Goku apparently can't grow stronger.

[Nazi Cola]

3 Years on earth? It took Goku nearly 24 years of training to come to PL 250, So how in the hell can Goku achieve 4 mill in lesser then 3 years. Billions is insane even for the standards of Anime/Manga Ranking, The only few who are actualy above the level of Billion nearly Trillion are Dark Schneider, Tenchi Kami, Hao, and Gogeta SSJ 4, Its ridicoulse, Goku´s base was 180.000 on Namek, With gravity training what Goku did in those 3 years was normal earth training with Piccolo and Gohan there is no way Goku could achieve such a level in lesser then 3 years.

What do you say to this? I know some people prefer relatively small numbers, but this is just wacky in my opinion, no offense. I'm not talking about the billions part, that's another debate, but I mean the part where this guy is saying Goku can't go from ~3,000,000 to 4,000,000 in 3 years while training intensely with Gohan and Piccolo. If you're someone of the smaller number mindset, could you please try to explain to me how Goku can get such a tiny increase while he's got Gohan and Piccolo to help train? Is it that he's focusing so much on them that he's not increasing his own strength? Or is it, like this guy is claiming, that Earth training just yields shitty results?

And really, I'm not trying to bag on anybody, I just want to know both sides of this story.

[TheDevilsCorpse]

The person is just narrow minded in forgetting that the stronger you get, the easier it is to train at higher levels, even if it is just Earth training. I'm not saying that he'll jump from 3 million to 20 million in 3 years of training on Earth, but Goku would definitely get stronger than a few minor digits. The person in the quote seems to think that if he had a power level of 3 million and then trained for another 24 years, that the result would be around 3,000,250, which is absurd.

[Bussani]

The person is just narrow minded in forgetting that the stronger you get, the easier it is to train at higher levels, even if it is just Earth training.

I always think it's the other way around. The stronger you get, the bigger training methods you need. That's why we got stronger and stronger masters, challenging new places to train like Kami's tower with its thin air, Kaio's planet with its high gravity, the Room of Spirit and Time with both, and the afterlife where time and stamina work differently. Eventually you outgrow a particular level of training and have to look elsewhere. That said, I'm not saying that I agree with the guy Nazi Cola quoted; training on Earth obviously still works to an extent, especially if you have a strong sparring partner or can find some other way to push your limits.

[TheDevilsCorpse]

I'm definitely not saying Goku can reach his maximum potential just training on Earth repeating the same methods over and over again, I'm just pointing out that the stronger you get the more effectively you can train in a certain environment for that specific quote. Obviously newer training methods will be required for greater results over a shorter period of time, but in Dragon Ball, you can still grow quite stronger using the old tried and true methods as well. The quote in the original post suggesting that Goku after the fight on Namek would only be able to gain the same amount of power in his next 24 years of training as he had in the previous 24 after his massive boosts would absurd.

After 50 years, I could see Goku maxing out at a power of 500 training only on Earth with no new training methods and no threats to cause him damage and receive zenkais, etc. But he did receive the Super God Water, the Zenkais, the gravity training, the low oxygen training, the Super Saiyan transformation. All this granted him new strength and allowed him to push new limits even with old methods. As I've said eventually there will be a cap and the arc on his power graph will begin to flat line with very minimal results, but after each hurdle in DBZ, the finish line get further away.

[Bussani]

That's pretty much what I was saying, too. And we have to keep in mind that Goku didn't spend those first 20-something years doing the same training again and again. The training was always getting bigger and always continued to get bigger, so I can't agree with the quoted-guy that Goku's increase would be exactly the same as what he'd already done. It's obvious that going back and training with Roshi's turtle shells wouldn't be much different than training without them once you're a Super Saiyan, though; the principle of it would still work, but you'd need a much heavier shell.

That's the key to it, I think. Training on Earth obviously doesn't just stop working altogether, but there's no denying that it's a step down from some of the more exotic places. To continue to improve and to overcome that step down, you have to be inventive and find other ways to challenge your new-found limits. Rivals/partners are usually the best thing for that, because as you improve, so do they.

[Herms]

Billions is insane even for the standards of Anime/Manga Ranking, The only few who are actualy above the level of Billion nearly Trillion are Dark Schneider, Tenchi Kami, Hao, and Gogeta SSJ 4, Its ridicoulse, Goku´s base was 180.000 on Namek, With gravity training what Goku did in those 3 years was normal earth training with Piccolo and Gohan there is no way Goku could achieve such a level in lesser then 3 years.

What standards of anime/manga ranking would those be, exactly?

Goku's base on Namek was 180,000?

[Fishman]

Goku's base on Namek was 180,000?

I honestly never knew whether or not to interpret 180,000 as Kaioken x3 (from a supposed base of 60,000) or not.

[Nazi Cola]

Goku's base on Namek was 180,000?

I honestly never knew whether or not to interpret 180,000 as Kaioken x3 (from a supposed base of 60,000) or not.

I thought it was established that his Base was 90k because he was using just a normal Kaioken.

[Herms]

I thought it was established that his Base was 90k because he was using just a normal Kaioken.

Yeah, that's what Daizenshuu 7 says anyway. And it's supported by the fact that in the series, after fighting with Goku for a bit Ginyu estimates Goku's power as around 85,000, at which point Goku uses the Kaio-ken and freaks him out. I can kinda understand thinking that 60,000 was his base, since that was Ginyu's initial estimate before fighting Goku, but I'm kinda flummoxed that anyone would say 180,000 was his base, since he's rather clearly using the Kaio-ken at that point.

[Dayspring]

I thought it was established that his Base was 90k because he was using just a normal Kaioken.

Yeah, that's what Daizenshuu 7 says anyway. And it's supported by the fact that in the series, after fighting with Goku for a bit Ginyu estimates Goku's power as around 85,000, at which point Goku uses the Kaio-ken and freaks him out. I can kinda understand thinking that 60,000 was his base, since that was Ginyu's initial estimate before fighting Goku, but I'm kinda flummoxed that anyone would say 180,000 was his base, since he's rather clearly using the Kaio-ken at that point.

Just to expand on this, regardless of what the daizenshuu says, his BP has to be 90,000 here. Ginyu confirms that Goku's base BP is well over 60,000. If 180,000 was the result of a kaioken x3 or higher, then Goku's base BP would need to be exactly 60,000 or less. Thus, only kaioken x2 is a possibility. 180,000 divided by two is 90,000, so just by what we see in the manga, 90,000 must be Goku's BP.

[Rocketman]

I'm not talking about the billions part, that's another debate, but I mean the part where this guy is saying Goku can't go from ~3,000,000 to 4,000,000 in 3 years while training intensely with Gohan and Piccolo. If you're someone of the smaller number mindset, could you please try to explain to me how Goku can get such a tiny increase while he's got Gohan and Piccolo to help train?

Imagine you lift weights, and you work yourself up to lifting 250 pounds easily. Then you go down to lifting only 100 pounds. Will you get stronger?

[gotensottile]

Imagine a rolling stone. It's going to get faster, right?
Goku continued to do more and more harsh training after Raditz's death(as well as his).
Training with Kaio-sama.
Training in his spaceship.
Becoming a Super Saiyan.
Training for another three years.
Training in the Room of Spirit and Time.
Training for Seven Years in the afterlife/Becoming a Super Saiyan 2 & 3.
Training for another ten years.
All those, starting with Kaio, are more beneficial to him than what he has done on Earth. The training gets harder as he goes along, and he trains harder himself.

[omegacwa]

Honestly, Goku training on Earth for 20 some odd years and only attaining a power of 416ish, is bizarre. Especially considering Piccolo goes from 408ish up to over 1500 in less than a year in preparation for the Saiyans (same goes for the human characters). Even though during that period no one was doing any type of special training. I mean they did train with Kami, but Goku had already done that and did not achieve strength anywhere near that level.

Here is the real explanation, two words:
Plot Device.

Basically suspend your disbelief and just enjoy the show.

[Rocketman]

Imagine a rolling stone. It's going to get faster, right?

Because of the force of gravity which constantly pulls the stone towards the Earth with no effort required on the stone's part.

Nothing constantly makes Goku get stronger, it's dependent on how hard he works.

[Dayspring]

I'm not talking about the billions part, that's another debate, but I mean the part where this guy is saying Goku can't go from ~3,000,000 to 4,000,000 in 3 years while training intensely with Gohan and Piccolo. If you're someone of the smaller number mindset, could you please try to explain to me how Goku can get such a tiny increase while he's got Gohan and Piccolo to help train?

Imagine you lift weights, and you work yourself up to lifting 250 pounds easily. Then you go down to lifting only 100 pounds. Will you get stronger?

Yes, provided you do more than 2.5x as many reps as you would do with the 250 pound weights. Seeing how Goku's gravity training was done in jumps of about x2 (with the exception of Kaio's, obviously), Goku would need to do exactly 200x as many reps under 1G to get the exact same gain he got from going from 50G to 100G. However, that's if he were an Earth-born human. We see from how quickly he got used to 50G that it's actually much less complicated than that for Saiyans.

Considering zenkai+muscle resistence for base form alone equals at most 23,000 out of Goku's 90,000, I think it's more than safe to say you're ignoring quite a bit. For example:

Length of training under 100G: I forget, but it's way under 7 days
Types of training under 100G: extreme muscle-resistence and extreme zenkais for base form, extreme spiritual training for base
Types of fighting under 100G: Solo for base form (the worst)

Length of training under 1G: between 1095 and 1460 days (in May, 767, Trunks says it's been "almost 4 years" since his trip in 764, so the number is much higher than halfway between those numbers)
Types of training under 1G: extreme muscle-resistence and mild zenkai for SSJ form, extreme spiritual training for base (and maybe SSJ) form
Types of fighting under 1G: sparring with Gohan and Piccolo, sparring with Gohan and Piccolo once they've gotten stronger, sparring with Gohan and Piccolo once they've gotten even more stronger, etc (the best) for SSJ form

I think it's possible for them to exceed the same gains as 100G training. Not the plotdouken-zenkai gain, but given the amount of time, maybe a good chunk of it (ie: 3 mil to 4 mil base seems very plausible to me, 3 mil to 6 mil not as much, but still plausible, beyond 6 mil seems unlikely, but arguably possible beyond 10 mil seems impossible).

[Dayspring]

I'm not talking about the billions part, that's another debate, but I mean the part where this guy is saying Goku can't go from ~3,000,000 to 4,000,000 in 3 years while training intensely with Gohan and Piccolo. If you're someone of the smaller number mindset, could you please try to explain to me how Goku can get such a tiny increase while he's got Gohan and Piccolo to help train?

Imagine you lift weights, and you work yourself up to lifting 250 pounds easily. Then you go down to lifting only 100 pounds. Will you get stronger?

Yes, provided you do more reps. For example, if you did 10 reps under 100 pounds, then 10 reps under 250, to get the same gain, you would do 10 reps under 625 pounds. If you switched to 100 pounds instead of 625, you would instead do more than 62.5 reps (2.5x 10 reps to maintain, 2.5x that to continue to grow at the same rate).

However, I don't even think it's that difficult for Saiyans. Goku did jumps of about 2x for his 20-100G training. Yet he got used to 50g faster than he expected to, implying that for Saiyans, it's less difficult to get used to the new gains. In other words, for an Earth-born human to get used to 50G while training under 20G, it would take at least 2.5x as many reps as one would normally under 20G. Goku essentially did less but still got that same gain. I think the zenkais he was abusing got him this cheat, so assuming he doesn't use zenkais in the 3+ years training, to get the same gain as going from 50g to 100g while training under 1G, Goku would have to workout 200x as much (100x to maintain 100G intensity, double that to get the same gain). So if Goku spent 3 days punching the air under 100G, under 1G he'd need to punch the air for 600 days. They had much longer than 600 days.

Added to all this, Goku's physical strength is only 23,000 out of 90,000. It's not fair to assume he'd only train his physical aspects, let alone assume that sparring with continually strengthening fighters is at most as effective as shadow-boxing. If SSJ really is just 50x stronger, then any SSJ sparring was done to give Piccolo and Gohan a boost, then he'd drop down to base form to fight people stronger than him. Otherwise SSJ training is 1/50th as effective as regular training.

So I do think Goku got another 3 million stronger? I honestly don't know, as 2,910,000 came from a plotdouken-sized zenkai. But I see the potential for them to train under harsher conditions than the 100Gs, so I don't think it's fair to say that the gains were substancially lower than Namek-era gains anywhere else in the series.

[Bussani]

This is basically the same point I was making. Going back to Earth after better places is a major step down, like if someone took all your weights away. You should still be able to get stronger, but you'd have to work a lot harder. And each time you got stronger, the training would become easier, and you'd have to work even harder than that.

PS: I'm not saying anything about how strong I think Goku got in 3 years on Earth. My only point is that it's not as simple as, "every time you spend this much time training, you get this much stronger." That's only a rough estimate, even if we're talking about training in the same place.

[Dayspring]

This is basically the same point I was making. Going back to Earth after better places is a major step down, like if someone took all your weights away. You should still be able to get stronger, but you'd have to work a lot harder. And each time you got stronger, the training would become easier, and you'd have to work even harder than that.

PS: I'm not saying anything about how strong I think Goku got in 3 years on Earth. My only point is that it's not as simple as, "every time you spend this much time training, you get this much stronger." That's only a rough estimate, even if we're talking about training in the same place.

I agree. I think Piccolo's growth from Ma Junior's birth to the arrival of the Saiyans shows that you can just use intensive versions of the same training under same conditions to get powerful gains. I feel that the fact that Goku is much more than 2/3 spiritual strength when his BP is 90,000 (ie: after he's completed his most intensive physical training) supports that as well. Having extra gravity certainly helps a hell of a lot, but it's just the same premise as weighted clothing; it's only one facet of training which, when mastered, isn't an important one.