I can squat 10 more pounds than I could 6 weeks ago, but my body weight hasn’t changed. In the same vein, I’ve seen skinny dudes rip 300 pounds off the floor.
In: 58
Like others said, your central nervous system gets better at activating your muscles. You can do specific training to boost that. Such as being as explosive as possible, box jumps and other non-grindy movements.
Your muscles can also be quite a lot more dense.
There’s also your case of 10 pounds not being very much – your beginner gains from simply learning how to activate your muscles and using what you already have will far outweigh any growth in muscle.
Muscle growth is slow, and you will not be gaining 20 or 40 pounds of muscle in 6 months like bogus training programs and apps will try to trick you into.
On top, you are likely to be redistributing your weight, so that less of your body will be made up of fat – there’s a bunch of things going on in the beginning phases of starting to lift.
I’m personally a lot stronger at a 10kg lower weight now than 10 years ago when I’d been going for some years. Well… now, not so much, because I became a parent and my gymtime died, but just 10 months ago I was on my way back from lockdown gym-closure and so close I could taste it to that 100kg over bodyweight squat. Doing sets 5 of 5 for 150kg (330 pounds) squats, at 82kg bodyweight – felt pretty good! Now It’s like… 100kg is super heavy.
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