You might be training multiple times per week, getting a sweat on, eating pretty well but for some reason you're just not getting any stronger. The answer might be more simple than you think.
You might be training too hard...
Most of us have been guilty of this at some point. Last week you PR'd on your deadlift and felt like Superman. Your mentality this week is to beat your PR by 5kg, and you try and keep this up every week. If only it was that simple, we'd all be giving Eddie Hall's 500kg deadlift a run for its money within a few years.
Inevitably this type of approach will lead to problems. For one, it's very unsustainable long term. If your programme 'periodisation' is built on setting a PR each week, but the night before you've had terrible sleep, which forces you to miss your lift, now your plan is wrecked. You've failed to create a stronger stimulus from last week, which will hinder your progress, and psychologically you've set yourself up for failure as you've missed the rep - this can play on your mind in the next session and when you're focusing on getting stronger, your mental game needs to be strong too.
That aside, constantly setting records is physically and neurologically very draining, which is why traditionally strength programme blocks are often set up in 4 week waves, with the first 3 focused on lifting heavier/increasing workload and the 4th being a de-load to allow for accumulated fatigue to drop, preparing you for the next wave. You might be familiar with this type of fatigue: you've had a good recovery as far as you can tell, but when you go to pick up a weight it feels like someone is holding it down. Or you're struggling to get fired up for a session mentally, which can indicate that you're pushing your boundaries and your nervous system is taking a beating.
Smart strength training leaves something in the tank. You focus on lifting weights that you can control, that don't force you to miss reps, and don't force you to grind them out. This applies to your primary exercises, as well as to an extent your accessory exercises, though there is more room to push the boat out. To be clear, I'm not advocating that you coast through the workout and don't challenge yourself. Rather, that you do so in a way that doesn't leave you feeling like a dumpster fire. As coach Pat Davidson would put it: don't be a week 1 firecracker and a week 4 fizzle because you trained like a madman every time.
Are you tracking your training?
As a beginner (never lifted a weight) you can get by with a haphazard training plan to a degree where you don't need to keep track of your weights. The body is unconditioned to resistance training, and will adapt quickly to a strong stimulus - strength will go up, as will muscle mass. You'll experience what we call 'newbie gains'.
As you get more experienced with training, the requirements for your body to adapt become greater, and the haphazard approach will start to yield diminished returns for the investment. Building strength now requires more stress to cause the body to adapt to become stronger and bigger to accommodate the stress placed on it with more efficiency. This stress needs to be great enough to force change, but not too great to overload the tissues and nervous system to the point where you can hurt yourself. But the only way to know the required dose is to systematically track your training by keeping account of the weight you've lifted, the number of sets and repetitions, and becoming better at certain specific exercises for an extended period of time.
Think of this like doing your monthly books. You're saving for a car that you want to buy in 6 months, and you need to track your outgoings and incomings to ensure that come the day, you can afford it. If you didn't track the money you spent on groceries, haircuts, clothes and holidays as well as your earnings, how could you confidently say you're getting closer to the target figure that you need for the car. It's the same with training and getting stronger. Think of the reps, sets and weights as your wage and bills and you'll save yourself time and confusion as to the outcome you're after.
Are you 'programme-hopping'?
Are you changing programmes every 4 weeks or every week? Each session you do is different than the last? We'd call this EXERCISING not TRAINING, and there's a difference. Exercising is engaging in physical activity for the sake of physical activity. Training is physical activity with the intent of achieving a specific goal. Now, to be clear, there is nothing wrong with simply exercising, but if you have goals that involve building strength and muscle, then you need to be training. Let's break this down.
As mentioned earlier, the body adapts to training stress imposed on it by becoming more efficient, stronger and more muscular. This process takes time, and involves complicated mechanisms like improved neuromuscular efficiency, higher motor unit recruitment, improved contraction timing, and so on. But cutting past all that, what this essentially boils down to is...time. You can't cheat time and consistency following a structured training programme in your quest to get strong as an ox.
The initial phase of strength training involves skill acquisition: we become more efficient at doing specific exercises/movements (think of when you were learning to ride a bike). Once our skill improves we can start to tap into heavier loads (now you can cycle faster) that stimulate our nervous as well as our muscular system in ways to start improving our true strength. This process doesn't happen overnight (or actually in a way it does, as it's a constant process), rather it takes several weeks to months for these specific adaptations to cement. This is why changing the fundamental aspects of programmes frequently won't work in the long run. The reality is, that most effective strength programmes are boring on paper, and often very repetitive. But if you're training, and not exercising, this is exactly what it's going to take, and the motivation to continue comes from seeing the fruits of labour.
Live strong and prosper.
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