I think you can build good size naturally if you start in your teens. But after 3 years that's all your getting. Plus you'll never hold as much muscle while dieting.
I beg to differ. When I finally broke 200 lbs, I'd been training for nearly 7 years.
I've often relayed my story of my college days, specificially spring semester 1996. I officially started serious training in 1989.
That semester, I went from 189 to 210. And, I simply wanted to hit 200. 21 lbs in three months, at least half of it lean mass. My mother and my friends shocked when I came home for the summer.
People are just afraid to eat....and I mean EEEEEAAAAAAAT to gain the mass they need.
And when I say "EAT", I don't mean just chewing and swallowing food. I mean ingesting calories, with both regular food and protein shakes.
I recall an article from Jeff Everson, which I used in my science project in high school about calories and nutrition.
"If you're having trouble growing, despite stuffing yourself, then it's time you learned the real secret to gaining weight: Liquid Nutrition."Your blender should be your good buddy. When I couldn't afford weight gain powder, I made my own shakes out of whole eggs and milk. When the cafeteria's breakfast food started to suck or I didn't have time to eat there, I made those shakes along with my weight gain powder, particularly for breakfast.
Get the size you need FIRST; worry about the cuts later. You don't have to turn yourself into a sumo wreslter. But, being ripped should be low on the totem pole, when size is priority.
Didn't Arnold once say,
You can't sculpt a pebble; you sculpt a block of granite"?
