It's too bad the guy who's close to 200 lbs is doing about 10 pullups a day as his only real arm workout. He's sort of ballplayer-sized to begin with, but I can't imagine that pro ballplayers average 30 seconds of upper body lifting a day.

Oh, "of muscle". Damn, otherwise I'd love to try it too.

I think this is possible, although my reason for thinking so is because I think I did it back in high school.

In the summer between junior and senior year, I was at the gym 3-4 times a week, doing cardio and weightlifting.

My weight actually went up that summer from 175 to between 180 and 185, but from what I figure, I lost fat (I was pretty chunky) and put it back on in muscle. So it's not entirely crazy to think that 15 lbs of muscle in 100 days can be done.

Of course, I was 17 and I'm guessing that it was easier then than it would be now.

When I was 22 years old, I put on about 20 pounds of muscle in four months, going from 150 to 170. I don't know what my body fat was, but it was really low. I was pretty skinny coming out of college. I was lifting like crazy...between 4-6 two+ hour sessions per week, each with about 20 minutes of cardio. I also ate a TON of food. A typical day included 6 egg whites for breakfast, one or two cans of tuna fish in a two or three tuna salad sandwiches for lunch, and a 1 lb. steak with steamed vegetables for dinner. I also was taking creatine and drinking whey protein shake supplements. Man, I got puffy fast...then I dislocated by shoulder and stopped lifting, and it was like having the air come out of a balloon...I was back to 155 or so in less than two months. But I definitely packed it on fast.

However, though I was in good shape before I started lifting heavy, I certainly had nowhere to go but up in regards to acquiring muscle mass. A better measure of fast-adding muscle mass would probably be to start with guys who already has a fair amount to begin with, and see how rapidly they were able to put on muscle weight. I imagine it would be a lot slower. In my own case, the first 10 pounds came in the first month, and by the fourth month, I was only able to put on another two pounds or so.

Mike:
I did 33 sets of side presses (a standing one-arm overhead press) with each arm last week, and deadlifts work the upper body, especially the shoulders and forearms, a lot harder than you'd think if you've never done them before. Squats are really the only exercise I'm doing that doesn't work the upper body in some way.

That said, I'd like to do more pull-ups, but they're not easy at 195 pounds. Maybe I'll try out the assisted pull-up machine this week.