gain much weight from your bones or your internal organs, so are we mostly talking about water retention?

Thanks for any insight you can offer!

[Jordan Feigenbaum]

Well muscle is about 80% water so yes, a significant portion of "LBM" increase will be water vs. physical tissue protein. Additionally, visceral growth, bone, tendon, cartilage (and all of these thing's water and glycogen content), make up LBM.

[stejor]

Well muscle is about 80% water so yes, a significant portion of "LBM" increase will be water vs. physical tissue protein.

So when I read articles talking about maximal rates of muscle gain (I've seen 3lbs/month cited as a general upper limit), are they talking about 3lbs of "dry" tissue (implying that you'd gain about 15lbs of muscle overall), or are they including the water in those 3lbs?

Additionally, visceral growth, bone, tendon, cartilage (and all of these thing's water and glycogen content), make up LBM.

Any idea on the ballpark percentages that you'd expect from LBM gain as a result of training? Are we talking about 90% muscle and 10% viscera/connective tissue? 50/50? 10/90 in the other direction? Or is this highly variable dependent on the particular scenario?

[Jordan Feigenbaum]

So when I read articles talking about maximal rates of muscle gain (I've seen 3lbs/month cited as a general upper limit), are they talking about 3lbs of "dry" tissue (implying that you'd gain about 15lbs of muscle overall), or are they including the water in those 3lbs?

They're including water or at least they should be. Upper limit for a novice of muscle would be ~15lbs in 3 months or so (but not total LBM).

The ratio and total LBM gained from training vary based on about a thousand things so...really hard to say.

[stejor]

Interesting. Thanks for the information!