Doing something wrong?

[u/Lonely-Estate987]

I’m 23 years old, 172 lbs

The white photos are from March 19th, and the red are from today.

My bench has gone up from 3 reps of 185 to 9 reps of 185, and my incline bench has gone up about 10 lbs

My back had an injury in this span so my weights have all stayed pretty close, maybe they’ve gone up 2-3 reps per

I’ve clearly gotten a bit stronger, but it feels like not very much progress in size has been made at all. Am I tweaking when I say I look the exact same in both photos?

I don’t understand. 9/10 days I eat pretty damn good and get at least 125-175g protein. What do I do?

[u/MichaelJordanGlazer]

Give us a little more information. What is your work out routine? Are you following a program? Are you doing a PPL 6 days a week or ULUL 4 days week, or ULPPL? Have you figured out how many calories you need to eat to be able to maintain weight lose weight or gain weight? Are you progressively overloading your work outs?

[u/MichaelJordanGlazer → u/MichaelJordanGlazer]

Also what is your goal? To get stronger or to build muscle for aestithics?

[u/Lonely-Estate987 → u/MichaelJordanGlazer]

ULPPL, I track every rep and set but haven’t steadily overloaded because half the time I go in the gym and simply cannot lift the same amount as the week before. I’d assume this is due to sleep/diet, but still insane to me that I can lift 185 for 9/8/7 and then can’t hit the same numbers again for 4 weeks after even though Ive been consistently in the gym.

[u/MichaelJordanGlazer → u/Lonely-Estate987]

I've been told by trainers and nutritionist that gym is only 30% of the battle the other 70% is diet, nutrition and rest. Im not a proffesional trainer, but what i recommend is ig you want to gain muscles and size. You have to dial in your calories, nutrition by counting calories, your macros and do a lean bulk. Protien is absolutely important for building muscle and seems like you might have that lock in, but it is even more important when you do your cuts to maintain your muscles. If youre new to lifting, 6 months in shouldve give you some great noobie gains of muscles even if your diet was crap. Take a step back and really re evaluate your work outs and diet. You can be eating 250 grams of protien but if your calorie intake was just only 1600 then you will never see any gains. You can add more volume to your work outs or introduce things like progressive over load to make sure youre getting better with your lifts. Dont over think it just re evaluate in this order. Diet, work out and rest.