I have been extremely consistent for about 11 months, however no ever looks at me and says ‘Oh he probably goes to the gym’

Several reasons

1)Poor starting point

Had a lot of fat and almost no muscle, overweight

2)Trash program

The coach in the gym directly put me on machines without squat bench etc, 20sets per muscle group

  1. (Probably) poor genetics

Barely saw any ‘rapid’ progression on my lifts in the start, took me weeks to increase weight

4)Obsessed with losing fat/fatigue from cut

Ended up cutting way too long, I wanted to get ‘lean’, but since I had no muscle, never lost my gut, just looked even worse ‘skinny fat’

However I seem to have fixed all the issues on my end, and am seeing slow but steady increase in reps and weights, it’s still kinda demotivating when my friends say that they can’t see progress but ofc they don’t know how bad I fucked up and ngl I am actually getting a little excited with everything coming together, and was wondering how long did it take y’all to start looking good

  • fastandcurious@lemmy.worldOP
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    8 months ago

    Sry, yeah I was trying to lose weight, but tbh I have always heard people use the term ‘cut’ when giving advice to people who are starting fat

    That being said, if I get literally close to 0 results in 8 months despite working hard and eating well, then I can be sure something is wrong with my training

    Also I had to start on ground zero anyway when I started those compound movements, my form was shit, I might have had the strength (spoiler alert I didn’t) but it didn’t transfer over

    • KillerTofu@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      IMHO stick with the compound movements. Read mark riptoes book, pretty much the standard on terms of beginning weightlifting. 5x5 strong lifts is a watered down version and easy to understand and stick to. Take progress pictures for yourself.

    • Aquila
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      8 months ago

      Sounds like you haven’t been very clear with your goals.

      What results are you going for? What have you been tracking? What’s your diet look like? What’s your workout routine like? What’s your base caloric needs?

      • fastandcurious@lemmy.worldOP
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        8 months ago

        Honestly my goal is to just get in better shape, yeah getting ripped might be cool but its just too far off, I atleast wanna look fit, the reason I use my strength as an example is because you can be sure that someone who cant bench 60lbs (about 5 months in iirc) confidently isn’t gonna be very good looking, and I am a male