Naturally growing your muscles might seem like an impossible thing that your body is capable of, but you’ll be surprised to know that it happens to all of us. Have you ever struggled with building muscles and gaining weight, especially at a young age, even though you were eating a lot and doing a fair amount of physical activity? I struggled with this personally when I was young until I hit a certain age where my muscles and weight started to grow exponentially. With that being said, at what age do you naturally start to grow muscles?
You naturally start to grow muscles around the age of 14 to 16 due to different factors like puberty and testosterone levels, but it also greatly depends on your eating culture, geographical conditions, and whether or not you’re involved in some form of physical activity.
In this article, we’ll talk more in-depth about the age at which you naturally grow muscles and the reasons behind it.
At What Age Do You Naturally Start to Grow Muscles?
Before answering this question, I’ll talk about my own experience which is closely related to this topic. Growing up, I was really skinny. I remember I was 14, 5 foot 7 tall, and weighed about 100 pounds which is considered extremely underweight for my age and height. I was literally like a walking stick to the point where people started reaching out to me and asking if I was malnourished or addicted to some form of substance. To be honest, it did bother me a lot and I built up so many insecurities about the way I look and how skinny I was.
At that time, I had a close friend that was a little bit older than me (he was 17 while I was 14). He was very fit and muscular, had a lot of knowledge about fitness, and he knew exactly how much I struggled with my weight.
One time, he told me something that I still remember to this day “Don’t worry about the way you look since it’s only temporary. At a certain age, you’ll naturally start to grow muscles. As soon as you feel like you’re slightly getting stronger or see that some muscles are starting to become visible, be sure that that’s the optimal time to take advantage of your growth spurt using some form of physical activity like weight-lifting to kickstart your fitness transformation journey.”
Those words resonated with me during that entire year and I was impatiently waiting for when this growth will start. Fast forwards to when I was 15, I noticed that I was getting stronger, could lift heavy objects with more ease, and surprisingly enough, some muscles like my abs and triceps started to naturally show. That’s when I knew that everything my friend said was correct, so I decided to follow his advice and start weight-lifting which was the best decision of my life. 3 years later after I first started working out and I look like a completely different person. Here is a picture of my transformation if you’re curious:
Based on my own experience and the experience of many skinny people that managed to transform their bodies, you naturally start to build muscles around the age of 14 to 16 (in my case it was 15), and here are the main reasons why:
Puberty
The main reason why most guys will start to naturally gain muscles around the age of 14 to 16 is the fact that that’s the time when puberty starts to kick in. According to The Institute of Medicine, for males, puberty starts between the age of 9 to 15. However, natural muscle growth is one of the later effects of this period and will usually start right at the age of 14.
But this could vary from one person to another since it is heavily based on genetics which can’t be controlled. There are some guys that will have early puberty and their muscles will start to grow much sooner, but there are others who’ll have a late one and thus, their muscles will start growing at a later age.
Testosterone Levels
Testosterone is pretty much the main hormone that stimulates and controls all the developments in the male body. And this includes, of course, muscle growth.
During puberty, this hormone is largely increased in males which explains the different changes in hair, voice, and muscle mass. According to the Journal of Adolescent Health, there is an approximate 30-fold increase in testosterone production in boys. But again, the same with puberty, this increase is heavily affected by genetics which is why certain boys tend to develop a larger amount of muscle mass during a short period of time without doing anything compared to other ones.
What Factors Can Slow-Down Natural Muscle Growth?
While there are factors that play a role in the natural gain of muscle mass like puberty and testosterone levels, there are other ones that may slow this growth spurt down:
Eating Cultures
Your eating cultures and habits can greatly affect your natural muscle growth simply because eating the right food is what will make your muscles naturally grow in size. Not eating enough or following a traditional culture-based diet that doesn’t provide the essential muscle-promoting nutrients will heavily slow down your natural growth.
It’s true that eating cultures are hard to get over with since it’s something that you’ve been relying on ever since you were a child but you always need to make sure that your diet has a balanced amount of protein, carbs, and healthy fats.
Not only will certain eating habits and cultures limit your natural muscle growth, but there is also a big chance that it will make you gain unhealthy weight which is not what you want at such a young age.
Geographical Conditions
Where you live can also slow down your natural muscle growth. For example, living in hot areas is a condition that your muscles enjoy. According to Sports Med., heat attenuates muscle cell damage and protein degradation which can promote muscle growth. Heat is often used for exercise recovery and muscle rehabilitation and adaptation.
This means that if you compare two guys that live in two different areas of the world, one that’s hot and another that’s freezing, the one living in hot conditions will naturally grow more muscles.
Lack of Physical Activity
Physical activity is one of the most important factors that can promote muscle growth, especially during a young age. Don’t do the same mistake that I did and skip your P.E classes or any form of physical activity just because you’re skinny since those are necessary for early growth. Practicing a sport, doing activities that require physical strength, or simply, weight lifting, are good ways to speed up the process of muscle growth.
Conclusion:
Since my friend managed to change the way I think about my body and fitness in general, I’ll try to do the same with you. If you’re struggling with being skinny, especially if you’re still young, keep in mind that it’s a temporary situation that will soon change naturally. As soon you start seeing this change, make sure to take advantage of it by starting some form of resistance training in order to kickstart your body transformation journey just like I did.