Quote Originally Posted by Dogmama
Muscle begins to degrade after 3 days of non-use. You can't gain muscle by sitting around. Gaining 7 pounds of muscle in a few months without lifting weights is impossible. Heck, gaining 7 pounds of muscle in a few months is impossible unless you're on steroids.

Dogmama, I'm with you on this one. All it takes is an injury to demonstrate how quickly muscle is lost. When I tore my MCL/ACL in Jan. within 2 weeks the injured leg had lost all muscle tone. My leg shunk in size and looked horrible. PT brought back some of the strength and shape but ACL surgery slowed the progress. The uninjured leg also lost shape and strength but not as much.

While I did not lose as much muscle after surgery, I started PT immediately, it has taken a long time to regain the strength in the injured leg. At the end of April I had 85% of the strength of the uninjured leg. My injured quad still does not have the same shape as my uninjured quad, the vastus medialis muscle is not back 100% yet and I don't have the cardio or muscle endurance that I had before my injury. My hamstrings and glutes also lost strength so I'm doing specific exercises to strengthen them.

Sometimes I do leg presses and I can do about half amount of weight with my uninjured leg as I could do before the injury.

Next week, I'll be 3 months from surgery and progress is slower than what I'd like it to be, although, considering what I've been though, I've come a long way in a short time.