---
title: 'The Fastest Way to Gain 20 lbs Of Muscle (Naturally)'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=ehQ_5TThkRI'
video_id: 'ehQ_5TThkRI'
date: 2026-06-28
duration_sec: 1255
---

# The Fastest Way to Gain 20 lbs Of Muscle (Naturally)

> Source: [The Fastest Way to Gain 20 lbs Of Muscle (Naturally)](https://youtube.com/watch?v=ehQ_5TThkRI)

## Summary

This video explains the fastest way to naturally gain 20 lbs of muscle, debunking common myths and outlining a science-backed system based on training, nutrition, and recovery. It combines insights from multiple experts to provide a realistic timeline and actionable steps for achieving significant muscle growth.

### Key Points

- **Realistic muscle gain visualisation** [0:00] — Shows how gaining 5, 10, 15, and 20 lbs of muscle transforms different body types (skinny, skinny fat, heavier).
- **Statistics on natural muscle gain** [0:22] — Less than 5% of people naturally gain significant muscle, not due to age/genetics but due to lack of a proper plan.
- **Realistic timeline for 20 lbs of muscle** [1:03] — Naturally, it takes at least a year to gain 20 lbs of muscle with proper training and nutrition; gains slow by about half each subsequent year.
- **Training volume findings from top natural bodybuilders** [1:45] — A study of 56 top natural bodybuilders found they only do about 12 sets per muscle per week, not hours of training.
- **Diminishing returns of more sets** [2:06] — Dr. Mike Zourdos' research shows diminishing returns: sets 1-5 provide lots of growth, 5-10 provide some, and beyond 10 gains are uncertain.
- **Training closer to failure doubles growth** [2:47] — Pushing each set to 1-2 reps shy of failure nearly doubles muscle growth compared to stopping 8 reps short.
- **Intensity vs. volume methods** [3:32] — Two main approaches: Intensity method (5-12 sets per muscle, all to failure, shorter workouts) and Volume method (12-20 sets, stop 2-3 reps short, longer workouts). Both are effective; choose based on adherence.
- **Hybrid approach and personalisation** [5:45] — Jeremy uses a mix: fewer sets to failure for arms/back, more sets with higher volume for legs to aid recovery.
- **Optimal sets per session and frequency** [6:21] — Research suggests capping sets at 10-11 per session per muscle group; splitting sets across at least two days per week can speed up gains by up to 30%.
- **Three stages of exercise selection** [8:00] — Stage 1 (beginner): Few compound movements (press, pull, squat, hinge). Stage 2 (intermediate): Add more targeted exercises (machines, cables) for lagging muscles. Stage 3 (advanced): Stick with proven exercises and rotate minimally.
- **Calorie intake based on body fat** [11:07] — Above 20% BF (men) / 30% BF (women): Aim for body recomposition with a small deficit (max 0.5% body weight loss per week). Leaner individuals: Use a slight calorie surplus (0.5%-2% body mass gain per month depending on experience).
- **Protein recommendations** [14:12] — Minimum for maximum benefit: 1.6 g/kg or 0.7 g/lb. Even lower amounts (1.2 g/kg) still support gains; protein plays a smaller role than often thought.
- **Pre-workout nutrition for energy** [15:10] — Eat slow-digesting carbs + protein 1.5-2 hours before, then fast-digesting carbs 30 minutes before training for sustained energy.
- **Creatine benefits and limitations** [16:02] — Creatine can boost lean mass by 2-3 lbs in 8-12 weeks, but much of that is water; 20-30% of people are non-responders.
- **Sleep's role in muscle growth** [17:34] — Sleep boosts growth hormone and testosterone; lack of sleep limits recovery and gains. Aim for 7-9 hours of quality sleep.
- **Improving sleep quality** [18:15] — Three key tips: pitch-black room (no LED lights), quiet environment (use eye mask + earplugs), and cool temperature (program thermostat to drop at night).
- **Naps for performance recovery** [19:42] — A 20-minute nap can restore performance after poor sleep, shown to improve sprint speed by 2-3%.

### Conclusion

The fastest natural muscle gain requires a structured system combining optimal training volume/intensity, targeted nutrition based on body composition, quality sleep, and consistency—not just more protein or supplements.

## Transcript

This is a skinny guy, skinny fat guy,
and heavier guy. And here's what it
looks like if they each gain 5 lb of
muscle, 10 lb, 15 lb, and [music] 20 lb.
Gaining that much muscle completely
transforms your body no matter your
starting point. I know because it
happened to me. I went from this to
this. [music] And just 12 lb in the
right places took my wife from this to
this. But here's the problem. Based on
the data, uh less than 5% of people ever
gain that much muscle naturally. Not
because of age or genetics, it's because
without the right plan, sure you may
make some progress early on, but
afterwards you get stuck spending years
with the same physique. And more
protein, more creatine, and more
workouts aren't going to help you break
through that. It's why I teamed up with
five of the world's smartest scientists
and coaches, experts in all different
areas related to muscle growth, [music]
to answer one question. What is the
fastest way to gain 20 lb of muscle
naturally? And at the end of this video,
I'm going to give you a step-by-step
plan that combines everything into one
simple system. But before we talk about
how to do it, we need to clear something
up that almost nobody online is honest
about. How long this is actually going
to take. Cuz you'll see fitness coaches
everywhere promising 20 lb of muscle in
3 months. With special sauce? Sure. But
naturally, a muscle just doesn't work
like that. With proper training and
nutrition, it takes at least a year to
put on that amount of muscle. And then
every year after that, your gains slow
by about half. But here is the good
news. Your fastest gains don't actually
come when you start lifting. They come
when you start lifting properly. So
let's start with training because this
is where 90% of your muscle growth
actually happens. [music] Take a look at
this. 56 of the world's top natural
bodybuilders. Guys who have naturally
built well over 20 lb of muscle, beyond
what most guys can achieve even with
drugs. And a few months ago, a group of
researchers studied their actual
training routines to try to find out how
they're putting on so much muscle
naturally. Now you'd expect them to
[music] spend hours in the gym
annihilating their muscles with tons of
exercises. But that's not what they
found. On average, they only do about 12
sets per muscle per week. So [music] for
chest, that's four sets of bench, four
sets of incline, and four sets of flies
for the whole week. Now, for some
muscles, they were doing just six sets a
week, probably a lot less than what
you're currently doing. And [music] the
reason why, might surprise you. The more
sets that you're doing, the less benefit
you get from each extra set. That's Dr.
Mike Zourdos, professor cited in over
6,000 studies, who currently runs a
muscle growth lab out of Florida
Atlantic University, where he and his
[music] team recently investigated how
much more muscle you grow by doing more
sets in the gym. Now, most people expect
a straight line upward. More sets, more
growth. But, here's what they actually
saw. From sets one to five, you're
getting a lot of growth. From five to
10, you're getting some. And then, every
time you add sets after that, we're not
as confident that you're still getting
more growth. And so, if [music] training
longer and longer isn't the best
solution, then what is? This is where it
gets interesting. So, Mike and his team
actually ran a second analysis. How much
more growth do you get by taking each
set closer to failure? The point where
you literally can't do another rep if
your life depended on it. When you stop
your set at eight reps short of failure,
which is honestly the intensity I think
most gym-goers train at, your muscles
still grow. But, when you push each set
to just one or two reps short of
failure, growth nearly doubles. And I
can hear you already. Jeremy, I train
hard, that's not the problem. Trust me,
I have worked with both beginners as
well as trained lifters who have
plateaued, and they both failed the two
simple tests I look for. Number one, if
their last rep isn't moving really slow,
they aren't pushing hard enough. And
number two, if on their very last set of
their exercise, they can do more reps
than their first set, even though
they're using the same weight, again,
they're [music] not pushing hard enough.
But, now you may be thinking, okay, so
if more sets help, and training closer
to failure helps, then why not just do
more sets and take them all to failure?
I always try to remind folks that there
are downstream effects of every training
decision that you make. What that means
is, if you take all of your sets to
failure, you're going to feel terrible
after the session, then you might have
some fatigue and soreness the next few
days. If that lasts for a little bit
longer, maybe you can't train again or
train effectively and then you've
actually decreased your frequency
throughout the [music] week. And maybe
that inhibits some of the total volume
that you could do because you were so
fatigued from it.
>> So, if your goal is building muscle as
fast as possible, [music]
the key isn't trying to maximize
everything at once. It's choosing the
training style that allows you to train
hard, train consistently, and avoid
injury. And that usually comes down to
two main approaches. The first is what I
call the intensity method. And if you
hate spending hours in the gym, you're
going to love this.
>> If somebody loves training to failure,
then they can go and knock out all of
their sets to failure. Perhaps they
don't need as many total sets. Maybe
even five sets a week per so on a muscle
group.
>> do five to 12 sets per muscle per week.
So, for chest, you might do three sets
of bench, three sets of incline, and two
sets of cable flies. That's eight sets
for the entire week. Your whole chest
workout might take just over 20 minutes,
and you might be in the gym as little as
three or four hours a week. But
remember, you're taking every set to
failure. And I'm not talking, "Oh, this
is getting hard failure." I mean, you
physically cannot move the weight
another inch. Your muscles are shaking,
your face is red, and you're making
weird noises. It is mentally tough, but
I have personally seen many lifters
switch to this approach and see way
better gains with half the sets.
Because, for the first time in their
lives, they're training with actual
intensity instead of just running on
autopilot with three sets of 10. But I
will admit, each set is a mental battle,
which is why there's a second option.
With the volume method, you do more
sets, like 12 to 20 sets per muscle per
week. But you stop two or three reps
short of failure. So, that same chest
workout becomes four sets of bench, four
sets of dips, four sets of incline, and
four sets of cable flies. Each set is
easier, but the workouts are longer.
Now, which approach is actually better?
>> The difference is pretty small. We get
hung up on looking in the weeds at what
is the the statistical difference in
this and but we're talking about a few
millimeters. So, whatever somebody is
going to enjoy and adhere to the most,
they should do that.
>> Now, for me personally, I do a mix of
both. So for arms and back, I actually
prefer fewer sets pushed all the way to
failure. But whenever I'm short on time,
I also use the intensity approach. But
for muscle groups like legs, taking sets
to failure can honestly be brutal and
hard for me to recover from. So, I'll
often prefer adding an extra set or two
instead. But to find what works the best
for you, here is an upper and lower body
workout with the intensity approach. And
here are those same workouts but with
the volume approach. So try out both and
see what style you're personally more
likely to stick to. Regardless of which
approach you choose, if you're training
this hard, you have to be smart about
how many sets you're doing in each
workout.
>> This is pretty recent paper from us by
Jake Remmert, one of my PhD students
right now who just did a fantastic job
on this. Unlike the other
meta-regression from Pelland where we
want to see the number of sets per week,
we wanted to see [music]
where you tap out for those diminishing
returns in sets per session. We found
that right about 10-11 sets per session
[music] per muscle group. So over that,
we aren't sure if we're really getting
more growth. And now, that could be for
physiological reasons. It could be for
fatigue, right? We're training in such a
fatigue state that we're not really
accomplishing anymore. But what that
suggests to me is that this is where
frequency becomes a variable that
becomes to be important.
>> And all this means is rather than doing
12 sets of chest all in one workout,
split those sets up into at least two
separate days per week. Based on Mike's
analysis, that one switch has the
potential to speed up your gains by up
to 30%, which is why upper lower splits,
push pull leg splits, and full body
splits are great options to organize
your training. Now for me personally, my
favorite split is this 5-day upper lower
push pull leg split. But the exact split
matters much less than choosing one that
actually fits your schedule and lets you
stay consistent. And if you stick to
what we covered so far, depending on
your experience, you should be able to
build 3 to 8 lb of muscle over the next
6 months. But you can speed up those
gains even further by choosing the right
exercises.
>> that some newbies might make, especially
with this social media age and there's
so much information is there's a lot of
exercises you could be doing but you
aren't in a position where you can
efficiently learn many many exercises.
>> That's Steve Hall, a pro drug tested
natural bodybuilder who has gained 45
pounds of muscle throughout his 20-year
lifting career. He explained how there's
three stages when it comes to choosing
your exercises starting with beginners.
>> Yeah, at least for those novice lifters,
fewer exercises, just general movement
patterns, a press, a pull, a squat, a
hip hinge, and then you can kind of
build from there.
>> In fact, with just these six core
exercises done three times a week, you
can build well over 10 pounds of muscle.
But once you actually put on some muscle
and have at least two or three years of
consistent training under your belt, you
might notice those same compound
movements have limitations. This is
where stage two comes in. This where
most people plateau.
>> Once you're at this point as an
intermediate, you've probably really
grown some of your strong, genetically
well-endowed muscle groups cuz your body
is just it wants to move the weight A to
B [music]
the most efficient way possible.
>> squats did a great job of growing my
glutes and inner thighs, but my quads
barely budge. And bench press never
really did much for my chest and often
just bugged my shoulders. It wasn't
until I started doing hack squats for
quads and more machine and cable work
for my chest [music] did these areas
finally start responding. But I know for
others it's a complete opposite.
>> There are some exercises that really
suit some body types versus others.
>> At this stage, you need to become your
own guinea pig and figure out what your
body and your joints respond best to.
And this is also a stage where you might
add a few more specialized exercises,
especially for muscles that tend to lag
behind, like the rear delts, upper
chest, or [music] lats. But here's a
list of a few exercises for each muscle
that I find tend to work well for most
people. Try two or three of these out
per muscle and pay close attention to
which ones feel the best on your joints
and give you the best pump and next day
soreness. Those are likely going to be
your winners. And so by the time you've
reached stage three, you've figured out
which exercises actually grow your
muscles the best. So instead of
constantly changing exercises, you
simply double down on the ones that work
and rotate them only when needed.
>> May or may not like this question, but
I'm just curious. If you could pick one
exercise for every single muscle, what
would they be?
>> You're right, I don't love it, but I
will I'll play ball. Delts, I'll go for
a cross body cable lateral raise.
Triceps, I really like skull crusher
variations. Dumbbell skull crushers
probably are the most sustainable for
me. Then for biceps, I will say Bayesian
curls are a big go-to. For chest, I I
struggle with my chest. I will go for
good converging machine press. Uh for
lats, I will say any sort of shoulder
width to slightly inside shoulder width
lat pull down works super well for me.
And then for my upper back, a good
pronated grip shoulder width or slightly
wider machine row suits me down to the
ground. Glutes, like a a machine hip
thrust. Can't go wrong with it. Quads,
if you've tried a lot of hack squats,
the Cybex one like a lot of well-trained
lifters kind of acknowledge it as one of
the best. It's very challenging and
humbling. Hamstrings, a good RDL.
>> And then last but not least, calves.
>> That straight leg calf raise can't be
beat.
>> And what's exciting about this stage is
even someone like me, I'm still
discovering exercises that unlock new
growth. My chest and back are good
examples. They've grown more in the past
couple years than they have in a long
time, even though my body weight didn't
change that much. But while training is
the engine that drives muscle growth,
your nutrition is the fuel. most
important question you need to answer is
how much should you eat? Take a look at
this chart. Now let's start over here.
Above 20% body fat for men or above 30%
for women. If that's you, then while it
may not look like it, you actually have
a unique advantage.
>> There's about five times the energy in
the fat tissue compared to the lean
tissue, roughly. And if your body
believes it needs to [music] build
muscle cuz you're giving it a resistance
training stimulus, some more body fat
may be metabolized to feed that.
>> That's Dr. Eric Helms, a muscle growth
scientist and pro natural bodybuilder.
If you have enough body fat, he suggests
you want to aim for a body
recomposition, losing fat while building
muscle.
>> You probably don't need to be in a
surplus. And you might be able to make
just as good of gains, probably not
exactly as good, but pretty close.
You're going to get a little more bang
for your buck visually, accepting like
80 to 70% of the muscle gain you could
have got, but losing body fat in an
appreciable rate. But the trick is you
don't want to be in a large deficit. The
likelihood of muscle mass loss is scales
with the deficit side. I would probably
cap your deficit and say losing 0.5% of
your body weight per week.
>> So, if you multiply your body weight by
0.005,
that is how much weight you want to aim
to lose per week. Which means you're
eating about 250, max 500 calories less
than your body needs per day. Many of
our app members follow this exact
protocol and end up seeing a complete
transformation, even though their weight
hasn't changed that much. I personally
saw it with my brother-in-law's 6-month
transformation, too. While he only lost
about 12 lbs on the scale, he actually
lost around 20 lbs of fat while gaining
7 lbs of lean mass. But if you're
serious about maximizing growth, you
actually don't want to use this approach
forever.
>> And in those scenarios, you can
probably, until you get below that
cutoff, that 20 or 30% respective body
fat percentage level, just based loosely
on the data, that's the point where you
might go, you know what, if if muscle
gain rather than fat loss is my
principal goal, now I'm going to move it
closer to maintenance or a slight
surplus.
>> So, if you're lean enough, this is
actually where more calories can help
maximize growth.
>> There's a great study by Rossow and
colleagues, 2002. Untrained university
age males, they go into a hypertrophy
oriented program and they're being being
given either nothing, just follow your
habitual diet, or a 2,000 calorie weight
gain shake. They were [music] just so
responsive to training, they gained
almost a pound a week of lean mass and
body mass. So, exclusive at the group
level, lean gains over 8 weeks, almost a
pound [music] a week, when they added
those 2,000 calories.
>> For context, mostly lifters can expect
to gain 10 to 20 lb of lean mass after a
full year of training. And just by
pairing hard training with a large
calorie surplus, these students were
able to gain eight after just 2 months
of training. But, that same approach
isn't going to work for everyone. The
key is scaling your calories based on
your potential to grow.
>> Your nutrition is permissive to growth.
So, if you are a rank beginner, 2% gain
in body mass per month, that's a great
target and it should be enough to not
hold you back. And if you are
intermediate, somewhere closer to 1%.
And then if you're advanced, which
hopefully also comes with the ability to
precisely track your nutrients, that
might be something closer to 0.5%.
>> And so, based on Eric's advice, here's
the exact approach I'd recommend,
depending on your experience level and
how much body fat you're carrying. But,
with your calories now figured out, how
much protein should you eat? Considering
protein has been put into literally
everything nowadays, it must be a
game-changer for growth, right? Well,
the real answer might surprise you.
>> So, protein overall has a very small
effect. So, I've made a whole
>> past video on this, and while protein
does support muscle growth, it doesn't
play as big of a role as people think.
And you don't actually need very much to
maximize its benefit.
>> So, I still think, say 1.6 g per
kilogram or higher as a kind of cut off
on the low end is a good idea, or 0.7 g
per pound if you're an American.
>> And it's not like you won't build any
muscle if you're not meeting that,
right? Again, that's like the minimum
for the maximum.
>> Exactly. You're still making gains.
>> I see.
>> Even as low as 1.2 g per kilogram, which
is like hard to not hit. So, if you
weigh 220 lb, only consuming 120 g of
protein per day.
>> Honestly, someone really needs to fix
our whole metric and imperial system,
but here is a good summary of how much
protein you actually need. Now, if
protein doesn't matter as much as we
thought, then now you may be wondering,
is there anything else you can do with
your diet to speed up muscle growth? And
yes, there is. Because based on my
experience as a coach, the biggest
nutrition mistake people make isn't
protein. It's what they eat or don't eat
before their workout. You won't believe
the number of times I've had someone
start a workout and I asked what they
ate before and they say something like,
"Oh, 3 hours ago, I had a coffee and a
granola bar."
And what I like to do is about 1.5 to 2
hours before my workout, I'll have a
meal with slow-digesting carbs and
protein. And so, for me, that's usually
oats with Greek yogurt and protein
powder. And then, about 30 minutes
before training, I'll have some
fast-digesting carbs. Now, these [music]
get right into my bloodstream, and I can
feel the energy almost immediately. I
usually don't last very long, but when I
eat like this, I can go hard for hours.
>> But of course, no discussion about diet
would be complete without talking about
supplements. It's super cost-effective.
It just has a really good track record
of having small but pretty consistent
positive effects on muscle growth.
>> That's Dr. Eric Trexler, a researcher
out of Duke University who has published
studies on pretty much every supplement
you can think of. And the supplement
he's referring to is creatine, which has
been found to boost your lean mass by as
much as 2 to 3 lb in the first 8 to 12
weeks. But, there's [music] two
downsides to keep in mind about this
number. First of all, most of that lean
mass is simply a one-time boost from
creatine pulling [music] water into your
muscles to help it look fuller. So, it's
not like you're going to continue
getting the big boost every 8 to 12
weeks forever. And the second downside
is something I've personally noticed
whenever I do take creatine.
>> Some people do not respond to creatine.
Some studies will suggest it's like 20
to 30%.
>> As for how to tell if it is working,
>> if you were getting 10 reps with that
weight, and you add some creatine to the
mix, and pretty soon after adding the
creatine, you're getting an extra two or
three reps out like a 20 or 30% increase
in that kind of rep range,
>> And while Eric and I did talk about a
handful of other supplements, I honestly
don't think you need any to build 20 lb
or more of muscle. I mean, look at
people in sub-optimal conditions, like
prisoners with no supplements and
limited protein. They can still build
serious muscle as long as the training
stimulus is there. But, that's only
going to work if it's paired with the
final piece of the muscle-building
puzzle.
>> So, you stimulate the muscle to grow,
but then don't give it the chemical
signal that it needs to do so, it's
eventually going to just shrink. [music]
>> That's Dr. Andrew Spektor, a
board-certified neurologist and sleep
specialist at Duke University. And the
chemical signal he's referring to comes
from sleep.
>> The body actually produces more growth
hormone and testosterone when you slept
better. So, if you want to build muscle,
you have to get the sleep. And then the
other side of that is if you don't sleep
following a workout, you're not going to
have the recovery time. And the body
[music] has to have that rest to be able
to rebuild and regenerate. So, if you go
into a workout sleep deprived, or if you
don't have recovery sleep, you're
limiting what you can possibly achieve.
>> And according to Andrew, it's not just
about getting 7 to 9 hours of sleep per
night. [music]
>> Because if you're getting 7 hours and
waking up and still not feeling
refreshed, there was something wrong
with the quality of that sleep, right? 7
hours ought to be at least mostly
[music] refreshing for somebody.
>> Based on Andrew's research, there's
three main ways many of us sabotage our
sleep quality without us even realizing.
>> So, the environment plays a much bigger
role than people give it credit for. And
so, when we say you want your room to be
dark [music] and quiet, everybody
intuitively knows that, but they don't
necessarily know what dark means. And
all these chargers around your room that
have LED lights on them, you know, or
your smoke detector with an LED light. I
mean, that's actually too much light
[music] just from the LEDs in your room.
The goal in dark is that you can't see
your hand in the front of your face. And
if you can still see the room around you
while you're trying to sleep, that's not
the dark we're talking about. Um quiet,
I don't have a measure, you know, it's
hard to to measure the noise. We don't
easily do that. Um but yeah, you do want
it dark and quiet. [music]
>> While most of us aren't going to install
blackout curtains and a noise-canceling
room, you can spend just $15 on Amazon
for something I use every night and
something Andrew recommends everyone
else use as well.
An eye mask and earplugs. These [music]
two items alone can make 7 hours in bed
start to feel like a restful 8 or 9
hours, [music] especially when it's
paired with Andrew's third tip.
>> And people are often trying to sleep
when it's too hot. The body needs it to
be cold to sleep. And if you can program
your thermostat so that it drops even
during the night, so by 2, 3, 4 in the
morning it's even colder, that's
preferable because that's when you
really need it to be cold to sustain
sleep well.
>> Now some nights of bad sleep are still
bound to happen, but there is something
you can do to prevent it from sabotaging
your next day performance and recovery.
>> It can be hard to get enough sleep
overnight. And naps have been shown
repeatedly to improve athletic
performance. I can tell you about
sprinting, for example, a sprinter, they
sleep deprived a sprinter to 4 hours and
they didn't nap. 20 minutes, that's it.
Just 20 minutes, doesn't need to be a
long nap. Then in another session they
did 4 hours of sleep and that sprint
speed decreased several percentage. Now
2 to 3% may not sound like a huge
amount, but if you're competing at a
higher level, that 2 to 3% is usually
the difference between first and like
eighth place, [music] right? That's the
margin of of elite athletes.
>> Keep in mind nothing we covered so far
with training, nutrition, or recovery is
magic, but it does work. I personally
seen it with men and women of all
different ages and body types. Because
the biggest challenge isn't knowing what
to do, it's actually applying it
consistently week after week. And if you
want someone to take care of all that
guesswork for you, literally tell you
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much for watching. I'll see you next
time.