Partners gym Progress Dissatisfaction

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nextstep

New member
Hey everyone! I’m not sure how to start this 🥹 so basically how do you comfort your partner when they’re sad cause haven’t really made any improvement at their gym?

My husband and I have been hitting the gym seriously these two years. Our gym have one of those professionals body weight/fat/muscle measurement. We are checked every 9 months to see our progress. I was so happy to find out that I’ve made really impressive progress, my body fat decreased by 3% and muscle weight increased by 4%. I was indeed happy for this result as I’ve not been disciplined at all in my program. Ate whatever I want, don’t do cut or bulk, skipping too many sessions whenever I felt lazy. 😅

On the other hand. My husband has been the complete opposite of me. He’s been extremely disciplined, never skipped his session, did cuts and bulks. But his progress was close to nonexistent… he was so devastated when he checked his measurement today. I felt so bad about it too. And I honestly don’t know what to say to comfort him.

But…. I’ve noticed that he’s the “ego lift” kind of guy. He doesn’t really take advice and hates it whenever I brought this topic, that his form is wrong, the weight is too heavy for him, that he should book the coach session to show him how to do certain exercise correctly,…. And so on.

So, how would you deal with this situation? Any input is appreciated. I honestly don’t want to come off as ignorant for celebrating my victory while he’s in his loss 🥹
 
@nextstep Those machines are not accurate at all. I’ve been going to the gym 3x a week for the last 4 months weight lifting. In that time I’ve increased my weights substantially, put on about 5-6 lbs in weight and look a lot more muscular. The machine says I’ve lost 2-3lbs of lean muscle mass and gained 4% body fat… no way. I eat well, sleep well, don’t drink alcohol or do any drugs.
 
@nextstep First, I would not overly fixate on the results from those scans: Body composition estimates are less useful than you think.

To be clear, that’s how you should interpret the results of those DEXA scans. If DEXA says you lost 14kg of fat and 6kg of lean mass, that actually means you lost somewhere between 10-18kg of fat, and somewhere between 2-10kg of lean mass. In other words, DEXA is telling you that the outcome of your diet was somewhere between “unambiguously good” and “catastrophically bad.”
Click to expand...

(DEXA is used as the example here because it is the best commercial method for measuring body comp, other methods generally have even higher errors).

Are his lifts going up? Does he prefer the way he looks in the mirror? Then his progress isn’t nonexistent.

However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement. If he’s open to it, the Fitness Wiki is a great resource that demystifies what is needed to make progress and really cuts through a lot of the bullshit. Fat loss is going to primarily come from diet and muscle gain from resistance training with progressive overload.
 
@nathan2018 Thank you so much for the detail answer! The coach today told him that he’s loosing weight too fast that’s why he’s not really seeing progress. The way I see him he’s definitely in a better shape than he was a year ago… I was kinda bump that the scan results was not what he’s expected 🥹
 
@womanofworth He’s definitely in Better shape! Even I had to buy bigger size for his shirts cause no way he could fit in his old size. I’m sad that he felt so demotivated from the scan results 🥹
 
@nextstep Let him help himself by not helping him. Less stress to both of you. Keep showing up at the gym and celebrate your victories :) and yes I agree-let him pout.
 
@nextstep So yeah, less about the machine measurement, as others have said. It's too bad he put so much stock in the results of this thing.

I think he should take progress pics instead. And I decide what exactly he's trying to do.

If he's mostly just caring about lifting more weight, than his body composition might not be the focus. He could focus on technique mastery for moving the most weight possible (powerlifting basically). If the powerlifting training is actually good, he will also gain muscle, but probably not the same distribution and total muscle gain as he could achieve on a more generalized hypertrophy program.

If he cares about losing fat and having abs, taking: weight measurement (3-7x/week), waist measurement (once / week) and pictures (every 4 weeks) would be my recommendation. Weight might not always go down, but combined with visuals and waist measurement he should be seeing positive progress. (Waist goes down, weight is stable = lost fat and gained muscle -- if waist goes up and weight goes up == "big shrug")

To be clear, trying to lift the most weight every time you're at the gym (as you said, egolifting) is not good training. It's a performance. And we train to be able to perform better. We don't peform to get better at performance. True maximal performance (1-RM attempts all the time) probably make us temporarily worse. Unless you're actually getting a platform, I would never do 1-RMs basically. More like a single at 3RM or 4RM, to practice heavy singles -- these you can do every week. And you use a calculator to estimate your 3RM from what you can do for reps.
 
@amn Thank you so much! I’ll screenshot your answer and send it to him . and pretending like I’ve got this information randomly on Reddit 🥹🥹🥹
 
@nextstep Maybe tell him that: "his form is wrong, the weight is too heavy for him, that he should book the coach session to show him how to do certain exercise correctly,…. And so on."

Generally, it's often most difficult to take some fitness advice from partner, you can try to start conversation without judgment and not try to give advices straight away.

Ask him why he thinks he is not making progress, try to steer the conversation in a way that he thinks he comes up with new ideas. It's possible but hard to do.

Don't expect too much, sometimes people need to learn from their mistakes until they understand.

There is also more drastic approach if it above doesn't work and you still want to do something.

Be very blunt and tell him straight on, that will lead to a fight or some silent days most likely but maybe after a while will have some effect.
 
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