The question may seem a bit weird, but nowadays in the “natural bodybuilding” sphere on YT (Natural Hypertrophy, Alex Leonidas etc.) there seems to be a consensus that there is no natural limit or ceiling to how much muscle one can put on without peds, or even a genetic limit for that matter.
The basic premise is that your potential for strength and hypertrophy is limitless without any cap, however nobody is able to gain forever because they age, their hormones decline and so they begin to lose muscle mass, but if it wasn’t for that the gains would never stop and you would never have a “final pr”. I.e. if you always stayed young you would never stop progressing.
I’ve heard Brad Schoenfeld claims something similar in his book “Science and Development of Muscle Hypertrophy” as well, though I haven’t read the book myself.
Is there any truth to this idea of there being no natural limit for how much muscle one can put on without peds, or even there being no genetic limit to how much mass or strength one can put on discounting age?
Like the premise claims, if humans lived a lot longer without being afflicted by age or were immortal, would they keep gaining strength and size indefinitely, or would there still be a biological limit to how much of both one can put on even in this scenario?
I’ve always assumed there is a biological limit to how much one can grow in both domains that is possible to hit way before even getting limited by old age due to the existence of things such as myostatin, but seems like that isn’t a consensus.
I think most performance-oriented characteristics are limited, whether by physics, biology, environment, technology, and so on. With respect to muscle growth, genetics are heavily involved in an individual’s response to exercise and their skeletal muscle carrying capacity, among others. I do not think it is probable that people would gain muscle forever due to multiple constraints, one of which would almost certainly be genetically-mediated. If forced to guess, the energy economics of the human lifespan that is consistent with maturation and reproduction probably limits muscle growth and is likely influenced by genetics on an individual level.
I don’t know how people would do if granted immortality, as whatever produced the immortality would influence the responsiveness to training. I don’t know that knowledge of a genetically-influenced limit (or absence of) changes management of training.
So what I take from this is, there is a limit, but it is highly individual and influenced by the person’s genetics, and it is possible to reach this point with proper training way before even getting limited by old age, is that correct?
As for it influencing management of training or not, yes it wouldn’t do much there, I agree. I was just curious because I’ve seen a lot of self identified natural bodybuilders online claiming the same thing about there being no actual limit besides just age, and I wanted to know if they actually have an evidence base to stand on or if they are just making stuff up to persuade people to not use peds as a lot of them are borderline religiously anti-peds.
So what I take from this is, there is a limit, but it is highly individual and influenced by the person’s genetics, and it is possible to reach this point with proper training way before even getting limited by old age, is that correct?
This seems probable, yes.
As for it influencing management of training or not, yes it wouldn’t do much there, I agree. I was just curious because I’ve seen a lot of self identified natural bodybuilders online claiming the same thing about there being no actual limit besides just age, and I wanted to know if they actually have an evidence base to stand on or if they are just making stuff up to persuade people to not use peds as a lot of them are borderline religiously anti-peds.
While I don’t think that irresponsible PED use should be promoted or romanticized, I think claims like this strain credibility.