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Comment by mmh0000 | Hacker News Reader

Over the years, I tried gym memberships and always go bored and stopped going after a week or two.

I got a personal trainer 7 months ago, and it's been one of the best decisions I've ever made. I find having someone besides myself to feel accountable to very motivating.

It's also nice to have someone walk you through all the movements, proper form, and telling you what to eat.

When I started with the personal trainer; I was skinny, lanky, nerd. In the last 7 months, I've added 25LBs of muscle. I'm still a lanky nerd, but I'm now a stronger lanky nerd!

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I feel like the most rewarding part of the gym is tangible gains. The weights don't lie.

its physically impossible to have gained 25lbs of muscle in 7 months unless you're doing steroids

I don't have the science to back this up, but I think it's plausible, if we make some assumptions. It's basically 3.5lbs/month.

- 2lbs/month is reasonable for beginner gains [citation needed, but sounds right to me].

- If you're really skinny, you'll get bigger gains.

- If you're training optimally (adequate diet, good exercise volume) you'll get better gains than the average beginner.

- Genetic lottery chances.

- Measuring body fat changes isn't perfect (and there will be changes if you're bulking), so it might not be exactly 25lbs.

2lbs a month is basically the maximum if you are perfectly optimizing everything.

3.5lbs a month is impossible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQkRDGz1Nkw

2lb/month of weight gain, including muscle, fat, and water, is very doable for a beginner lifter. 2lb/month of true lean tissue mass is indeed "impossible" without exogenous hormones.

And it gets harder adding muscle. Adding 2lb the first few months is doable. Eventually adding even 1lb gets harder to do and you plateau.

wink wink nudge nudge

If I'm going to waste time going to the gym, I'm going to get the maximum time to benefit ratio.

Yeah it is not like there are any life fucking up side effects

Have some sources

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32081788/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3897047/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j232kdcnSQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBhfP3MBYLU

https://www.reddit.com/r/trt/

Oh right your wink is about testosterone! I have had supplemental testosterone because of low levels. No big deal I reckon.

I thought the nudge was about anabolic steroids, since that is illegal most places.

Hmmm I was 6'0" 142 first day in the military... After 19 weeks of abuse, (infantry school + airborne) often active 20 hours per day I emerged 165. So 23 lbs of almost lean muscle in under 5 months. I would rate the previous commenter's claim as plausible.

How do you know there is no fat, water or bone in the mix?

I suppose I don't. But it makes less sense to me that I would increase bone density in 19 weeks in a meaningful amount and even less sense that I would put on any fat when we had roughly 2-5 mins to eat every meal.

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