First off thanks for reading, I appreciate it. Secondly, thanks for the comparison to Mythical Strength, who is definitely one of my favorite fitness bloggers out there. A true compliment.

Reddit is better for information on fitness than I think most experts give it credit for you. There’s a lot of great lifters that will answer some of the most niche questions out there. But a lot of the top posts are biased toward extreme results. When someone goes from 140 lbs to 175 lbs of mostly muscle, that’s just really impressive and of course it gets posted and of course it gets upvoted.

But for every one of those guys, there’s ten of us that are just grinding out more typical results. Because our results are just average, we’re less likely to post them and they’re less likely to receive upvotes. So, it’s important not to think of top posts on /r/fitness of shredded 24 year olds as normal, they are outliers.

I’m about eight months into powerbuilding and I’m finding the same thing as you: I’m starting to look like I lift. I’m sure this is a combination of greater emphasis on assistance work, like you said, but also just finally having the strength to make some real hypertrophy gains. Someone with a 2 plate bench can do hell of a lot heavier 3x12 dumbbell arm assistance work than someone with a 1 plate bench.

Good luck on your journey, man. Thanks for stopping by and telling your story.