In Part 1, we went over a few key points regarding the weight training side of things, while following a cut.
As a quick summary….
First, tamper your expectations about medium to long term linear progression while dropping weight. Instead, following a system that allows for some autoregulation. My preference is something like a Conjugate / Westside system or a “rotating” linear progression that allows you to go “all out” at every session, allowing for the fact that your all out effort might not be a PR. And in fact – later in the cut – it probably won’t be.
Second, don’t bombard yourself with volume while cutting. High training volumes require high levels of fuel – and you simply don’t have it. And if you eat up all of your resources churning out set after set after set – you don’t have much to use for recovery. Remember – both training and recovery require calories. Your calories are, by definition, inadequate at the moment to optimally fuel both. The goal with the cut is to maintain your muscle mass. So leave some energy available for recovery. Keep sessions short and intense rather than long and drawn out.
In part 2, we’ll discuss a couple of quick tips as it pertains to your Diet & Cardio.
We already know that you have to be in a caloric deficit to lose the weight. Usually this means keeping protein relatively high (again – in order to preserve as much muscle as possible) but dropping your energy sources – usually some reduction in both carbohydrate and fat. And usually some cardio can help nudge the process a long a bit faster and without starving yourself quite as badly.
But the trick is not simply just calorie reduction. That’s the most important part, and it has to happen. But it’s not as simple as that.
We aren’t just looking to lose weight…..we’re looking to lose the maximum amount of body fat possible, while retaining the most amount of muscle possible.
First, let’s look at diet.
Many conventional diets and meal plans make every day look more or less identical to the last. So each day has the same amount of protein, fat, and carbohydrate as every other day. This isn’t wrong and it absolutely makes planning and preparation easier. That in and of itself makes a strong case for uniformity across the week.
However, the reality is that not every day is a training day and not every training day is the same as every other training day.
So it makes some sense to bias your carbohydrate intake throughout the week in a way that will best support your training. Even though it may be difficult (and at sometimes impossible) to train at PR levels during the cut – we still want to fight like hell to preserve as much performance as possible in the gym. Not to protect our ego – but to protect our muscle mass.
It’s likely some drop in performance is inevitable during a prolonged cut. But if we can make that a 5% reduction in performance rather than 10-20% drop, then we’ll likely have held onto more muscle when we eventually reach our target body weight.
So if carbohydrates are low on your diet, you don’t have to spread them evenly throughout the day on a training day. If possible, try to shift the greater balance of those carbohydrates into the pre-training meals, combined with lower in fat proteins. Then later in the day shift away from higher carbohydrate foods and into higher fat proteins and fibrous vegetables.
You can use the same strategy between days. You don’t need the same amount of carbohydrates on a rest day that you need on a training day. So instead of eating 150g of carbs every day…..you could potentially shift that to eating 200g on your training day and 100g on a rest day. Or even 250g on a training day and 50g on a rest day. Obviously on the lower carb rest days, the energy balance would be made up with a slightly higher fat content, which happens to be great for recovery.
There are a million ways to do it potentially. But the moral of the story is to try and manipulate the carb intake in a way that best supports your hardest training sessions.
When it comes to cardio, I have the same philosophy as I do with diet – protect your carbohydrates/glycogen for use during training.
This is why I’m a bit old school on the question of Long/Slow Cardio vs HIIT. For someone in a prolonged caloric deficit I’m a fan of the Long/Slow cardio modalities.
HIIT burns up a lot of muscle glycogen. That’s your primary fuel source for your training sessions. I don’t like depleting it just for the sake of burning calories.
Long/Slow Cardio burns up less overall calories, but a higher percentage of those calories come from fat. To me it’s a bit more of a precision tool.
For someone in a surplus I tend to have the exact opposite thought – I think HIIT is likely the better tool as a means to not only burn off some excess calories as a means to prevent too much body fat increase – but also as a great tool to enhance insulin sensitivity which can become somewhat blunted during long periods of caloric surplus.
But while in a surplus, our glycogen stores are never really in danger of depletion. So burning up some glycogen during cardio is fine. We’re gonna fill the tank right back up most likely.
But during a deficit – glycogen stores might be running low and the resupply train might not be back to the station for a while.
Protecting your glycogen protects your capacity to train heavier and harder – thus protecting your ability to hang onto your hard earned muscle mass during your cut.
