No quotes, you’re the most reasonable guy here. I appreciate the feedback
If you get some less patient replies it’s primarily because there is a frequently observed pattern of people coming on the boards asking the same sort of questions you did and then not really wanting to hear the answers, it can be frustrating, specially because we all do this to help, it’s a free knowledge sharing, out of desire to see people do great things. I think trying to respond with theoretical knowledge when people are giving proven real world experience is often a red flag indicating the OP doesn’t easily want advice.
I try to give the benefit of the doubt to most posters, but in turn I’d like to think the information is being actioned, if it isn’t then I’ll generally drop out of the conversations.
However you’ve been brave enough to upload the photos, so you’re taking some actions and I’d like to think we can help you.
Definitely answer this when you get a chance:
Some random comments:
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Muscle growth is a slow process. Most people think that what they are doing is not working because they have unrealistic expectations.
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A non-beginner can gain around 0.5 to 1.0% of their body weight per month in the form of muscle. And that is if he does everything optimally to build muscle. Let’s say that you are 200lbs, this means that you can gain, at the most 1-2lbs of muscle per month.
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You are not training legs, which is probably around 40% of your muscle mass. Right from the start we need to lower the possible muscle gain by 40% (since you will not be putting on muscle on half of your body). So rather than 0.5 to 1.0% of your body weight per month, a more realistic expectation is 0.3 to 0.6% of your body weight per month of muscle. If we take our 200lbs example, that’s 0.6 to 1.2lb per month.
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And that’s if you don’t train legs but still do everything else perfectly. You mention that you don’t always train at 100%. It’s probably worse than you think (just from experience, people who tend to skip legs aren’t training hard in general). So that will take some gains off. You also mentioned that you want to recomp, which almost never works. But that also means that your rate of muscle growth will be lower: you gain more muscle while in a surplus, but that can also lead to some fat gain. Considering those 2 factors, I would estimate that a realistic rate of progression for you as you are doing things right now would be around 0.2 - 0.4% of your body weight per month in muscle. Taking our 200lbs example, that would be 0.4 to 0.8lb of muscle per month.
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If you’ve been training seriously for 4 months, this means that a realistic muscle growth would be around 1.6-3.2lb, spread over all your upper body. That is not enough muscle to see a significant visual difference, hence why you think you are not progressing.
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On the bright side, your strength has gone up satisfactorily. Which indicates that you are progressing. Just not at your expected rate. But chances are that your expectations were just not realistic.
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Could you progress faster? Most probably. You didn’t provide us with any info about how you train. A training split (which is all you gave us) is not a program. And out of all the training variables it is by far the least important. More significant for us to analyze what you are doing are your exercise selection, the number of sets per exercise, the number of reps per set, the type of load you are using, if you are using any special methods, what kind of rest periods, when do you decide to add weight, how close to muscle failure do you go, etc.
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Most people (at least non-advanced lifters) grossly overestimate how hard they are training. A recent study looked at perceived vs real effort levels in their training. The researchers asked a group of subjects how much weight they normally use for certain exercises for a set of 10 repetitions. Then the researchers supervised the subjects and forced them to keep doing reps until they failed to complete a repetition (training to failure). The lifters all did 6-9 more repetitions than they normally do (so instead of getting 10 reps with their selected weight, they did 16 to 19). And this is pretty much what I see of most non-advanced lifters: they think that they are training hard, but they are really leaving at least 6 (let’s say 4-5 to be generous) reps in the tank. Which basically makes those sets worthless at stimulating growth. (reference Barbossa-Neto 2021). Since you are probably like most average lifters, you are probably just not training hard enough. Even though you think that you are.
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#5 is a great point.
Are you still around Throwawy?
My dumbass almost thought this was @throwawayfitness
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I did as well, but a short timer.
I’d love to know what happend to people like this, I’m pretty sure I can guess, still making excuses and getting no where, but it’d be nice to be proven wrong.
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I had cancer, was generally frustrated at a lot of things. Found a tumor in my leg and things made sense. Progress has stopped but will resume when removed. Whenever or if that happens.
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Wow, really sorry to hear about the cancer, glad you’ve found it and it’s being treated, assuming the prognosis is good?
The photo was a great way to come back to the forum thought, hopefully you’ll keep coming back - that’s solid progress, looks like you figured some things out.
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I hope you have a good treatment and recovery.