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Well, I've been going to the gym for about five years now, but I still feel weak and small (in terms of muscles).
Sounds like you are either doing something really terribly wrong or you have a very warped perspective of your body. Posting some stats might be helpful.
I weigh 91kg right now, up from a low of 75kg 18 months ago. In that time, I've gotten a thicker waist and only marginally stronger. I can bench 100kg for 6, up from doing it as a single. I haven't tested my squat recently (last time I pushed it I did 140kg for 5), but my OHP (60kg for eight) and deadlift are both stagnant. My deadlift is particularly frustrating because I used to have a better deadlift - I maxed out at 195kg in 2019. Now, I can't even do 180kg, even using a belt, and I get lower back pain when I do so.
Over that 18 months I've also been fairly depressed. I never stopped going to the gym regularly, but I have fairly constant negative thoughts about my own weakness and laziness. As you said, I must be doing something terribly wrong, but I don't know what. I drink alcohol only rarely - about once a month, and I've probably only been genuinely drunk twice in the past year. I eat a lot of protein. My sleep schedule is uh, not much of a schedule because I work unusual hours. But 95% of the time, I'm sleeping 6-8 hours. I function terribly on low sleep so there's not really much of a choice.
Overall, I've been lifting for over five years. Over COVID lockdown, I did some bodyweight training at home, but not very consistently. I don't believe my perspective on my body is warped. I know plenty of people much stronger than me, some of whom have trained for substantially less time. And the thing is that I don't even care that much. I don't really hate the way I look, once I shed some fat I think I'll look okay. It's knowing that I could have more, and the only reason I don't is because of my laziness.
These seem like not amazing but not bad numbers. It would also be helpful to know how tall you are. Plugging them into symmetricstrength, I get intermediate on the edge of proficient, which is what I would expect given your description of motivation, training history, and lifestyle. I do tend to believe that the qualitative descriptions there line up pretty well with what I've observed in the gym. For intermediate: "The majority of those who go to the gym regularly fall into this category."
Are you sure the people you are comparing yourself to who are stronger are not more athletically gifted, younger, bigger, or on gear/TRT? It also depends on how old you are. If you not in your early 20s or a noob gains come at a glacial or negative pace eventually, especially if you aren't at a point in life to hit it supper hard.
Also, I guess its fine to pick random programs if your just trying random stuff out for fun. No one is forcing you to do power cleans. Pick a different program if you don't want to do them. I can't comment on the quality of the program and don't have the inclination to read the ebook. But based on the advertising, are you sure you had realistic expectations going in? It doesn't really look like the kind of thing that is engineered to work for intermediate natties. Like, why would you think that someone who is physically gifted and on a shit tone of gear would have particular skill at designing a cooky cutter program for average natty people? If you are just doing it for fun that's fine, but then I don't understand why you would be disappointed by the results.
Well, it's not so much getting poor results on one program, but getting poor results on basically everything I've done over the past year. It makes me think the problem is with me, not the program. And I picked this because someone recommended it to me on Reddit.
I rarely have any expectations doing anything, but sure, I thought I could have made some gains, instead of nothing.
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These are not noob numbers. I would be ecstatic if I could bench 100 for 6.
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