this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2025
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Gyms also provide a social aspect that you don't get at home. When I was wfh full time, it was one of my only social outlets on a daily basis.
Not to mention if you want to get "big" it's immensely difficult / impossible to do so without lifting a lot of weight. Obviously, you can get in great shape without equipment, but building size is what a lot of gymbros are pursuing.
So, wait, the actual weight influences muscle growth? I thought it was reps and weight.
Might be why I plateaud then. I don't have anything heavier here.
It's a variety of things, but yes to increase size and strength you do need to eventually lift heavier things, with the best method of doing so considered to be progressive overload. There are much better resources than me but to give some basics: while bodybuilding is not a direct translation to strength (see strongman competitions and their body types), it absolutely does correlate and bodybuilders are actually quite strong, their goals are just usually way different than strongmen. Anecdotally, I have done both, and prefer strength training mentally, but my body prefers bodybuilding as I tended to get a lot of minor injuries with strength training because it is a little more risky (assuming proper form across both disciplines).
Basically, you need to continue "overloading" what your body can lift over time, and you do this by increasing reps, sets, and weights. You don't need a ton of weight to do this for your upper body, but legs and back you'll eventually want some plates and whatnot. You can also overload in different ways, higher reps and more sets will help increase both your endurance and strength, though moreso the former. Over time, you will be able to add weight, add reps, add sets, and you will absolutely gain in size and strength.
The other key items are hitting the weights frequently and diet. If you want to get bigger you need to eat a surplus of calories and gain weight, "bulking." You can do this either cleanly (eating healthy) or do a dirty bulk (obviously, not clean eating), and you'll gain either way, though typically you'll add more fat in a dirty bulk. Then, you can then lose some of the weight later while "cutting," the most miserable time for a bodybuilder, where you try to maintain your prior workout intensity, weight, etc, but now operating at a calorie deficit in order to keep the muscle while losing the fat.
Strength programs will typically call for fewer sets/reps and to increase the weight as fast as you safely can while bodybuilding is best pursued with higher reps, though I believe it usually caps at sets of 12 or so reps before you start adding weight for optimal size increases. In my experience, this makes bodybuilding more time consuming as well, but you can recover faster.
The diet part is challenging.
Luckily I hit 195 lbs 3 months ago, and while I haven't lost anymore weight (well, that's not true, I'm hovering between 190 and 193), my waistline has gotten smaller and I'm in a shirt size smaller. So I'm clearly doing something right. (Down from 290lbs at peak).
Protein intake is 70-80 grams/day. I tend to eat more fats than carbs, but I apparently need to be careful about this as sometimes I only got like a third of what I needed minimum.
The lower body weights make sense. Squats with 50lbs of added weight hasn't actually changed how many I can do, almost exclusively because of blood pressure related issues (it's very easy for me to grey out/pass out). Knowing that, I'll see if I can find a gym that's easier to get to at least for that.
I'm glad the upper body isnt too dependant on equipment. When I was in school, the most pushups I could do was 10 on a good day and that was mostly because I weighed 120lbs at 6'. After creating a pushup routine, I'm up to a set of 15, and a set of 10 (and I can definitely see making it to two sets of 15 in a couple of weeks). You can practically feel your body expand with those lol.
That is amazing progress! Always try to remember it's a journey, not a destination, and you will have ups and downs along the way. For instance, I'm just getting back to serious gym pursuits because in the last year I got a new job with a commute that sucks (everything else is good with it tho) and lost my father, so I stumbled pretty hard on my journey while learning to cope with some major life changes. It can get depressing when you know you can do better but aren't for whatever reason, and you just have to try and remember that you will get there again if you keep at it. Giving up is easy, getting up is a hell of a lot harder.
Your protein intake seems very low to me, I believe the ideal protein intake is about a gram per pound of your goal weight. So, you likely need to at least double your current intake to allow your body to build more muscle.
If you have a blood pressure issue, squats are probably going to be risky, esp the more weight you add as your effort increases. Def talk to your doctor about what you can/should do, and maybe try to mix in other exercises. Weighted lunges are wonderful for you.
There's a 100 push up program you can follow if you want to keep improving there, it was a fun challenge that I did once upon a time, now as long as I can consistently do 30 or so I don't feel like like I've lost it entirely lol. But, make sure you balance it with back work or it can cause issues in your shoulders and back (big/strong pecs pull your back forward and round your posture if you don't have big delts to counter em). Back workouts are probably the hardest to do without some kind of extra equipment like a pull up bar at minimum. Kettle bells can go a long way in making up for a lack of other equipment if you don't have an alternative, a 10 lb and 30 lb bell were the first pieces of equipment I ever bought.
Doc told me 1g per kilogram. He raised an eyebrow when I asked how I could possibly get 1g per pound and he said it would be terrible for people's kidneys if they had to consume that much.
Been a while since I've looked into it, but looks like now it might be a bit less, at .8/lb: https://mennohenselmans.com/the-myth-of-1glb-optimal-protein-intake-for-bodybuilders/
It does seem to indicate you can likely get away with less than that, but I think a gram per kilo would be a bit under optimal.
Also if you don't already have kidney issues there's not really anything to worry about with consuming extra protein, other than that it gets expensive. Same myth that people used to discuss with creatine consumption.