How Much Muscle Can You Build With & Without Steroids?

in this video I'm going to tell you exactly how much muscle it's possible to build naturally and how much muscle it's possible to build using steroids by looking at real world examples and scientific studies let's start with what's possible naturally now I'm definitely not the best natural bodybuilder in the world but I did win a gold medal at Canadian natural bodybuilding Nationals so I'll use myself as an example of a natural bodybuilder I've been training without steroids for about 15 years I weigh 160 pounds when I'm lean and 180 pounds when I'm balked at five foot five inches tall like most people I put on most of my muscle in my first five years of lifting both of my parents were bodybuilders so I trained pretty hard from the start in my first five years I gained around 20 pounds of muscle over the next five years I put on a little more muscle but not as much only another five pounds or so then in the next five years after that it was even less maybe one or two pounds add it all up and that's 27 pounds or 12 kilos of muscle that I've built in total and while some people will build more some people will build less every natural lifter doing most things right will experience a similar growth curve with faster growth at the beginning and slower growth as they approach their so-called natural genetic sealing and research backs this up studies show that men tend to max out their natural potential after gaining 20 to 40 pounds or 9 to 18 kilos of muscle mass and women tend to max out their natural potential after gaining 12 to 24 pounds of muscle and while I think it is possible to gradually nudge that ceiling up with Advanced Training and diet strategies that nudging will be marginal now of course in order to max out your natural potential you need to do things consistently well with your training and diet this means that you train hard regularly approaching failure you maintain consistent technique you do enough training Volume 5 to 15 sets per muscle per week is a good ballpark you do a variety of exercises and you aim to add some weight or some reps to those exercises over time on the diet side of things you need to eat enough calories ideally being in a moderate caloric Surplus for at least half your lifting time and you need to eat enough protein ideally eating at least 0. 7 grams of protein per pound of body weight or 1. 6 grams per kilo if you do all of this for five to ten years you'll almost certainly gain 20 to 40 pounds of muscle and come pretty close to maximizing your natural potential and here are a couple examples of natural bodybuilders that I think have either reached or very close to reaching their Peak natural development this is Alex Leonidas a fellow YouTuber who put on roughly 40 pounds of muscle in 13 years of lifting at five foot six inches tall he's 120 pounds in the before photo and 160 pounds in the after photo at a similar body fat percentage he's also done several extended bulks where he's got as high as 200 pounds at around 20 body fat so it wasn't like those 40 pounds went on completely lean without ever gaining any body fat and I've heard Alex argue that you need to spend some time in a surplus and at a slightly higher body fat to maximize your natural muscular potential as a taller example this is Jeffrey Verity Scofield another fellow YouTuber who put on roughly 43 pounds of muscle across 10 years of lifting at six feet tall he's 150 pounds in the before photo and 193 pounds in the after photo at a similar body fat percentage once again it's worth mentioning that Jeff did a series of bulks and cuts getting up to 224 pounds at his Peak bulk weight before cutting down to 193.

now just in case there are a few people who think these examples aren't actually natural and we're secretly taking steroids to advance our Fitness careers let's consider a few two examples of bodybuilders from the pre-steroid era anabolic steroids weren't isolated and synthesized until the early 1930s and weren't made injectable until 1935 so any bodybuilder prior to that date couldn't have been using them and here are some examples of impressive bodybuilders from that era who had to be natural as a matter of historical fact there were impressive strong men and strong women from the 1920s and earlier displaying incredible muscularity and leanness there were even some bodybuilders from the 1800s rocking amazing all-natural physiques but of course both training and nutrition methods have improved a lot in the last hundred years and there are more people into bodybuilding these days so it's extremely unlikely that these pre-steroid era bodybuilders represent the Pinnacle of what's possible naturally the best modern natural bodybuilders achieve even better development but given the availability of steroids today there'll always be some skepticism around their true Natty status okay so what do steroids add well let's start with the science this is one of the most famous studies on anabolic steroids by Boston and colleagues from 1996. you may have seen it before they split 43 subjects into one of four groups group one didn't train or take steroids they didn't do anything group two trained naturally without taking steroids group 3 trained enhanced they did take steroids and group four did not train but still took steroids so there was a natural group that didn't train a natural group that did train an enhanced group that did train and an enhanced group that didn't train after 10 weeks these were the findings the group that didn't train or take steroids unsurprisingly gained only a negligible amount of muscle mass nothing significant the group that trained naturally gained 4. 4 pounds of muscle in 10 weeks not bad at all but here's what happened to the group that trained and took steroids they added 13.

4 pounds of muscle on average that's more than three times the amount of muscle gained by simply injecting 600mg of testosterone per week everything else was the same but that's not the craziest part the group that took steroids and did not even train they gained ready seven pounds of muscle in 10 weeks that's more than one and a half times the muscle gained by the natural training group without even training let's consider the dosing though they injected 600 milligrams of testosterone per week which got me wondering if that'd be considered a high dose or a low dose by today's bodybuilding standards to help me answer this question I spoke with an anonymous anabolics expert about how much steroids people actually take in the most famous studies on this they give people 600 milligrams of testosterone per week would you consider that a high dose moderate dose or low dose it depends on the context of the individual I would say for an entry level enhanced user it would be high at 100 milligrams you're typically looking at what is representative of therapeutic hormone replacement as you get to 150 to 200 milligrams per week you're looking at what is more representative of like some people call it Sports trt it's kind of like the fitness industry trt kind of levels where you are pushing a borderline super physiologic free test level perpetually even though your total T looks normal on paper as you get to 300 plus you're kind of in enhanced territory now even though you were already enhanced right before that and then at 500 to 600 that's entry level bodybuilder cycle territory I would say and then to represent what could be seen at a professional level in the very competitive ranks you see upwards of at minimum oftentimes 1 000 milligrams a week but as high as four to five thousand milligrams a week per week you've heard of people doing that I've seen it that's very helpful thank you so the 600 milligrams used in that study would be considered a high dose by trt standards but is more on the moderate to low end compared to what many high-level competitive bodybuilders take and it turns out that dosing matters a lot in 2001 the same research group did a follow-up study to see how much muscle mass changes with different doses of steroids this time 61 subjects were given five different doses of testosterone they injected either 25 50 125 300 or 600 milligrams per week for 20 weeks and this is how much muscle they gained the lowest dose added just under one pound of muscle and the amount of muscle gained increased right alongside the steroid dosage with the group taking the biggest dose adding just about 20 pounds of muscle in 20 weeks that's one pound of muscle per week on average this isn't the highest responder this is the average think about that I might put on one pound of muscle in the next year if I'm lucky as a late stage natural these guys put on one pound of muscle per week by taking 600 milligrams of test oh I guess I should also mention they didn't lift weights in this study zero lifting they just took steroids that's how much of a difference they can make but again many ifbb bodybuilders wouldn't even consider 600 milligrams a high dose my anonymous source told me that he knows competitive bodybuilders that take five to ten times that amount so let's take a break from the studies and have a look at what steroids actually do in the wild for this I want to look at two examples Sean Clarita and Chris Bumstead John Clarita is the reigning 212 MrOlympia Champion but not many people know that before he began his ifbb pro career he was a world-class natural bodybuilder in fact he reached the Pinnacle of what's possible naturally before ever enhancing something I strongly respect as a natural competitor at the wmbf natural bodybuilding world the most stringently drug tested event in the world Sean weighed 130 pounds or 59 kilos on stage we can assume he was maxing out his training and nutrition at this time because come on Harry is repping 900 pounds on the leg press and here he is training his arms from the same year this guy has always trained super hard so based on some rough math and what I could find on line it looks like he added something around 20 pounds naturally going from 110 pounds to 130 pounds at five foot two inches tall then after reaching the Pinnacle of this board naturally he started enhancing and added wait for it another 60 pounds to his physique that's three times the amount of muscle that he built naturally Chris Bumstead is the reigning MrOlympia classic physique champion and is without a doubt one of the greatest classic bodybuilders of all time Chris started lifting at the age of 14 when he weighed 170 pounds or 77 kilos at six foot one inches tall over the next five years of Maddie training he grew to be 225 pounds or 102 kilos by the time he was 19. that's a 55 pound increase in body weight now of course some people will argue that Chris wasn't actually Natty in this after image but I believe he was here's what he looked like at 17.