This might be the most asked question I get on a weekly basis. If not, it’s definitely top 5. It goes something like this: “Andy – I want to keep getting stronger, but I also want to drop some body fat. What’s the best type of strength program to use while I’m cutting body fat?”
I don’t know that there is ONE single program to use that works 100% of the time with every trainee in every situation, but I would say in general my favorite barbell-based strength program to use during a fat loss phase has to be the Classic Heavy-Light-Medium protocol.
If you don’t know what the Heavy-Light-Medium template is, search my blog for a 3-part article series I wrote a few years ago that goes into pretty good detail on the subject. The program is also discussed in Practical Programming for Strength Training 3rd ed, and of course Bill Starr’s classic – The Strongest Shall Survive.
It is important to understand that the Heavy-Light-Medium template is just that……a template. It’s NOT a “program.” A program is something very specific. It’s sets, reps, loads, exercise selection, etc. It’s written out for an individual or very specific population. The Heavy-Light-Medium template can be manipulated dozens of different ways to form a specific program for a specific individual to chase a specific goal – general strength, competitive strength sports, non-barbell sports, hypertrophy, etc. It’s extremely flexible and that’s one of the reasons I like it so much.
But the purpose of this article is to examine WHY I like it so much for a client or trainee who is trying to preserve or even build as much strength as possible, while cutting body fat.
#1: Big Lift Frequency
For anyone who has ever done a weight cut before, you’ve probably experienced the defeating feeling of crawling underneath the bar and having the barbell feel about 50 lbs heavier than it actually is! I’ve even re-racked the bar to double check and see if I misloaded it! Of course, we know, that the weight didn’t get 50 lbs heavier over the course of the week if you are training correctly……you just got smaller!
Even if your bodyweight is only down 2-3 lbs, it often feels like the load on the bar increased by 10 times that much.
If your fat loss strength program only calls for doing each lift 1x/week and you are losing weight on a weekly basis, that barbell is going to feel exponentially heavier week to week, even if you are only making small incremental increases week to week.
One of the ways to mitigate this de-motivating experience is to train your primary lifts with a relatively high level of frequency. At least 2-3 times per week. This helps you “keep pace” with the weight loss.
In addition, higher frequency training keeps the nervous system “primed” to more efficiently perform whatever exercises are being frequently repeated throughout the week. Usually, when we increase in strength, our gains are essentially coming from two areas: growth and neurological efficiency.
Growth can occur through an increase in size of the muscle fibers themselves (sarcomeric hypertrophy) which increases their actual contractile strength. Growth also occurs from the “swelling” effect within the muscle cell that comes from an increased capacity to store glycogen and water (sarcoplasmic hypertrophy). This can have an impact on strength mainly through creating more advantageous leverages around the joints. Either way – growth is driven by caloric excess. i.e. you have to eat a lot of food and specifically a lot of carbs. If you are trying to drop body fat you’ve got to create a caloric deficit and you probably have to restrict your carbs to some degree as well. Neither lends itself to an optimal environment for growth.
Since we aren’t maximizing muscle growth and weight gain to drive progress on our lifts, we need to maximize the neurological side of things. We do this really in two main ways: train each lift heavy and train each lift often. The Heavy-Light-Medium template allows us to do both. On the standard Mon-Wed-Fri schedule we can train each lift directly up to 3 days per week.
#2: Structured for Recovery
Training each lift 3 days per week hard and heavy is not really feasible on a strong caloric deficit. If you are a natural trainee, you simply cannot recover from this amount of stress during the week. In fact, even in a caloric surplus, training each lift heavy 3 days per week is difficult, unless you are a rank novice in your first few months of training. However, with the Heavy-Light-Medium system two of the three training days are actually relatively easy. Even though they may not actually FEEL easy, trainees should never really be in danger of missing weights on Light and Medium training days. These days are not meant to impose new stress on the trainee – they are meant to preserve strength, facilitate active recovery, and keep motor pathways fresh while the trainee recovers from the stress created on the Heavy Day.
This is in contrast to a much harder program such as the Texas Method. The Texas Method basically splits volume and intensity work up over the course of the week with a light day in between. So essentially you have a training week that is structured as Heavy-Light-Heavy as opposed to Heavy-Light-Medium. This can be difficult to navigate on a caloric deficit.
This is also in contrast to body-part splits, which aren’t inherently bad, but are designed to maximize muscle growth by placing a high volume of work across all parts of the body with a combination of low-rep heavy training on the big lifts and higher rep isolation type work to maximize the “swelling effect” on each individual muscle group – usually with the expressed purpose of enhancing the physique. My very popular KSC Method for Power-Building program is structured like this and is very effective for gaining size and muscularity, but would not work well in a deep caloric deficit. It’s simply too much day to day stress and recovery would become a problem very quickly.
#3: Only One High-Stress Day per Week Works Well With a Fat-Loss Diet
The Heavy Day could also be re-named “High Stress Day.” So the heavy day really has to be the one day of the week where all the progress of the program is derived from. This means that both volume and intensity must be supplied in sufficient quantities that strength can be improved or at least maintained. If you are using the Heavy-Light-Medium system on a weight cut, you need to place your priority lifts on this day. The Heavy Day will be long and it will be hard. And we’re going to eat enough to train through it appropriately.
Even on a weight-cut you can afford (and I actually recommend) at least one very high calorie/high carb day per week. We are going to use this high calorie/high carb day to get us through the Heavy Day workout.
Many coaches recommend that you place the high calorie/high carb day on the same day as your hardest weekly workout. I actually feel that the better method is to place your high calorie/high carb day as the day before your hardest training day of the week.
This is for two reasons.
First is to leverage the “post cheat day bloat” and weight gain that occurs after a high-calorie/high carb or “cheat day.” If you’ve been dieting pretty hard on low-carbs/low-calorie for a week or more, and then all of a sudden you have an entire day of double, triple, or even more of increased carbs and increased overall caloric intake, it’s not uncommon to wake up the next morning 7-8 or even 10 lbs heavier than the day before. This is mostly all water weight or “bloat” but that bloat isn’t non-functional. It will improve your strength (if only temporary) and increase your energy reserves for a long hard Heavy Day workout. In my experience it takes a day for us to efficiently “uptake” or store all that excess glycogen and water so placing the cheat day or high calorie/high carb day BEFORE the Heavy Day only makes sense. Placing the high calorie day the same day as the Heavy Day workout is not efficient timing if you want to leverage all those increased calories towards a better workout.
Second, when you’ve been eating low carb/low calorie for a week or so and all of a sudden you start gorging on high carb meals – energy drops as blood sugar spikes rapidly. This is the infamous “Carb Coma.” This is especially prevalent in natural fatties (or endomorphic body types) who tend to be more carb sensitive. And if you are on a severe weight cut – this is likely to be you. The “Carb-Coma” is not a productive state to train in. Energy is low, focus is off, and you generally feel heavy and sluggish. In my experience, the day AFTER the high-carb day is much more conducive to an energetic and focused training session.
#4: Easy to Program Cardio in a Heavy-Light-Medium Program
If you are trying to lose body fat, then diet alone may or may not be the only method that you use. For many of us, we can have a little more wiggle room in our diets if we institute 2-4 days per week of cardio work. The biggest problem many people have with cardio or conditioning is – when to perform it during the week?
Depending on the nature of the cardio work performed, it can have a negative impact on a strength training session the following day. However, with Light and Medium days during the week, it’s okay if your legs are a little tired and beat up from the previous days conditioning work. You’re going lighter on your lifts so you can generally push through a little fatigue and it’s no big deal. The only day you should strictly avoid cardio work is the day PRIOR to your Heavy Day. However, if you are training Heavy-Light-Medium on Monday-Wednesday-Friday then it becomes very simple and easy to perform say 20-40 minutes of conditioning work on Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday without a huge drain on your strength work. It’s hard to do that on more demanding programs.
#5: Adaptable to Any Individual
As I mentioned before, the Heavy-Light-Medium template is extremely flexible. This is a big plus for a coach who has to program for a wide variety of trainees. Volume, Intensity, and exercise selection can all be tailored to the individual within this template. It can be used with a hard-charging 26 year old competitive power-lifter or a recreational 45 year old casual lifter, or even a 65 year old trainee with a few health problems. Simple manipulation of sets/reps/loads can make the template work for just about anyone.
If you’re not sure on how to set up your own Heavy-Light-Medium program, I can probably get you set up on the right track with a simple 1-hour phone consult. All we need is your current numbers on each of the main lifts and then we can convert them all over to an easy to follow program that should yield a steady 12-16 weeks of progress. You can book a Phone Consult Here if you’d like some individualized help with this type of programming.
Otherwise, do yourself a favor and review my Heavy-Light-Medium article series, read the Heavy-Light-Medium section in PPST3, or even review some of Bill Starr’s old programs, many of which followed this type of template. This should give you some insight on how to set one of these programs up for your own personal goals.
