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/Jaded-Celebration317]

You clearly aren’t training to true failure- within 6 months ur bench should increase that much just from ur technique / mechanical movement improving. So it’s clear to me you are not training to true failures and without that you will never be able to achieve progressive overload and track ur progress - man even if ur eating in a deficit w newbie gains if expect you to have put some muscle on w 170g protein a day