how much muscle mass can you gain in 1 week?

I was just wondering how much muscle mass pounds can you gain in 1 week along with fat loss?  I am working with a personal trainer and my measurements showed that I lost 1 pound but I gained 6.5 pounds of muscle and lost 7.5 pounds of fat.  Is this normal and should I expect these results each week or will it slow down?

Oh I've been wondering the exact same thing lately! Last week when I weighed in on Saturday morning I weighed 126.8...I tracked my calories and had a deficit of at least 1800 for this past week (and I do underestimate exercise cals and over estimate food cals) and well, today I weighed in at 126.8 again lol. Hm

I would love to know this answer...

thats a huge loose of fat. How did you measure the loose of fat and gain of muscle? Id love to be able tot measure this as im excerising every day but dont seem to be loosing weight, guess i must be adding some muscle but my body doesnt look different

good question. you might want to post this on the fitness forum where all of the weight lifters lurk...  there are some pretty knowlegable people on that forum with respect to gym-related questions. 

You could probably measure it with BF%, chelseagirl.  I don't know how reliable a measurement it would be, though.

It's impossible to lost 7.5 pounds of fat and more impossible to gain 6.5 pounds of muscle in one week. Losing the fat is the most possible but gaining 6.5 pounds of muscle in a week? Professional athletes don't even get close to that. Hell I wish it was true though! ;-)

I also would like to know how you determined your loss/gain...before and after submersion tests?  MRI?

It's impossible to gain that much muscle in 1 week!  I'm in the gym 5 nights a week lifting hard and heavy and I don't think I"ve gained 6.5 lbs of muscle this year!

I hate to say this but you are either very mistaken or a liar.  As people have stated that much muscle gain is nearly impossible.  It might be possible for a month if you are on an elite routine with a personal chef and 'supplements'.

I am not lying. I am working with a personal trainer who calculated my body fat and muscle percentages using a measuring tape, weight scale and fat capilars.  I was not trying to be conceited, I was actually a little disappointed that my stomach and hip area stayed the same, I only went down 1 inch in my thigh area.

I guess this could be wrong, I'm not sure, its just what she showed me.  I did really push myself, working out cardio 6 hours that week and 3 personal training appointments and counting calories. 

 Most likely your personal trainer is wrong - unless you're a former bodybuilder getting back into shape.

To quote myself from another thread:

Original Post by melkor:

Isn't the max for drug-free male athletes 28.03 grams of new muscle mass a day? I've misplaced the reference now, but it was a paper by someone from the UCLA sports medicine department discussing the biochemical limit for muscle growth due to protein synthesis capacity in the body. If that's wrong I'd love to find out - it would mean I could add more than about 15-20 pounds of muscle in a year without resorting to chemical assistance.

Females would have to have a lower rate than that - not enough testosterone :) And as far as I know women primarily add muscle through IGF-1 and growth hormone which are significantly less effective than testosterone-fuelled muscle growth. Well, women do have some testosterone produced through the adrenal glands, but it's nowhere near a male level.

'Course, the biocemichal limit can't be all there is to it. Otherwise you wouldn't have anecdotal evidence like what Arthur Jones did for Casey Viator in about a month:

Viator?s body weight increased from 166.87 to 212.15 pounds, for an overall gain of 45.28 pounds. Body-composition analysis revealed that Viator had actually built 63.21 pounds of muscle, since he had lost 17.93 pounds of fat.

Jones was always careful to point out that Viator was rebuilding previously existing level of muscular size?but even so, such a rate of increase was nothing short of remarkable.

Jones swore Viator wasn't on steroids - so this indicates to me that at least some people under some circumstances can transcend what sports medicine says ought to be possible, but so far the how and the why of it seems more like guesswork than science.

Though for most people, it looks to me as if you add a quarter pound of muscle in a week you're doing good.

 So it's vaguely possible if you're regaining old muscle mass and working intense weight sessions with no cardio. But by cardio alone?

Probably not.  Most likely your personal trainer made a mistake.


 

Here is my guess- your personal trainer is wanting to keep you motivated and hoping that you'll spread the word of how incredibe he or she is and he is fudging the numbers or seriously exaggerating.

I know for fact that the even serious body builders have a hard time putting on more than 4 lbs a month in muscle, and that is with ALL day training and supplements etc.

But I have to say to pheonix rising- why would you call someone a Liar?  that is just uncalled for! He's skeptical himself- that's why he's on this site asking these questions!

Good luck Mike, keep up the good work, it may not be the outstanding results your trainer is saying it is- but you are most definitely going to see great results!

I don't think your lying at all, I just think you're wrong. ;-) Maybe the trainer is trying to make themselves look good. But I know some AAA baseball players who work out all summer to bulk up with Major League trainers and strength training regimines and they can't gain 15 pounds of muscle in 3 months. That is true for most professional athletes who do 5 to 6 hours a day. Think about what you said too, 6 hours of cardio... not 6 hours of power lifting with creatine shakes. I do about 7 to 9 hours of cardio a week and i'm losing 3 to 5 pounds a week on average, but I also lift weights 4 nights a week and while i'm sure i'm gaining muscle I know I not even close to 7.5 pounds. Now everyone is different and i'm not work out god (or even close, lol) so you could be doing way better then me but I can't think of how that's possible without "help". You aren't using "flax seed oil" or the "cream and the clear"? ;-)

No I'm not using anything to help bulk up, I am a female who is just trying to tone up and lose weight after having 3 kids.  These are the numbers that she wrote down for me re:my progress.  These didn't include the fat capilars which I think was part of the formula she had to calc body fat percentage although I'm not sure.

Weight start 176, now 175               &nb sp;               &nb sp;               &nb sp;               &nb sp;   

Overall body fat % start 36.2%, now 32.2%

lbs of fat mass start 63.71, now 56.35 (loss of 7.36 lbs)

lbs lean mass start 112.29, now 118.65 (gain of 6.36 lbs)

neck start 12.75, now 12.5

arm start 11.75, now 11.25

chest start 35.5, now 35.5

waist start 33, now 33

hip start 40, now 40

thigh start 22.25, now 21.5

calf start 15.5, now 15.5

What are your thoughts?

the fat capilars on my thighs showed the greatest loss, she even tried it 3 more times to make sure it was accurate, but I don't have those numbers.

I hope this doesn't sound wrong but I assumed you were male, I am now 110% certain with the information you have given us that you in fact did not gain anything remotely near 7.5 pounds of muscle. You're female, you're not trying to gain muscle, you aren't intaking enough protien to build that much (muscle is protien), you aren't rebuilding muscle, etc,. I am sure you are getting in great shape and losing weight, which is friggen awesome! I don't think you gained any muscle just yet. ;-)

 Yeah, sounds like she's just plain wrong for whatever reason - if you're new to using calipers or you haven't been instructed by someone experienced it's easy to make significant mistakes.

 Try this home test, or this one for body fat percentage. They're both wildly inaccurate, but using them you can work out your own trend lines since they're consistently wrong.

 Something that can't be said for your trainer - and being inconsistently wrong is worse than useless. It leads to flawed calculations like what she's showed you - it's very improbably that a non-steroid-using female can add that much muscle in a week.

You can't gain that much muscle in a week. If you are male, possibly at the start of a programme you could gain up to a couple of pounds of muscle in a week and for a woman, maybe a pound max. It slows down after the first few weeks.

It's more likely just inaccuracies in the measurement of your body fat. It can vary depending on the time of you day, method used and experience of the person measuring.

caliper methods are only as accurate as the person who's giving you the test, It's a very innaccrate way of measurement in my opinion, take the bio-metrics test which is more accurate.

Only things to consider is you have to take the test after you wake up, after using the restroom before you eat or drink. This is what they use on the biggest loser tv show. http://www.amazon.com/Omron-HBF-306-Body-Fat- Analyzer/dp/B00006WNPU it's cheap and removes a lot of human error in testings.

 

Btw lean body mass doesn't mean muscle, when your first starting to workout people tend to get over joyed because they say WOW I lost 20pounds in a week, which is impossible out of pure water weight or out of surgery. A person just starting out will lose weight fast, cause they have a lot to lose.

The things to watch out for is most people are idiots when it comes to dieting and exercise, and most personal trainers are idiots where they don't let their clients know of good eating habits.

Here's a simple math that most uneducated people follow to lose weight while exercising.

average daily recommended calories is 2,000 calories per day

1 pound of fat = 3,500 calories

so if i cut out 500 calories per day that's 1 pound a week! perfect!

This math is technically not wrong if you really are the AVERAGE person. Many often being bigger, smaller, taller etc which is a huge factor in the amount of calories you should be taking in.

Also people don't realize that when you exercise you need to EAT MORE. Just cause it said you burned 100 calories in your treadmill workout DOES NOT MEAN that you only burned 100 calories. Your workout speeds up your metabolism for the next few hours burning more, also your body spends a lot more calories and nutrients to rebuild the muscles that were torn and broken down during your workout.

ALso the more muscle mass you attain, the more calories you will burn because you now need more calories and protein, because muscle takes more resources to maintain.

For a person who workouts often it's not unusual to see healthy number of calories go up to 3,000 calories per day and STILL see FAT loss is possible.

Some people who are ectomorphs who want to gain muscle has to intake 4,000 calories + a day.

You can't diet and exercise at the same time without eating more, it's like asking a car to drive faster and longer on the same tank of fuel. It just doesn't work. Although yes your body is more dynamic than a car. if your body isn't fed enough, guess where your body loves to get it's energy to rebuild your muscles? - after a certain point your body will stop using fat as a excess fuel, and when you build enough muscle mass it will switch to a superior source which is muscle itself.

 So it breaks down muscles to repair muscles, kinda like borrowing money from peter to pay paul. It looks ok for the moment but you'll always stay in debt.

 

I'm not a professional but I must agree with the masses.  This seems a bit impossible in such a short period of time.  It's very difficult to gain muscle mass and to do it so quickly is even more difficult.  The balance of food, exercise & strength training must all be in perfect sync to accomplish the results that you did.  It's as though the solar system was in perfect alignment.  Calipers are the least reliable method of measuring body fat, so this may be where the error is. 

Keep working towards your goal and don't become discouraged if you find out that there was a mistake made by your trainer.  Good Luck!