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Assuming a strict diet and training schedule, there should be a limit to how much muscle growth the average person can expect within a given time frame.

To be more specific, lets assume the person has 70kg and just started to go to the gym 3 times a week. How much muscle (in kg) can be gained on average within a month? I am looking for a rough benchmark here because it obviously depends a lot on many other variables. I am also interested in the differences between men and women concerning muscle growth expectations.

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    When you say "strict diet", do you mean "eating a lot so one gains muscle and fat" or "not eating very much so one maintains low body fat", or something else?
    – Dave Liepmann
    May 16, 2013 at 12:53
  • I am talking about a diet where the goal is to gain muscles while keeping the body fat low.
    – Demento
    May 16, 2013 at 18:03
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    This very much depends on diet, training/programing, and experience (novice lifters can gain a lot quickly). I don't think you've adequately answered @DaveLiepmann's question. Of course you want to gain muscle & not fat - that's a universal desire - but it doesn't really tell us much about what your diet actually is!
    – G__
    May 19, 2013 at 2:34
  • To be more specific, it is a low-carb diet where carbs are only allowed in the morning and before/after training sessions. The rest of the day mostly protein and fat. The average calorie intake is about 2500 calories per day.
    – Demento
    May 20, 2013 at 10:59
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    In my opinion this could be a fair acedemic question. Also, it could be a fast "red alert measurement" if something goes wrong with ones bodybuilding efforts. If we were able to provide a rough equation for maximal weekly/monthly muscle gain, someone gaining twice as much mass would know that he's doing something wrong and gaining fat, before he gets noticeably fatter (waist measurements etc). @JohnP such answers would just be bad kind of answers, and that does not indicate the question itself is bad. We had questions on how much fat can one lose weekly and those were valid, why this one isnt?
    – K.L.
    Jun 3, 2013 at 10:53

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If its the first time you have ever got into fitness/working out you can sometimes expect "noob gains". I myself got about 5 kilograms without nutrition at all.

If you are really strict with your diet (Bulking) you can expect to get like half a kilo of muscle per week after that. Its a really rough number, it will be more or less depending on your body and usually you will overestimate how "well" you are exercising and dieting.

This will plateau out eventually, you cant keep putting on muscle on indefinitely

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  • Thx, that's exactly the estimate I was looking for. Do you know if there is a major difference between men and women concerning those numbers?
    – Demento
    May 22, 2013 at 19:23
  • I assume there will be a general trend for males to gain more but there is going plenty of difference between individuals anyway. Plenty of females make better progress than males with similar routines/diet
    – Darcys22
    May 23, 2013 at 6:01

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