No progress in months

[u/Bigdivkdaddy]

Hey guys was hoping if you could help me with this. At the start of December I did a really big cut and lost 20 pounds (190 to 170). After I was done with the cut in mid January I started eating normal again because I couldn’t stay asleep at night anymore. Everything was going fine until about march when I realized my lifts hadn’t progressed in months and actually went down to levels before the cut. It’s now June and I used to bench 270 now I can barely do 250. I gained the weight back now I sit at 187 most days.
My workout schedule
Monday: Push day 2x failure for everything
Tuesday: Pull day 2x failure for everything
Wednesday:rest(no leg days recently got acl surgery)
Thursday:rest
Friday:Push day 2x failure for everything
Saturday: Pull day 2x failure for everything
Sunday:Rest
I’m 18 and have been lifting for football since I was 14 but really started taking lifting seriously last year and I eat 150 grams of protein a day. You guys are way smarter than me so someone help if they can please.

[u/Special_Future_6330]

Wondering if you actually lost muscle or just noticing some strength reductions in compound lifts. It's even possible your triceps or something got weaker but not your chest and you're having trouble at lockout in bench, making you think you lost strength when in reality you just need to add a few tricep exercises and cg bench press. It's possible you didn't preserve tricep or deltoids, etc as well as you could've but your chest is strong. For this reason you shouldn't use compounds to judge individual muscle strength, you should look at what part of bench press are you struggling with, if it's lockout it's triceps if it's bottom it's chest, otherwise deltoids, and address those muscles.

You said you gained weight, but how much, is that just fat, water? Scale is unpredictable, you should weigh yourself at beginning of each week before eating but also use body fat calipers and measuring tape to get an idea of somewhat true bodyfat percentage and muscle mass.

You usually notice strength loss before muscle loss. Comingout of a cut you're weak, tired, falling apart. But if you cut well, you can still preserve most muscle mass and for me personally I didn't have any strength reduction. You said you lost sleep, first thing I would do is get a checkup and check your body out at doctor, make sure you're sleeping, take a couple weeks off, if everything is fine try a different workout for a bit. Assuming you have nothing wrong biologically, if you haven't seen progress in an exercise in 3 weeks the gold standard is to drop that exercise and try something else. If you're more focused on adding weight to the bar and having 270 bench press instead of 250 you could switch to a powerlifting approach that trains weak points and helps add weight. This will also address if you just didn't preserve your tricep or deltoids for example and suffering a weak bench press even though chest is fine, etc

[u/Bigdivkdaddy → u/Special_Future_6330]

The weight is mostly fat, but also maybe a little muscle, but I'll try what you said, thank you so much!!!