smeyers,
Your right everyone is different, including diets, general health, exercise programmes and so on. The routine I did was given to me, and was just loads of text on paper. So all the techniques were totally self taught, and I would immagine the top quality programmes such as the [words=http://www.mattersofsize.com/join-now.html]MoS[/words] programme would be far superior as far as gains go.
But back to your question, it took me about 3 1/2 - 4 months. hope this helps you some.