What experience trainer or non could gain that much lean body mass? An amazing yearly gain for a guy with a couple of years experience is about 5lbs lean. That's an amazing accomplishment. Now if we are talking about a 5 to 10 year natural trainer that starts training on gear that's a different story.
You can gain a lot more than 5 lbs of muscle in a year.
The problem, especially for natties (as they're called here) is that too many are all bent out of shape about being "lean" all the time.
I go back to my own personal experience, which I've chronicled here beforehand. In one semester of college, I went from 189 to 210. That was TERRIFIC for me, because my goal was just to get to 200.
That's 21 lbs. With at least half of that being muscle, that's 10.5 lean pounds on my frame. When I went home, my friends and my mother were in shock. Trust me! NOBODY thought I was fat.
Loading with creatine for the first time got me to 225 or so. When I went back to school that fall, my college buddies were in disbelief. So was Mr. Kelly, the guy who ran my dorm.
Guys that bulk up do gain muscle but when they train to get ripped they lose that perma bulker muscle gain. It's best to gain while staying relatively lean.
That depends on how they diet. If I go too low on calories and try to crash-diet, my muscle size and strength go bye-bye.
When I take my time and don't drop my calories too low, the mass and strength tend to stay put.
