How long does it take for the average wimpy guy to build muscles?

[ryanman]

40 or 50 kilos is quite a bit stronger than me right now!

But I bought these awesome Bowflex Select Tech adjustable dumbells. Each dumbell weighs up to 21 kgs and if I can get to the point where they aren't heavy enough for me I will be well pleased.

I think I only weigh about 68 kgs so benching 100 is very impressive.

Are you talking one rep max's here or sets of 12 though?

I have some similar dumbells that allow you to select weight coz I train at home and dont have much room for weights. Mine go up to 35 kilos and after that I have other dumbells and I just put normal plates on them.

I can do 6 reps of 110kilos but then again thats always after I have worked my way up to that weight so if I did a quick light warm up then Id probably get more.

I have to be careful when using dumbells for things such a flies or dumbell presses coz I have double jointed shoulders (shoulders used as stablizer muscles) and if I make one wrong move I can pop them out especially with alot of weight on them. I have done it once before and was holding 25kg in each hand with no spotter and nearly dropped one on myself, shoulder hurt like fuck afterwards lol. So for things such as chest I try to keep to things such as dips, elevated push ups and chair push ups (that way you can get more of a stretch because you can go deeper), flies (not too heavy, if I go heavy I do partial reps to minimise stress on my shoulders) and bench press with a smith machine on some days and other days on free weights.

You sound pretty strong Snakey, 25 kg in both hands is a fantasy to me at this stage.

I would like to think that with a year of training I could do with a bit more weight than 25 kg per dumbell for flat bench presses and maybe squats but I can't ever see myself getting strong enough to need more than that for other exercises.

You probably will Bilbo. My friend started training 6 weeks ago. He is about 5'9 and weighed about 9st 7lbs - so a tiny little guy. He started by chest pressing 10kgs in each hand (Hahaha!) but is already doing 20kg pretty easy.
I started at 15kg in each hand for the flat press but 6 months later im doing 34kg-38-kg with pretty similar improvments for other exercises (I started by shoulder pressing 10kg in each hand but now im doing 26kg-28kg). It very very much depends on the person I think.
Also, a few years ago I was 6ft, and about 12st but looked really skinny, looked about 10st. I quit smoking but did no training and went up to 14st 7lbs in 5 weeks. Gained 2 and a half stone in five weeks and it was alomost completely muscle. I don't know how it happened but it did. So my advice is the quickest way to gain weight is to quit smoking. (I'm not sure if it would work if you were a non-smoker that takes up smoking just for this reason then quits! But why not try?haha).